The Core (The Demon Cycle #5)
by
Peter V. Brett
And thus endeth Sharak-Ka!
The fifth and final installment of the Demon Cycle is the culmination of a decade long journey for those, like me, that have been following it. This is a nice change of pace compared to the endless wait for some series to carry on, let alone conclude, that many readers have to go through. The main question is:
Is it worth it? (pssst… some minor spoilery bits might be there)
First, to recap, The Core picks up from the thundering end of The Skull Throne, as our primary heroes begin their descent to the titular Core in a fools quest to try and end the threat of the Demons that have haunted mankind for untold generations and are poised now to utterly decimate the civilisation that has struggled to establish itself.
The leaders still alive on the surface try to hold the line and keep everything from falling apart as the final lunar cycles bring about what will be the decisive battles of this long war
- Leesha Paper tries to work with Gared and her fellows to keep the over-burdened new state of The Hollow together as refugees flood in and new challenges like her wayward Painted Children roam the wild.
- The royals of Angiers are trying to pick up the pieces of their shaken city-state, even as new threats from both humans and demons wait at their doorstep.
- The once unshakeable mountain kingdom of Miln is shaken to its core as Ragen and Elissa try to find a way to convince the people and politically rife Courts to heed their warnings.
- To the south and west, the Krasians are struggling to keep their own fragile unified nation together in the wake of the disappearance of their leader – Jardir, the Shar Dama Ka – as internal power-struggles continue between the varied members of his family.
There are multiple story threads as listed above and there are more still to be had in this vastly sprawling narrative. There is the now utterly insane and more brutal than ever Sharum, Hasik, who has taken to forcibly mutilating others into eunuchs like himself and with the crippled Abban in tow and constantly being tortured, has built his own rogue army. There is the vagabond Briar who is half Thesan and half Krasian and continues to struggle to find his place in this world – now in a new direction as his path crosses with the runaway warrior Ashia on her own quest. And this is all just the broad strokes of things underway through these pages.
This book truly is a culmination and that is a huge challenge for any author. Brett tries bravely to bring a huge myriad of storylines, character journeys and the overall narrative to a satisfactory conclusion – no easy task.
This series has been interesting and for me was both a huge win and in moments, a bit of a drag, but the saving grace was ever that (a) Brett knows how to tell a hell of a story and his writing never allowed anything to feel utterly superfluous, even if plodding, and (b) his skill with action scenes and sequences is truly excellent and gripping.
The single BIGGEST plus in this whole book is the dynamic between the two supposed Deliverers – Arlen Bales and Ahmann Jardir. They’ve been working on their own for the first time ever since the saga began and since the 4th book, have had to spend time around each other for the first time since The Desert Spear – more intense now because of the stakes around them plus all that they have been through since. They back and forth and conversations between them are fantastic. It is philosophical and thought-provoking and frankly more than a little allegorical, which is something I really enjoy when done well in fiction, but it is usually more ham-handed than good – here it is excellent right up until the end.
The Core has some of the best writing he’s done since The Painted Man which started this series. It is longer and more dense and there are moments that are a bit slow and some side-stories that frankly I had to force through a bit because I was far less interested in them and wondered why it was needed at all or couldn’t have been shortened – but in the end, none of them were bad or did not serve some function in the larger story. Could there be bits excised entirely? Yes, safely and without impacting the core story, but again, Bretts’ ability to tie story threads together to show how they all connect – even loosely – and to make even “side-quests” feel important and action-packed keeps it from becoming a slog.
That this dense book is forced to be more intense in tone and pace and has a healthy dose of action and some truly shocking reveals and moments (several of them happen at the far tail end of the book but absolutely did not see some things coming!) and despite some moments where it felt like the pacing was thrown off or attention got diverted just as something was amping up – all perhaps in the service of attending to the different threads while also not keeping everything at a constant fever-pitch, in the end it largely ties together very well.
This series has definitely been some of the best and most creative fantasy work I’ve read in a long while and even conceptually I think struck me more than most popular fantasy titles today. Perhaps more so because it is complex and layered with characters and motivations you can believe, even if not always understand, and Brett makes it a point to not seemingly pick sides between his characters – everyone gets a fair shake and the reader can choose who they want to root for cleanly. It is a fresh and interesting world and I have enjoyed the series for the most part but unlike many in most any medium, this final book is a suitably bombastic finale after all the build-up that doesn’t jump any sharks and ended up leaving me feeling satisfied on multiple scores, both big and small.
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