Shannara – if all else fails…use a hammer

A Knight of the Word - Terry Brooks — Cover illustration by Brom
Publisher: http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

A Knight of the Word, the second instalment or Terry Brooks‘s Word and Void trilogy, takes place several years after the events of Running With the Demon. Nest Freemark is now in college. Her grandfather has recently passed away and she’s thinking of leaving Hopewell, and the park and Pick along with it for good. She hasn’t used her magic in years and is not even sure that she still has it, especially since Wraith, her mysterious protector, also seems to have disappeared.

Then she is visited by a tatterdemalion, a messenger of the Word. John Ross, the Knight of the Word who had helped her defeat her father years ago, is in trouble. He has forsaken his calling as a Knight of the Word, and the servants of the Void are trying to turn him and his magic to their ends. He is already being subverted by a demon and it may already be too late. Nest must go to Seattle and confront him, give him one more chance to take up the black staff again. Should she fail, his life will be forfeit, and possibly hers as well.

Read the rest of the review here. Some minor spoilers, but no details.

Running With The Demon by Terry Brooks is an urban fantasy/fantasy thriller and the first novel in his Word and Void trilogy. It is the ninth novel set in his Shannara universe, though chronologically it is the first, the events in it taking place more than two thousand years before The Sword of Shannara which was his first novel.

Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks — Cover illustration: Brom
Publisher: http://www.orbitbooks.co.uk

The novel, which takes place over the Fourth of July weekend, tells the story of Nest Freemark, a fourteen-year-old girl being raised by her grandparents in the fictional town of Hopewell, Illinois (there really is such a place as Hopewell, IL., but this Hopewell is actually based on the city of Sterling, IL., Brooks’s hometown). Nest has a secret: she has the gift of magic. Along with the sylvan, Pick, and her mysterious protector, Wraith, she has to help maintain the balance between good and evil in Sinnissippi Park, one of the places on Earth where magic still resides. Read the rest of the review here. No spoilers. I promise.