The Painted Man (2001)

The stunning debut fantasy novel from author Peter V. Brett.The Painted Man, book one of the Demon trilogy, is a captivating and thrilling fantasy adventure, pulling the reader into a world of demons, darkness and heroes.Voted one of the top ten fantasy novels of 2008 by amazon.co.uk.Mankind has ceded the night to the corelings: demons that rise up out of the ground each day at dusk, killing and destroying at will until dawn, when the sun banishes them back to the Core. As darkness falls, the world's few surviving humans hide behind magical wards, praying that the magic will see them through another night. As years passed, the distance between each tiny village stretched farther and farther. It seems that nothing can stop or harm the corelings, and nothing can unite the dwindling populations.Born into these isolated hamlets are three children: A Messenger teaches 10-year-old Arlen that it is fear, rather than the demons, which has crippled humanity. When she is only 13 summers old, Leesha's perfect life is destroyed by a simple lie, and she is reduced to gathering herbs for an old woman more fearsome than the demons at night. And young Rojer's life is changed irrevocably when a travelling minstrel comes to his town and plays his fiddle.But these three children all have something in common. They are all stubborn, and know that there is more to the world than what they've been told, if only they can risk leaving their safe wards to find it.