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The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett


aidan

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It seemed like the Demon Princes were in the story solely to provide a climax, rather than to drive the plot along. The climax of the novel should have been

between Arlen and Jardir, the principal characters in the novel.

Wouldn't that be too soon, considering there will be five books?

Overall, I must say I really liked these two books. There are some shortcomings and what mostly bugs me is repetitiveness, especially indecisiveness of most female characters, especially Leesha's. Like it's crucial whether she'll have sex with somebody or not. In general, there's too much focus on sex and rape.

On the other hand, these novels bring back the world of epic fantasy as it was back in the 80s and 90s. Heroes, quests, monsters and beautiful ladies in distress. Perfect fun.

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Wouldn't that be too soon, considering there will be five books?

No. The central conflict of the novel is the Demons, stretching out Jardir and Arlen's storyline for too long will dilute the series, I fear. Though it's too early to tell, I feel that The Desert Spear could likely have been merged with The Daylight War and not much would have been lost in the process. The pace slowed waaaaaaay down in The Desert Spear and little was actually accomplished in actually moving the plot forward. What did happen could be covered in the first 1/3 of The Desert Spear. I don't want Brett to lose track of what made The Warded Man so compelling. It wasn't Leesha.

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It seems to me that the Daylight War will take over in importance in the next installements and will become the central theme of the series.

I will not be surprised if the demons, in fact, present the materialization of human sins and failings.

Arlen and Jardir, being two faces of the same coin, represent their civilizations. They are basically two paths to the same goal. I bet the struggle between them will be resolved in the last book. And then, united, they will defeat the enemy. Sounds formulaic? I did find the story so far to be formulaic, but that doesn't take anything from it's appeal.

Therefore, there is huge similarity to The Name of the Wind. None of the two stories are original, but both are hitting the same (sweet) spot.

Leesha element is somewhat like Nyneave tugging her braid, but a bit less irritating.

Of course the novel did't go far in terms of plot development when one third (or more) is prequel and retelling from the opposite POV. A small problem I find there is that the...

...betrayal is a bit too much addressed to the influence of Inevera. This deflates the impact of cultural differences, somewhat. That's odd, since it was quite obvious that the story of Daylight War is a story of differences and possibilities to overcome them. Hence the behavior of the dukes on one side and rigid religion on the other. It is just too similar to our world not to be a parable. In terms of plot, I still ponder Jardir's last sentences. Is he really going to proceed as scheduled? Than the whole "Leesha and Rojer in Rizon" part was for nothing except having a good sex.

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I wasn't aware there were 2 titles for one book.

I'm delghted it's coming out ad can't wait to read it. Not reading this thread yet since there seems to be far too many spoilers in it

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Just finished both books and I have to agree with most of the opinions. The rape card is overused. I especially agree with Tom the Merciful about it being formulaic. Almost everything about these books, save the magic and Core aspect, is formulaic. The evil Muslims, lazy Dukes, women actually being in control but just behind the scenes, etc. have been used way too many times. There's one more thing:

When Arlen travels down towards the Core, he realizes there are billions of corelings and there's no way humanity can fight them. This seems like an obvious setup for a Deus Ex Magica or something. I hope it isn't and all this is some clever set up for something new.

Other than that, I enjoyed these books but I don't think the story is worth five books unless there's some major twists ahead.

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When Arlen went down, he noticed that the magic at the core isn't evil. I guess the demons are just sucking up that magic energy and using it to power themselves. I just had a feeling that the overwhelming odds would mean that the war is pointless as it stands. The only way to defeat them would be to tap that Core magic somehow to either use it against the demons or just deprive them of it. Unless the demons are really humans who've been turned by too much magic into demons. That would be too easy though, right?

Two hundred posts, I'm proud of myself for some reason.

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Does anyone know any other fantasy books where the main protaganist grows up to become in the hero in the series? I'm sick of books where the main protaganist meets the hero out fo the blue and I usually have no emotional attachment to the hero as I'm rooting for the protaganist. So, does anyone know any other books like Dune or The Warded Man where the protaganist grows up to be the hero of the books?

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Does anyone know any other fantasy books where the main protaganist grows up to become in the hero in the series? I'm sick of books where the main protaganist meets the hero out fo the blue and I usually have no emotional attachment to the hero as I'm rooting for the protaganist. So, does anyone know any other books like Dune or The Warded Man where the protaganist grows up to be the hero of the books?

Hmm, many of the old school books have that element.

The Belgariad Series by Eddings

Magician by Feist

The dragonbone Chair (i forgot the trilogy's name) by Tad Williams.

These are the stereotypical farmer boy grows up to be a hero storyline... which i might add, i love :)

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I for one would like to see an arab based civilization that is not a vicious, fanatic villain. In the Painted Man, when the protagonist took the spear to city in the desert I immediately thought that it was obvious where this was going and that the evil muslimz!!1 would betray him.

*sigh* :agree: Yes, I know. So annoying.

Why has no one compared this with C.S. Friedman's Cold Fire trilogy? They have many of the same elements including wards, "demons" (not Christian demons but just another kind of creature), the danger of going out at night when the demons come, etc.

Onto specifics

Too much rape.

Renna went by a little fast but her reaction to rape was one of the most realistic. Especially her out of control violent behavior after escaping her little town.

Leesha apaprently tried to sex Arlen right after the rape because she wanted to avoid abortion since that would go against her beliefs. That part I can somewhat grudgingly accept better than true love at first sight.

Rofl at the Leesha-Jardir pairing. :ack:

I have problems with Jardir. He seems very tepid, especially compared with Arlen. :spank:

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Thanks alot. I already have The Dragonbone Chair sitting in my bookecase unread. Guess I'll give that a shot.

Hope u like it. Reactions are quite mixed over this series. Some find it too slow. But i quite liked it :)

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I enjoyed the second book almost as much as I enjoyed the first one.

Have to say it though, the second book didn't have any sequences as intense as the night of Arlen's betrayal in Krasia. But I really like where Arlen is at the end of the second book. Means we're in for some serious badassery in the next books.

I don't like seeing Leesha becoming the new main/central character. She's obviously hogging that role though. I am not happy over the prospect of reading a lot from a more timid, more mary sue version of Nynaeve. She's made enough books less enjoyable for me.

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No. The central conflict of the novel is the Demons, stretching out Jardir and Arlen's storyline for too long will dilute the series, I fear. Though it's too early to tell, I feel that The Desert Spear could likely have been merged with The Daylight War and not much would have been lost in the process. The pace slowed waaaaaaay down in The Desert Spear and little was actually accomplished in actually moving the plot forward. What did happen could be covered in the first 1/3 of The Desert Spear. I don't want Brett to lose track of what made The Warded Man so compelling. It wasn't Leesha.

This.

In addition, I disliked the improptu 'cropping up' of the demon-princes as a new introduction of organised demon behaviour, that seems to me to be installed for the single purpose of stretching the 'story' - thereby watering it.

In hindsight: I should have stopped after reading the 'Painted Man'.

As of yet, I am not sure, I will follow this series any longer.

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I liked some sections of this book, but overall it tended to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I agree with the general trend that most people seem to have felt that rape was overused a bit, but I did find that the situations it was used in were generally quite believable.

I liked the way Arlen and Renna's stories progressed in the book and enjoyed these sections of the book the most. These parts of the story seemed to follow the style of the The Painted Man, which is one of my favourite books and was the whole reason for my buying The Desert Spear in the first place.

My main disappointment with The Desert Spear was the way Leesha's character was changed.

She went from someone who goes out of her way to defend people who can't defend themselves to someone that was quite willing to completely ignore the murder and rape of innocent people (many described to her as still being little more than children) at the hands of Jadir, all because she found him to be attractive. When she went to Fort Rizon she didnt even try to talk to anyone to find out what had happened and happily jumped into bed with Jadir. She appeared to be most upset by the fact he was married, and not that he was raping and murdering innocent people :angry2: . I found this rather astonishing considering all the effort the author had gone to in order to portray Leesha as a strong, independent and compassionate charater and then in the space of a chapter or two she became a fairly pathetic person who dismisses the attocities committed by Jadir and his army as being unimportant.

I found the Jadir storyline was written in a much hasher style than The Painted Man and strayed away from what made the first book of the series so enjoyable to read.

I also found the attempt by the author to create empathy for Jadir to be a bit annoying. He was a fairly textbook sociopath similar to pretty much any other dictator seen throughout history. He murders, torturers and rapes anyone in order to satisfy his own desires or achieve his goals. There seemed to be a large disparity between how the author would portray some of his other evil characters such as Harl who was shown as a truely disgusting person (and is a truely disgusting person) compared with how Jadir was portrayed. Even though both characters murdered innocent people and raped young girls.

I probably won't bother continuing with the next book. It looks like Jadir may be turned into the savior or some sort of hero

when I would rather see one of the women he had raped stand up and stick a knife in him like Reena did to Harl. I generally liked Brett's writing style and dont mind when the charaters are portrayed as being a bit "grey" rather than just being black and white, but I am a bit of an old fashioned fantasy reader and prefer it when good triumphs over evil and in this story I cant see Jadir and his army being held accountable for what they have done and most of them will probably get away with murdering and raping innocent people.

Does anyone knows of any books to read with a similar style to The Painted Man with characters that aren't perfect but without the harshness shown in The Desert Spear?

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Wait wait wait, when did Jardir rape anybody? Jardir hasn't raped anyone, he's let his men rape, he himself has been raped, but he hasn't raped anyone. He isn't even allowed to use the communal harem, if you would consider that rape. His sexual relations appear to be confined to his wives, and I don't think polygamy = rape works here. Moreover

Jardir doesn't entirely like his society, or the way it treats his people, but he's not a moron. He knows he can't do too much or he'll lose power, savior or not. For example, if Abban told Jardir about his wives and daughter getting raped, he'd probably murder whathisface on the spot. But, Abban realizes that Jardir really can't show his real thoughts about his caste in this case, because it'd be too much for Krasians to accept.

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If you brought a bunch of violent men to someone's house and they raped the women in there while you watched and did nothing (and accepted it as "necessary"), you would be a guilty as hell of rape. Just because you don't pull your own pants down and join in doesn't mean you aren't responsible for it.

Whether Jardir enjoyed or approved of it, he was right there watching while his men raped young girls. That makes him just as guilty as them. :rolleyes:

Anyway I thought Jardir did rape someone? Or was that not literally rape when he

shoved a spear into someone's ass?

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If you brought a bunch of violent men to someone's house and they raped the women in there while you watched and did nothing (and accepted it as "necessary"), you would be a guilty as hell of rape. Just because you don't pull your own pants down and join in doesn't mean you aren't responsible for it.

Then every leader of every pre-modern army, and (many modern ones) are all rapists!

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