The Core: Book Five of The Demon Cycle

Seriously disappointed in this series. There was a lot of potential in the first two books but it just got progressively worse. If you were hoping the finale would concentrate on characters you were actually interested in then you're better off skipping this book.

While this book is a step up from the previous book, The Skull Throne, that is not high praise. Superfluous secondary characters return in force, arcs that you never cared about in the first place will be shoved down your throat (i.e. Abban, Hasik, and the castration arc), and your mind will be boggled by the ineptitude of the Mind Demons, creatures that have lived for thousands of years, yet regularly get outsmarted by characters across the continent.On the other hand, we actually see the protagonists for more than five minutes in this book. Better still, they are active protagonists and are constantly trying to get down to the core, though their plan is garbage and the final fight is solved by a Deus Ex Machina that the characters could have performed TWO whole books ago. It just flabbergasts me that the author and editor of this book saw the ending as a solid choice.I'm glad that this series got an ending, but it already fell off the cliff back when Arlen and Jadir fell off the cliff two books ago. Skip the series, you'll be happier, and richer, for it, unless you are absolutely desperate for something new to read.

I am very disappointed in this book, I looked forward to reading it and now I am not even going to bother finishing. The plot seems to be completely lost and the dialogue is unbearable. The sex scenes are bizarre and clunky completely irrelevant and they seem like filler. I really wish I could return this book— I can’t return kindle books can I?

So.Much.FILLER! While I will say I enjoyed all the stuff that happened in the actual Core, nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, really happened on the Surface of this book. The first book was by far the best, and sadly they all just went downhill from there. Though this one was probably a little better than 2-4. I would recommend reading it if you, like me, need to know how Arlen's saga ends, and I for one was somewhat satisfied with the ending as a whole.This booked seemed rushed, and at the same time there were a lot of new and useless things happening when you'd think he would be tying off loose ends. Do not be afraid to skip pretty much whole chapters, you won't miss anything critical.3 Stars because at least the overall story was decent. Now go read Stormlight if you want something really good, or just re read The Warded Man and remember the potential that book provided!

This is one of my favorite series but this last book was by far worst. The first third of this book was like wtf completely different style of writing with orgies and odd sexual parts that just degraded characters.the next part was all about castration. This all leads to me he essentially was using GoT as a guide. again disappointing because his book stood by themselves without copying from another author.The ending was very lack luster and really made seem like the characters that were bad somehow were good.On the flip side it was nice seeing all the characters in the book and hopefully one of his short stories actually concludes the series.

1st quarter- weird, unneccessary sexual content. Sorry, but teenagers covering themselves with demon ichor before an orgy does nothing for plot resolution. Hermaphrodite babies just to have something odd about which to write...just pointless oddity.Big middle- castrations, endless demon fighting, all of which seemed designed to do nothing more than ensuring all *likeable* minor characters met with unhappy end stories. Mostly a struggle to get over all the endless Krasnian titles to *finally* get some form of plot resolution.Resolution- giant Deux ex Machina, finalized by taking the characters that behaved the worst through the series and giving them the greatest standing and reward. And writing it like everyone around them is just honestly fine with that.Overall, terrible. It was like Martin took over writing the series-more shock value than plot resolution, and a perverse delight in rewarding the immoral for their actions.

Not a great ending to Brett's series. Started off great with his first book. The second was good, the third ok, the fourth bad, and sadly this may be the worst. Marred by tons of fluff and peripheral characters, with occasional good scenes thrown in. And this isn't even entertaining fluff. For example, there's a long scene in chapter 3 focusing on Gared and Elora which does not need to be in the book and is just juvenile to read. Scenes like this abound throughout the book. I read at the end that the first draft of this book was 1,043 pages until the editors revised it. They should have kept going and chopped off at least another 400 pages. And the ending was predictable as well. Did not like how Brett decided to solve the demon problem, as it came off as a deus ex machina.

Much anticipated culmination to series left much to be desired. Feel like author threw in the towel on this one.

And that's almost worth half a star on its own.The problem for me is that the whole premise of the series (demons rising from the core) got lost a long time ago amid the soapy mush and tedious politicking. There's quite a bit happening in this book, but a lot of it is padding. eg Elissa and Ragen to me seem quite pointless other than to show yet another demon battle. Talking about battling demons, the process of humans learning to fight them should have been paced better throughout the series: it got quite boring and repetitive after three books. There's also some oddities in this book (eg "Olive" - you've got to read that yourselves to believe it) that serve no apparent purpose and go nowhere. I really wish he had concentrated more on Jardir and Arlen: their interactions were actually quite interesting. The ending was not so satisfying as I'd hope, leaving questions unanswered.I'm not sure I'd want to read further books set in this world, the ideas here have been flogged to death. If the author has other ideas I would be interested.

I tried so hard to like this book but like quite a few readers I found it seriously wanting. Again like many I loved the first two books and high hopes for this series it seemed to be something fresh and different but it got lost along the way. I found this book hard going and the central theme lost. it seemed more concerned with who stuck who when rather than a battle for life over death. It felt more like a soap opera, there were lose threads galore. What was the point of the whole thing with Olive? it went no where. Considering Arlen is one of the main characters he doesn't seem to get all that much screen time.It made for a very tough read.

Ladies and gentleman this years winner of the not so coveted Raven's shadow award for most promising series subsequently ballsed up goes to......drum roll........Peter V Brett, applause, applause etc etc. As an aside Anthony currently doing great things with the Draconis Memoria, please don't blow it.The amount of 5 star reviews of this book are a little bewildering, I find it hard to believe that people really think that the last 3 books of this series were anything like as good as the first two. Don't get me wrong it is still very well written but just a bit boring.So where did it all go wrong ? for me it went wrong around the time a creditable trilogy suddenly became 5 books. Not sure how this came about whether it be greed or just that the author really thought he needed the word count to tell the story satisfactorily. Regardless of the reasoning he managed to do what Peter Hamilton does with minutiae and trivia to a perfectly reasonable story but with people. Apart from a pace switch from electric to almost glacial the sheer weight of meaningless pointless characters ruined this series. While the Krassians were perfectly reasonable and necessary protagonists was it really necessary to include all seventy odd of Ahmann Jardir's progeny (well it seemed like it ) and their immediate relatives ? You could have knocked a couple of hundred pages from the word count just by not using full Krassian titles for characters. Plot lost interest waning rapidly.The 3 star rating would have been less but I thought the conclusion wasn't half bad to be honest, if you had stuck with the original 3 books it probably would have been all good. Anyway as an anal completist buying this entire series in hardback has been equally frustrating and expensive. Once bitten twice shy so the next Peter Brett book I buy will probably be a 99p kindle job.

I read this a while ago, and I’m reviewing it months later because I needed to calm down.My main problem is that there were too many extra characters. There was a chapter where Arlen sets out his will. He bequeathes his fortune to characters I’ve grown to love over the series. Then up pops Derek.My reaction at the time was “WHO THE HELL IS DEREK!?!?”.Now, I’d actually reread the previous four books in preparation for the last instalment, so I was more than a little annoyed when I found that I’d missed the books that came in between! (Why didn’t he just write the last book!?)And for me, this was “the core” problem with this book.It suddenly seemed as though the author had taken a really good story and was now milking it for everything it was worth.All these extra characters and magic systems* served only to dilute the story I actually wanted to read. I came to the point of not caring about the other battles, I had no emotional investment in these characters. I realise he was showing the fighting on all fronts, but he could have done this with characters he’d already fleshed out.*Styluses!? Another addition of the side books that weren’t needed!The other thing was the orgy in the early stages. I remember thinking that it should’ve been named “The Hard core” - it just seemed like an excuse to put this content in…Okay, so what did I like about it? Well the actual journey down into the core and the final fight wasn’t bad. I quite liked the interactions between the characters I actually knew. I also didn’t have any hangups about the baby, it seemed a good explanation as to why it turned out that way. (I notice, other reviewers weren’t a fan of this.)Overall, I thought it was a good story that had been watered down with too many extras. Peter V Brett left it in a place where he could/would add more books to the series (more milking to be done) and this really disappointed me; it cheapened the wonderful time I’d had reading the previous four books.Yes I would read it again, but I have certainly been put off future instalments.

I’ve been a massive fan of this series since it’s launch and waited eagerly for this release. Such an anticlimax.The expanded story is dull, slow and in places it reads more like a transcript from an Al Jazeera news report.Two stars only given because it’s fibally ended and Peter can’t disappoint me any further.