The Daylight War

May 19, 2014
Brett's third Demon Cycle installment (after The Desert Spear) offers little forward progression. Demonic "corelings" continue to rise and attack humans. Magicians Arlen Bales and Ahmann Jardir continue to fight each other for the sake of becoming the prophesied "Deliverer" from the demons. The first third of the novel focuses on Jardir's cunning First Wife, Inerva, whose backstory is fleshed out with some uncomfortable sexual power plays. The second half shows some movement and excitement when a coreling invades Arlen's mind, but Brett's fondness for silly dialects and faux-Arab stereotypes derails any sense of immersion. New readers will be welcomed by decent recapping, but Brett offers little for returning fans.

February 1, 2013
Third in Brett's once-projected five-installment--now swelled to six--Demon Cycle. The demons in question, called "corelings," are the bad fruit of a world that has descended from enlightened civilization to darkness, which ought to be meaningful to anyone who pays attention to the news. These corelings--they come from inside the Earth, whence their name--are sort of like vampires, but with lots more magic, and if you're a human, you want to be endowed with or at least around someone with magical powers: Arlen Bales, say, who sports demon-fending body paint, or the desert warrior who sports a magical spear and is now assembling an army to battle the demons once and for all. Hmmm. World-ending battle driven by an object imbued with magical properties: LOTR, anyone? Brett's debts to Tolkien are many and obvious, though there's some Frank Herbert mixed in, too: "Soli was...still young to be wearing the robes of a full dal'Sharum, the black cloth still deep with fresh dye." "The ring seemed a simple silver bauble, but it was etched with tiny wards and powered by a half pebble of demon bone at its center." It has some surprises, too, as when Brett channels Thomas Hardy (" 'He ent bluffing, ' Elona muttered. 'Been with him near thirty years, and still ent got a clue.' ") Ents? Orcs? No, but there's even some satisfying bodice-ripping to keep the story rolling ("She moved higher, pressing his face into her breasts as she pulled harder, and that seemed to help"). Obvious ancestry aside, and though the book is dense and a touch too busy, it's capable fantasy.

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March 15, 2013
Brett further widens the scope of his epic fantasy saga with this third book in the Demon Cycle. Though the series is centered on two potential saviors of humanityArlen and Jardirthis volume focuses more on the women at their sides: Renna, Arlen's promised; Inevera, Jardir's First Wife; and Leesha, Arlen's childhood friend and Jardir's lover. The identity of the prophesied Deliverer is still uncertain, and Jardir and Arlen both have an army of believers on their sides. Inevera knows that the Deliverer is not born, but made, and she has schemed and sacrificed on Jardir's behalf only to have Leesha thwart her machinations. Leesha's own loyalties are warring, while Renna, worried about losing pace with Arlen, begins a dangerous process to increase her power. Although Brett advances everyone's story lines, he delves deeply into Inevera's fascinating backstory, chronicling her violent, meteoric rise to power, much like he did for other characters in prior books. Climaxing in a breathless confrontation between Arlen and Jardir and ending with a bang, this volume will leave series fans impatient for more.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)