Customer Reviews

A Knight of the Word

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Where as most of "Running with the Demon" was centered around Nest Freemark. This one turns it attention to John Ross, a Knight of the Word. Just in case you didn't get that from the title.

"Knight" takes place five years after the first book left off. John Ross is suffering from a crisis of faith after a botched rescue which makes him a prime target for the demons that he was fighting against to turn him into one of them.
The Lady enlists the help of Nest freemark along with a tatterdemalion Ariel to save him.

Really a good sequel. Nothing as far as continuity was forced and you can see that the author has more to tell with this series. Once again Brooks provides us with some likable and readable characters, and it proves, like it's predecessor, to be the heart of the book. For those who like quick paced action, look elsewhere. However there is one of the best chase scenes I've read hands down. Not being dramatic, but man it was good!

The book provides more insight to John Ross and makes him more of a sympathetic character. But surprisingly the Lady and Two Bears more ambiguous. I never really caught on to Two Bears in the last one, thinking he was just an awkward plot device. In this book, it's more of the same. Fans of the native american veteran should be happy, though. The one fault in the book is the author manages to be a bit magnanimous when it comes to talking about the homeless. It was well intentioned, but it was almost too much. He also comes short as a mystery writer as well.

Faults aside, this still is a good book and fans of the first installment will not be dissapointed. It definiteley makes you want to get the third in the series. Brooks again proves that he is still one of the best writers of his genre.

If you are looking for the action and suspense that you found in "Running with the Demon", you won't find it here. Terry Brooks drastically changed his writing style from the first book in "A Knight of the Word". This book is about John Ross' rejection of his faith. After witnessing a terrible massacre at a school, that he was unable to prevent, John Ross decides that he can no longer be in service to the Lady or the "Word". He returns to Wales to return his staff, and finds that leaving his office is not a choice that the "Word" will allow him to make. John stops acting as a knight in an act of defiance. He moves to Seattle and tries to regain his life as a "normal" human being. Summoned by the Lady, Nest must travel to Seattle to help John regain his faith, and to reclaim his life as a Knight of the Word. The book is mostly dialogue and several of the characters that Mr. Brooks spends many chapters building are not necessary to the story line beyond being peripheral characters. Terry does a good job of building the mystery of the demon's identity right until the very end. However, the trick is to read chapter twenty-four and move on to "Angel Fire East".

I love reading the bad reviews even more than the good ones sometimes. The vitriol, the spleen! It's a lot of fun:) Anyway, I have tried more than once to labor thru this book and couldn't do it either time. Ross is too normal, very dull. If you want a worthwhile good vs. evil story, read the novelization of Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight.

Did Brooks fluff this up for a novel? Did he find himself short, or need to upgrade his computer or have new storm windows installed? He apparently needed fundage but didn't have an idea in his head right at that moment.

For a book with "knight" in the title, the novel is awfully long on introspection -- by very non-dimensional characters -- and short on action.

I have a Lebanese friend (so you may supply the accent) who says, when viewing the first romantic exchange in a film, "Ah! Movie start now."

Twenty pages from the back cover, I said, "Ah. Story start now."

What is meant by "non-dimensional?" Well, I knew who the demon was when (spoiler coming) she was first introduced. That isn't necessarily a problem -- this is fantasy, after all, not a whodunit. The guy that got burned in the shelter fire had the aroma of the unnamed crew member on the orginal Star Trek -- you just knew he was gonna die. The most lively character in the entire book was completely unnecessary to the plot (Della the secretary). However, she was also the one character that started to nudge her way up from the one-dimensional.

There is one positive criticism -- the darned thing is short. The reason I'm not a great fan of fantasy is because the authors of same tend to think in terms of book tonnage. And, since I'm new to the genre, I have never been a Brooks reader. So, please tell me: is this what all his novels are like? If so, I don't need to waste my time. This should have been a ten page short story, and I would have felt gyped if this hadn't been a loaner.

I read the first book, it was not good. But I read the 2nd one to see if maybe there was some hope.
Nope, figgered this one out on page 12 just like the other one!
Good heavens!
Oh, and if you want Brooks to lecture to you about homeless people ad nauseum then read ahead! Some of the lectures in this book were straight from the writer to the reader, with no characters in between. A note to Mr. Brooks: DON'T EVER TALK TO ME WHEN I AM READING YOUR BOOK!
Oh and his scene descriptions are so detailed and looooooooong, you just skip over them to get to where the characters are actually speaking instead of moving through these long boring scen descriptions! (Terry, go talk to Stephen King. That fool can give a decription of an area in like five words and it's better than your FOUR PAGES of scene description...(no I'm not lying FOUR PAGES!))
Do not read this book or this story, it is atrocious.

In "A Knight of the Word", the reader catches up with Nest Fremark and John Ross five years after the events in "Running with the Demon". John Ross has moved on to Seattle, where he has met and fallen in love with Stefanie Winslow, a strikingly beautiful woman. Both of them work for a homeless shelter called Fresh Start. Fresh Start is run by Simon Lawrence, a self-made man who has made it his life-long challenge to help the homeless. Ross has renounced his vows to the Word. Earlier, he suffered a traumatic personal experience. There was a hostage takeover at a school, and fourteen children were killed. Ross was foretold of this event in his dreams, but even though he thought he had everything figured out, the children were still killed. He has blamed himself for this tragedy, as well as blaming the Word for not helping him. Thus, he renounced his faith in the Word.

Meanwhile, back in Hopewell, Nest Freemark is visited by Ariel, a tatterdemalion sent by the Lady to help Ross. Areil explains to Nest that John is in great danger and Nest must warn him. Nest, now a student at Northwestern University, isn't sure what she can do, but she decides to go to Seattle.

Upon arriving, Nest finds her way to Fresh Start and immediately begins to feel ill. She steps outside to get some air, but she recognizes where the sickness has come from; a demon. Finally, Nest meets up with John and she explains to him how the Lady sent Ariel to tell her about him. John dismisses everything, saying he's perfectly happy with his life the way it is now and he has no intention of going back to being a Knight of the Word. He still blames himself for the death of the children.

Ariel then tells Nest that she's discovered a sylvan guarding one of the parks, and they go to meet him. Unfortunately, the demon found out too and he is there as well. Nest is forced to flee back into town away from the demon. She vows to herself to stay in Seattle to see everything through to the end, but will she be able to convince John before its too late?

I found this book to be very good. The characters are brought vividly to life by Brooks, and its easy to allow oneself to become immersed in their fight for survival. I thought Brooks went a little overboard with his discription of every square foot of Seattle, but he more than makes up for it by weaving a genuinely exciting tale. I highly recommend this excellent work. It will leave you wanting more.

This is the second book of a fantasy trilogy about Nest Freemark, John Ross, the Knight of the Word, the Void and magic. I rated the first in the series, "Running with the Demon," five stars, which I rarely do. The magic of that first novel dissipated in this sequel, however.

The first third of the book is heavy with back-story, and I do mean heavy as in dragging, lugging, burdensome, tedious, and arduous. The author reiterates the theme, plot and principal scenes from his first book in narrative so boring it sucks the life from his old characters.

Even the new characters are lifeless. Stef is so stunningly beautiful that the author cannot find the words to convince us that she is. This time the demon is a "changling," meaning it can assume the identity of any of the other characters, which robs it of a personality of its own.

At first, the identity of the demon is obvious to the reader, but not to the protagonist, John Ross. With this tactic, the reader is supposed to cringe in fear for Ross, urging him to wake-up to his precarious situation. Later, the author treats the demon's identity as if it were a mystery for the reader to ponder. Unfortunately, I neither cringed nor pondered.

Even the dialogue is lifeless, unless you are impassioned by long speeches on the plight of the homeless and why Native Americans ought not to be called Indians. Overall, this is good example of a book that gives sequels a bad name.

Before reaching the halfway point of the book, I found I had been lectured on environmentalism, the plight of the homeless, the unfair treatment of native americans, and the moral decay of our society. I've read religious books that preached less than this, and it was insulting. The entire story seems a thin broth to tie together a series of pontificating essays that Brooks knew nobody would publish on their own.

If you can get beyond that, you're confronted with the fact that Brooks really wants you to know that he's familiar with the Seattle landscape. He describes Seattle in such exhaustive detail that it's obvious he's trying to make the book appeal to people who live there (here, as I do), since nobody else would care about a brass pig in the Pike market. The problem is that he spreads it on so thick, it's tiresome and obvious.

All in all, the story is too thin to make it on it's own, and buried under the mounds of trash that Brooks throws on it, it's just not worth your time.

Through most of the story, the characters are in little danger, so there's not much suspense or action. When they do face the demons, the demons are so weak that they're quickly defeated. Maybe if Terry made demons a little bit more dangerous and more of a threat the story would be better.

I'm a biased reader. I have read all of the Shannara series and a few of the other fantasy and magic books that Mr. Brooks has written. All I can say is thanks for another serial. Just ship the next one to me, I'm good for it.