The Demon Cycle

When the sun goes down, the ground breathes out murder. Mist seeps up from the Core, hardens into flame and rock and wind given teeth, and the only thing between a sleeping family and the corelings is a ring of wards — glyphs scratched in the dust that hold as long as the lines stay unbroken. Miss one stroke and you are meat by morning. This is Peter V. Brett's world: a humanity three centuries into a losing siege, huddled in the dark, waiting on a Deliverer half of them no longer believe will come. The Demon Cycle runs five volumes — The Warded Man (published in Britain as The Painted Man), The Desert Spear, The Daylight War, The Skull Throne, and The Core — following a messenger who tattoos the lost combat-wards into his own skin, a healer, a fiddler whose music turns demons aside, and a desert warlord who claims the prophecy for himself. Around them sit shorter works (Brayan's Gold, Messenger's Legacy, Barren), and beyond them the ongoing Nightfall Saga — The Desert Prince, The Hidden Queen — carrying the next generation into a war their parents did not finish. At its heart is a quarrel over faith and fire: the mannered Free Cities against fanatic, sand-hard Krasia, two would-be saviors who cannot both be right, and a lost art of war-magic that could turn prey into hunters. Begin with The Warded Man and read straight through in publication order; the novellas keep, for later, once the dark is under your skin.