Peter V Brett - The Warded Man

The way this started was with me being sick. And, being sick, not feeling like I had the attention span to actually settle down to read something—and being rather uninterested/uninvolved with the books that I'm currently reading on the Nook—I decided that I should really start to go through the many many book samples that I have on my Nook and start to weed out the ones that really don't interest me.

This seemed like an absolutely brilliant idea…except that the first two samples I went through—Jim Beaver's memoir which I've been waffling about forever and a book I picked up from a Goodreads friends favorable review, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—were both interesting and good enough that I wanted to buy them and they were both $10+, which I was unwilling to spend at this moment in time for a number of reasons that I won't go into lest I completely derail this post. In any case, after yet another nap (because, you know, sick) I woke up and decided to try again.

The next sample on the list was a book that I don't even remember where I heard of it or why I picked it up, The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett (Goodreads link). I have no memory attached to this title/author at all, but it's there, so I clearly must have had a reason at some point. So I crack open the sample—a very satisfying one at 25 pages—and start reading. Around page 20 of the sample, I check the price: 6 bucks and change. I waffle about it a bit, think about how few books have actually caught my attention in a good way lately and decide to take the plunge.

It was not a perfect book. There were some random POV changes, mid-scene, into characters that we never hear from (in a POV sense) scattered throughout the book. I don't know if the print book was the same, but the ebook has some annoying typos and formatting errors also scattered throughout the text. And I feel like before I talk about the book to anyone I want to hang a huge sign that disclaims: I HAVE SOME HUGE HETERONORMATIVE ISSUES WITH THIS NOVEL.

But, all that being said, it was a pretty damn good read. And I already bought the second book.

(Spoilers beneath the cut; trigger warning: rape)