The Painted Man Reviews

I’m absolutely delighted. I didn’t expect, but this book hit perfectly to my liking and made a huge impression on me.

The author tells the story of three children, Arlen, Leesha and Rojer, living in a time when humanity has been decimated by the Corelings, the demons of darkness attack after dark. People protect themselves in their homes guarded magic and pray every night to survive until dawn. The stories of these young people, narrated individually, represent their characters, desires, their struggles with family and environment, show the problems of growing up in a world where not only Corelings are cruel, but people too. Young people grow up in the second half of the book we meet with them when they are already mature.

The main character is going through an internal transformation (probably not just once), a lot of different emotions that are beginning to shape his and finally we find out why and how did the title of the book and why Arlen takes appropriate decisions about their lives. Finally, the fate of the main characters intertwine with each other, as I waited impatiently, all the while imagining the circumstances in which this happens. Each of them survived a lot, many suffered, carries their luggage experience and each of them has something original, irreplaceable, and above all - the courage and desire to change the world for the better, which can make it, that in the next parts of the book Corelings will shit into each other.

For me, everything in this book was interesting. Starting from the created world, after each one character described in the book, each was very real and believable, even the secondary characters, to each one person I felt some emotion, from the enormous sympathy, through amusement, compassion, to hatred. There wasn’t one moment when I started bored, on the contrary, from moment to moment, my curiosity grew, what will happen to the characters. I’m very curious sequels and certainly read them.

A great read and not your average fantasy. I really enjoyed this and had such a hard time putting it down. I loved the main character because he had back bone (just finished reading a series where the main character didn't have a back bone, it was a nice change). I like a character with guts basically and the fact that some of the other characters had that as well made a big difference to the story, for me at least. That and apart from a bit of action and magic there was also some humour.
It was a very tightly packed novel and a great first attempt for a new author as well. Enough to make me want to read the next one in the series.