Penguin Random House:
For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile.
The Painted Man (Demon Cycle 1) by Peter V. Brett
Narrator(s):
👍🏻The Warded Man by Pete Bradbury,
👏🏻 The Painted Man Colin Mace
My Rating: 
Easily a 5-star book. It’s a character driven fantasy. It’s a story of a boy (Arlen) growing up hard in a world where demons rule the night while humans huddle in fear behind magic barriers called wards that they barely understand.
Events mold young Arlen into the man he becomes. It’s much like a coming of age story as well as a hero’s journey.
Book has everything a fiction lover could want. Mystery, the fantastic, love, unrequited love, suspense, thrills, and of course tragedy that we’d much rather endure in fiction than in real life.
There are multiple protagonists (Leesha, Rojer), and the book follows each of them. At first the demons of the night are clearly the antagonists but where there are humans with different beliefs and values conflict hangs in the air like a thick fog.
From a very young Arlen who acquires a 15 foot tall rock demon “one arm” nemesis, who appears to hate Arlen in particular, we are propelled through the drama of human affairs to heroic events causing a dying town to change their name in honor of the scared and sick humans standing in the night against the onslaught of armies of demons.
