Terry Brooks revisits the world he created in Running with the Demon one exactly like ours except it’s tinged with magic and torn by the apocalyptic battle between the dark forces of the Void and the good forces of the Word. Demons haunt the night, bent on causing anarchy, enslaving humanity, and destroying civilization.
It has been five years since Nest Freemark faced her demon father in Hopewell, Illinois, and learned about her magic abilities abilities currently dormant. Now 19, Nest faces life alone. Gran and Old Bob are gone, and she learns that John Ross the Knight of the Word who saved her on that fateful Fourth of July has given up his responsibility to the Word and abandoned his knighthood. Ross failed to foil a demon-inspired hostage situation, and the guilt has driven him to renounce his own magic and sworn quest. He does not realize that the Void will now seek to subvert his powers and that the Word’s assassins will not allow it. Now residing in Seattle and working for Simon Lawrence (The Wizard of Oz), an enigmatic social reformer whose Fresh Start program for the homeless is winning ever-increasing support, Ross dreams that he will murder the saintly Lawrence on Halloween. But why? What could lead to this outcome? Nest arrives in Seattle to convince Ross of the danger he faces, but it’s too late. Events have been set into motion that will result in confrontation with a special kind of demon, a changeling who can become anyone. Who is the demon? Is it the Wiz himself? Andrew Wren, the investigative reporter eager to uncover the Wiz’s financial improprieties? Or Stefanie Winslow, Fresh Starts’s press secretary and Ross’s lover? Once aware of the danger, Ross and Nest hurtle through this fast-paced novel and face the evil agents of the Void with the help of several magical creatures. Each will realize his or her new role in the struggle to maintain balance between dark and light, and each will lose something of value. Brooks steps closer to the neighborhood of urban fantasy by setting his story in an urban neighborhood rife for demon infestation. Marred only by an occasional tendency to rely on shorthand narrative descriptions rather than active scenes, A Knight of the Word is a solid, exciting transition to a third novel in this magical series.
Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
