Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind

Terry Goodkind is either a genius or a hack and I'm leaning toward the latter.

When I saw that he was coming out with The Law of Nines, I thought Goodkind was leaving the fantasy genre and had written a mind-bending thriller.

The story starts with a young man, Alex, standing at a bus stop behind a lady. A truck comes cruising right at them and Alex saves the day.

This lady isn't all that she appears to be. And Alex is destined to save the world...a world.

The Law of Nines takes place thousands of years after the Sword of Truth series that Goodkind has completed.

I wasn't sure if I would be happy that he can't get away from that world, but he may surprise us yet and turn out to be the genius I hope him to be.

Having said that, this book is basically a re-telling of Goodkind's first book, Wizard's First Rule. In both books, the main character is a guy who rescues the girl within the first couple chapters. Both men have a grandfather character who is wise. Both characters have their homes burned to the ground by the villain's henchmen.

The other negative aspect of this story is how gratuitous the violence is. Whenever someone fights, and there is a lot of fighting, a throat gets slashed and we get to read all the bloody details.
Oh, plus, Alex must be superhuman. He can take quite the beating and get right back up and slam his elbow into a man's back hard enough to shatter his spine.

I was disappointed with The Law of Nines.

1 comment:

Tracie said...

I'm about a quarter of the way through this book and was very excietd to get it. I loved the Sword of Truth series, but your right this seems like a retelling of that series. Especially with the use of the name Rahl. I'm not sure what to make of it just yet but right now I'm wondering if Terry Goodkind lacks imagination becasue he can't come up with a different story line.