At SPACE AND SORCERY, Maddalena participated in Nathan of FANTASY
REVIEW BARN Tough Traveling meme. Each week Nathan chooses a topic from
THE
TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND by Diana Wynn Jones, and challenges everyone to come up with a list of books featuring that trope. For this week’s topic (awesome displays magic), Maddalena included Peter Brett’s DEMON CYCLE.

In Peter Brett’s DEMON CYCLE people are plagued by demons, called corelings, that rise out of the planet’s core at night leaving a trail of death and destruction behind them: each demon is tied to a specific element – like fire, air, rock or wood – and all of them seem to have no other purpose than to feast on humans and spread terror.  The only protection against the corelings are wards, special signs painted or carved on the dwellings where people shut themselves in at night, or drawn on the ground when someone is caught in the open at the fall of darkness.  If one is still alive at the return of morning light, they can still survive for another day…

One day though, a lone traveler discovers that painting wards on his skin gives him protection against the demons, and etching them on his weapons allows him to destroy them, so he tattoos those wards all over his skin, becoming the Painted Man (or the Warded Man) and he becomes something of a legend because he can travel at night without fear of the corelings and can bring the fight to them instead of huddling in fear behind four walls.

Read the about the rest of Maddalena’s selections at SPACE AND SORCERY.

For more info about THE GREAT BAZAAR & BRAYAN’S GOLD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.