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    The Core
    The Core
    The Core
    Audiobook29 hours

    The Core

    Written by Peter V. Brett

    Narrated by Pete Bradbury

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Peter V. Brett brings one of the most imaginative fantasy sagas of the twenty-first century to an epic close. For time out of mind, bloodthirsty demons have stalked the night, culling the human race to scattered remnants dependent on half-forgotten magics to protect them. Then two heroes arose-men as close as brothers, yet divided by bitter betrayal. Arlen Bales became known as the Warded Man, tattooed head to toe with powerful magic symbols that enable him to fight demons in hand-to-hand combat-and emerge victorious. Jardir, armed with magically warded weapons, called himself the Deliverer, a figure prophesied to unite humanity and lead them to triumph in Sharak Ka-the final war against demonkind. But in their efforts to bring the war to the demons, Arlen and Jardir have set something in motion that may prove the end of everything they hold dear-a Swarm. Now the war is at hand and humanity cannot hope to win it unless Arlen and Jardir, with the help of Arlen's wife, Renna, can bend a captured demon prince to their will and force the devious creature to lead them to the Core, where the Mother of Demons breeds an inexhaustible army. Trusting their closest confidantes, Leesha, Inevera, Ragen and Elissa, to rally the fractious people of the Free Cities and lead them against the Swarm, Arlen, Renna, and Jardir set out on a desperate quest into the darkest depths of evil-from which none of them expects to return alive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9781501949920
    The Core
    Author

    Peter V. Brett

    Peter V. Brett is the international bestselling author of THE PAINTED MAN and THE DESERT SPEAR. Raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books and Dungeons & Dragons, Brett has been writing fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and art history from the University at Buffalo in 1995, and then spent more than a decade in pharmaceutical publishing before returning to his bliss. He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Core

    4/5

    180 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Best series I've ever read by far perfect 1000/10 couldn't recommend a better series of growth and struggle! Absolutely loved it!!!
    • 2/5
      Nice ending for the characters (particularly Arlen) and good pace for the apocalypse towards the end

      Never really understood the point of the search for Abban the kaffit towards the end
    • 5/5
      I have loved the direction this series took, from the beginning to the end. Discovered the first book randomly, and have followed each release eagerly, this last book most of all, since Brett was finally wrapping up his adventure. It definitely did not disappoint. Wrapping up the various threads that have been woven throughout the series wasn't necessarily fast, but it was good to see loose ends tied. You won't love all the characters, but that's the mark of a good story, and Brett doesn't disappoint. The frenemy relationship between the two main characters is one of the best parts of the books, as they ping back and forth between the points that destiny has woven for them both, and there's plenty of that in this last book. Highly recommend the series.
    • 5/5
      A fitting end to the series.
    • 1/5
      I read this for the "A Book With Bad Reviews" part of my 2018 reading challenge. I understand it's book 5 in the series and I haven't read the first 4, but every other time I read a book farther into a series it still spends a chapter explaining the characters and previous events. This one didn't, it just jumped right in and I had no idea who anyone was or what these "dama" and "shama" titles meant. I was confused the entire first half of the book, the plot condensed more in the second and made a little more sense, but not by much.
    • 2/5
      The concluding book, maybe, of the Demon Cycle. Arlen, Renna, Ahmann and Shanvah must descend to the Core to defeat the demon Queen, a sort of ant queen type, before she can hatch a huge new brood. On the surface, Leesha and her allies have to fight off one last demon surge. After the events of the previous 4 books, they are as prepared as they can be. There are some strange and convenient elements in this book. There's an obvious attempt to avoid a prophecy when Ahman and Leesha's child is born. Conveniently, after years of warfare and distrust, when Ahmann tells his wife that the Krasians must cooperate with the northerners, everyone goes along. People show up at just the right time in several instances. All in all, this was a decent wrap-up of the series. We can't say the end, because the author left himself several plot holes to continue stories about this world if he wants. Not bad, not great, a bit too dark in spots, in a bit too convenient in others.
    • 5/5
      A great conclusion to a great series.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic conclusion to this very good fantasy series. The author does a fine job of tying up loose threads and brings things to a satisfying conclusion. I'd highly recommend this series to lovers of both traditional and more grimdark type fantasy, as it has elements of both.
    • 5/5
      The Demon Cycle is one of my favorite book series of all-time. I love the world that it's in, most of the characters, and the magic system that's in place. That being said, I was a little worried about this final novel since I was disappointed with the Daylight War, so the potential for this one to disappoint was also there.

      I am happy to say that I was not disappointed by The Core. I loved it from start to finish. Everyone's character arc came full circle very nicely, and although the ending made me sad, it was still satisfying. I look forward to re-reading this series again.
    • 4/5
      This was a satisfying ending to the series. In the final two books quite a few new characters are introduced and minor characters inflated into major ones, while previously main characters don't get nearly as much air time, which is disappointing. Overall well written and exciting.
    • 3/5
      The end of the Demon Cycle books. Arlen and Jardir, with several others, head to the core to put an end to the war of the demons, as their allies above fight the increasing power of the attacks on the human towns.
    • 2/5
      So, in book five, they finally move to get to the 'core' of the issue ... he he. I had forgotten how much dirty talk goes on among the cutters (Leesha's people), and it was ultimately pretty distracting. I thought that Arlen creating a new ward when he's in the clutches of raw magic was a bit of Deus Ex Machina - i wish there had been a different way, though it worked. I felt like the baby being hermaphroditic was ... why? I just don't see what it added to the storyline. It also felt a little long, but it wasn't long enough to split into two books, so I get it. A decent ending to the series, which I think was fairly original in it's ideas, kind of a Tripods trilogy post-apocalyptic loss of technology, but with magic rather than aliens, or at least in the mix of ideas. But the crudeness did get old by the fifth book.
    • 4/5
      I've been following the Demon Cycle series for a few years now ever since my husband surprised me with the first book when I was going through a reading slump. THE CORE is the fifth and final book of the series and I was eager to find out how it all wrapped up.Ahmann Jardir and Arlen Bales are preparing to do the unthinkable: lead an assault on the demons' home deep underground in an effort to put an end to constant war. They must do it quickly since the demon queen is about to hatch and turn a single hive into many more, but they also need to make sure that their own people don't tear each other apart in their absence. Meanwhile, the people of Thesa, including Hollow County's new countess Leesha Paper and Jardir's wife Inevara are preparing for an all-out attack by the demons.I thought THE CORE did a good job of wrapping up the story and providing resolutions to most arcs. It almost felt a little too neat but it was fulfilling so I don't mind. Unlike the earlier books, there are no flashback sequences so the book is fully devoted to resolving the current conflict. Significant portions of the narrative were told through the viewpoint of some of the newer characters which I thought was refreshing because the main characters are significantly overpowered and don't have much conflict or growth left. We get to see the war from the points of view of various parts of Thesa through these characters. We even get some perspectives from the demons.This book isn't perfect, the pacing seemed a little off. We don't get to the journey to the Core until hundreds of pages have passed, and what we do get instead with Ahmann and Arlen seems a little too much like fanservice. Abban's viewpoint is extremely uncomfortable to read and I' not sure why he was such a big part of this book given his role (or lack thereof) in the book's events. And there are things about this series that annoyed me from the very beginning and they continued to annoy me – the way that Arlen, Renna, and other Hollow County people's accent is translated, the Krasian language with its extremely similar sounding words, the occasional crassness, but I knew all that going in so I don't think it's fair to complain too much about it.Even though this book concludes the story satisfactorily, it's blatantly obvious that there will be a new series (I'm calling it Demon Cycle: The Next Generation in my head) since pretty much every woman is pregnant and we're introduced to about eight babies towards the end. We're also reminded that this is only one hive of demons and there are probably more out there. I am looking forward to seeing the world of the books expanded and meeting the new characters.
    • 3/5
      Hoo boy. What can we say about this one.(Spoilers for the entire series.)....The final war between demons and humankind has come. The scant protection that humans have built for themselves is overrun as across the land, the waning of the moon is accompanied by assault after assault. Meanwhile, our heroes attempt to attack the demons on their home ground in a last ditch attempt to save the world.That sounds awesome. Then why was this book so... well, boring?It may be because few of the characters were really engaging. I cared about Arlen and Leesa, and maybe Rojer back when he was around, but that's about it. The middle books exploded with Krasians (dried cranberries?) whose similar names and motivations blended into a swirl in the back of my head. Since great swaths of The Core dealt with wrapping up their plotlines, I felt like the wheels were spinning but we weren't going anywhere.And maybe it's because none of the characters are really distinct, not in speech or in personality. Few of them seem to really want anything, except to defeat the demon hordes, or else gain power for themselves. The result is deadly dull.And at this point, you might be wondering why I bothered to read this far in the series if that's my opinion. And the answer is that there are hints of so very much more. Brett is quite deft at writing action sequences. A book full of demon attacks could get tremendously repetitive, but he manages to imbue each battle, each desperate flight through the night, with clear stakes and distinct events. In fact, I can remember the action scenes better than I can the characters who participated in them.Brett is less adept at people. His grasp of politics is rudimentary, his grip on dialog is shaky. He has a knack for making his unpleasant characters very unpleasant -- so much so that I don't enjoy spending time reading about them. And his world building needs work. There appear to be only two separate cultures, the European-metaphor and the Islamic-metaphor. The world is named Thesa, and yet we only see this one small corner of it. You can't feel like the entire world is in jeopardy when the whole thing takes place in two such restricted locales.Brett has built a story on a fascinating core concept (no pun intended), but just doesn't have the character writing chops to pull off a truly great story.