World Famous Comics: A Knight of the Word (Word and the Void)
A Knight of the Word (Word and the Void)
By: Terry Brooks Publisher: Del Rey Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Del Rey Number of Pages: 309 Publication Date: July 28, 1998 Release Date: July 28, 1998
Product Description: An unbroken string of fourteen national bestsellers has established Terry Brooks as today's leading voice in fantasy fiction, a writer whose magical creations and characters are beloved the world over. Now, in this no-holds-barred battle between good and evil, the dazzling sequel to his bestselling Running with the Demon, Brooks surpasses even himself.
In the eleventh century the Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr was chosen to combat the demonic evil of the Void and disappeared from history to fulfill that mission. Armed with powerful magic, Glyndwr became a Knight of the Word--a draining and demanding legacy passed on eight centuries later to John Ross, a professor of English literature on tour in Wales.
In accepting the black runestaff that channeled the magic of the Word, John Ross accepted a solemn trust--and an awful burden. Each night he dreams of hellish futures wrought upon the world by the Void. And each dream is of a future that will come to pass unless Ross prevents it in the present. Crippled in body and soul by the searing magic he wields and the horrors he dreams, sustained only by his faith in the goodness of the Word, Ross drifts across America, a modern-day knight errant in search of the agents of the Void.
Then an unspeakable act of violence shatters his weary beliefs. Haunted by guilt, John Ross turns his back on the Word. With the help of beautiful Stefanie Winslow, Ross slowly builds a new life--a life whose only magic lies in Stefanie's healing love.
But a fallen Knight makes a tempting prize for the Void, and merciless demons soon stalk Ross and all close to him. His only hope is young Nest Freemark, who wields a powerful magic all her own. Five years earlier, Ross had aided Nest when the future of humanity rested upon the choice she would make between Word and Void. Now Nest must return the favor. She must restore Ross's faith, or his life--and her own--will be forfeit . . .
Amazon.com Review: John Ross, the tortured, conflicted Knight of the Word from Terry Brooks's Running with the Demon, finally gets a good night's sleep in the sequel. He buys this moment's peace at the cost of his sacred oath to be a champion of the Word, renouncing that pledge after failing to prevent the slaughter of a group of schoolchildren. Duty and destiny are difficult to elude, though, and soon his former charge Nest Freemark, now a college student and Olympic hopeful, arrives to warn him of his imminent destruction, or, worse, his unwitting fall into the service of the Void.
The story winds lazily through sleepy, wet Seattle like a tour bus, steadily building. Everything eventually converges on the homeless shelter where John works with his new sweetie Stefanie Winslow for über-activist Simon Lawrence, a man his dreams tell him he is fated to kill. A thin mystery clouds the identity of the demon conspiring to deliver John unto evil, but the book's real focus is John's fitful, foot-dragging attempts to fulfill his destiny. Knight doesn't provide the suspenseful energy of Running, a book that followed Nest through the dramatic loss of her childhood, but it rejoins her as she assumes the responsibilities of young adulthood and--like that period in life--still manages to deliver satisfying, if more subtle, rewards. --Paul Hughes
Is there an escape from fate? Or are we trapped by destiny? Fate and destiny intertwine to trap John Ross in this, the second book of the Word and the Void trilogy. Devastated by his failure to completely prevent a tragedy at a grammar school, John decides he is not able to continue as a Knight of the Word and stops. Stops using his magic, stops following his nightmarish dreams of the future ... and eventually - seemingly - the dreams go away, eventually his link to the magic appears to go away. He is still crippled, he still requires his black staff - the token of his Knighthood - in order to walk, but he no longer utilizes it for anything else but a walking staff. He meets the woman of his dreams - a stunningly beautiful woman named Stefanie Winslow - and together they move to Seattle and begin to work for a man called Simon Lawrence - a man of extraordinary vision who works to help homeless women and children - and a man who, according to the only dream John still has, John is fated to kill.
But the Word is not so willing to give John up; despite the fact that he has renounced his place as a Knight, he still holds the magic of the Word and if a demon can twist that magic to the use of the Void, that would be a giant blow struck in the war against the Word. Nest is contacted by O'olish Amaneh - the last of the Sinnissippi - and asked to go and try to get John to take up his part as a Knight of the Word, to try to get him to believe that he is up close and personal with a demon, because one is already close to turning him to the Void's purposes.
Although the identity of the demon didn't come as much of a surprise to me - having figured it out fairly early - it was nonetheless revealed in a rather startling manner. Watching John Ross go through what he did in this book was painful in the extreme, because it is easy to understand the isolation and loneliness that he underwent as a Knight of the Word as compared to the happy life he had built for himself in Seattle, where he had a job he loved, a girlfriend he loved and a thriving social network. To watch all that come apart under the machinations of a demon AND the Word - it was quite painful. And to watch his determination to make things right anyway was somewhat awe-inspiring.
Terry Brooks can break your heart over and over and you still keep coming back because his characters speak to you in so many ways. This story was about growing up, in more ways than one. I highly recommend it.
A Knight of the Word I am a huge Terry Brooks fan. This book does not disappoint. I have introduced my grandson to Terry Brooks, and he enjoyed this book as much as I did.
Different from "Running" but still enjoyable Nest Freemark and John Ross return in the second installment of the series called "The Word and Void Trilogy." John Ross has forsaken his duties as a Knight of the Word and the Lady has assigned Nest to convince him to get his act back together.
While I found the story entertaining, I did not find it as gripping as the first book "Running with the Demon." Not to say I didn't like it, but we are talking apples and oranges here. Brooks slows down the pace considerably here and the characters do much more navel gazing. Perhaps the contrast in settings affects the story; while "Running with the Demon" was set in a small town, "A Knight of the Word" is set in the city. I did enjoy the chase scene between a demon and one of the characters . . . pretty intense.
If you liked "Running with the Demon" you'll like "A Knight of the Word" but just expect something different. Sometimes change is good.
Not as good as Running with the Demon I agree with most reviewers that this is not nearly as good as Running with the Demon, but I'm still giving it 4 stars because it was really fun to read! Yeah, the story is a bit soap opera-ish and predictable (I knew right away who the demon was, why the Shelter was set on fire, etc.) Probably what made this book very worthwhile is, once again, the presence of Nest. She is just the coolest character I've ever read in a novel! And, poor John Ross, can't he ever get a break?
Mediocre and guilty of the no-twist twist sin This is the second book in the Word/Void trilogy, which reads like a quasi-spiritualist Judeo-Christian moralization of modern society. That sounds like a criticism, but actually I find it pretty compelling. The first book of the series, in fact, sets these issues out fairly succinctly and interestingly but without too much preachiness, verbosity, or judgmentalism. I haven't read the third book in the series yet but I imagine it will continue, as this one did, in the interesting concept he's come up with that the modern world is going to ruin because people just aren't nice enough (he may be right, but I doubt it).
That preamble made, the literary merits of this book left a lot to be desired. First of all, there is the considerable problem, which other reviewers have touched on, that there isn't much action. In fact, except for a tragedy scene in the beginning told in retrospect, and a couple brief if intense hunt scenes, there is no action whatsoever until the last dozen pages.
Second, and this is tied with the first, this book apparently aims to be a mystery or thriller. A who-done-it that focuses not on "who is the murderer" but instead just "who is the bad guy" (which in this series' mythology, means who is the "demon"). That can be great if you don't know who the demon is, but it was painfully, ludicrously obvious what the twist was almost from the first chapter of the book, and with the rest of the story alternating between giving even more credence to that twist and trying to throw the reader off the scent (somewhat ham-handedly), it made for boring reading.
If you are going to have a big surprise twist at the end, and want to build up to it, you either need (a) a lot of other action going on or (b) so many characters and possibilities that the reader is always in doubt about the twist until it's revealed. Neither was true here. Made for a tough read. It's not a perfect analogy, but imagine if you knew all along that Verbel was going to be revealed as Kaiser Sose, and the entire rest of the Usual Suspects was just talking with no action...you might tend to become bored, eh?
I also have to say that Brooks' description of magical battles has atrophied since Shannara. I know this is "modern" times, but the mild descriptions of how the protaginists' magic work is similar enough to how elf stones work that I felt robbed of some of the excitement in the earlier (later in time) books where there was much better excitement in the magical battles. Sorry, but sort of turning into a ghost dog is not exactly an overwhelming volcano of power and excitement.
In any event, he's a fine writer. I enjoyed the book overall, and the series moreso, but he either needs to stay away from mysteries or he needs to do a better job hiding the ball if he expects the whole paradigm of the book to be a thriller. On the whole, mediocre. I'm hopeful for the next one.
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