Product Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers a stunningly original , high-octane thriller. They watch you through mirrors! 'Your mother was twenty-seven when it came to her. Now you're twenty-seven, and it's come to you.' The skin of Alex's arms tingled with goose bumps. By her twenty-seventh birthday insanity had come to his mother...Turning 27 may be terrifying for some, but for Alexander, a struggling artist in small-town Nebraska, it is cataclysmic. Inheriting a huge expanse of land in Maine should have made him a rich and happy man; but something about this birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he just saved, has suddenly made him -- and everyone he loves -- into a target. A target for extreme and uncompromising violence...Where do you turn when your own reflection spells doom? In Alex, Terry Goodkind brings to life a modern hero in a whole new kind of thriller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4619 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 502 pages

About the Author
Goodkind was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, where he also attended art school, one of his many interests on the way to becoming a writer. Besides a career in wildlife art, he has been a cabinet maker, violin maker, and he has done restoration work on rare and exotic artifacts from around the world -- each with its own story to tell, he says. In 1983 Goodkind moved to the forested mountains he loves. There, in the woods near the ocean, he built the house where he and his wife, Jeri, live, and came at last to tell his own stories.

Customer Reviews

From another world
"The Law of Nines" looks and sounds like a suspenseful thriller. In fact, it's a set-in-the-future sequel to Terry Goodkind's doorstopper "Sword of Truth" series -- and sadly it's anything but thrilling. Instead this fantasy/thriller is more like an endless and repetitive stretch of chases and fight scenes (how many times do we hear about throats being cut?), with a bland hero and a mustache-twirling villain.

On Alexander Rahl's twenty-seventh birthday, he almost gets run over saving a hot woman, a strange man buys and defaces a bunch of his paintings, and he inherits a vast expanse of virgin land in Maine.

The woman he rescued, whose name is Jax, adds to the weirdness by claiming to be from another world -- and unsurprisingly Alexander doesn't believe her, although he wants to. But then an ex-girlfriend of his appears one night with a couple of thugs, and Jax barely manages to save him. She reveals that the ex-girlfriend is only one of many enemies who has come from her other dimension. World. Thingy.

She also reveals that the bad guys are led by an evil overlord, Cain, who is eradicating magic from her world, and that somehow his plans involve Alex -- the last member of the House of Rahl. The two of them set out on a frantic search to discover what it is that Cain want, only to become enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy to reopen a gateway between two different worlds.

"The Law of Nines" is a book that sounds a lot more exciting than it is -- a Ludlumesque fantasy-thriller about the lost scion of a magical house. Even more so if it's the sequel to a bestselling fantasy series.

Too bad the actual plot is a seemingly endless series of very repetitive fights and chases, in which random people turn out to be evil minions of the bad guy (cue a staggeringly boring stint at a mental hospital). Even Goodkind seems to eventually realize that this is teeth-grindingly boring, so he throws in some random plot twists -- a contrived secret society, the evil overlord's secret hobby, and the most boring terrorist attack in the world.

And while Goodkind lavishes plenty of detail and foreshadowing in the first chapters, his style deteriorates quickly. His dialogue is plain at best and silly at worst ("It should have a taste to wake it from its long sleep to its purpose"), and Jax and Alex frequently launch into long, dull monologues about evil magic Communists, the wonders of technology (magic glue!) and the "Sword of Truth" world. Eventually you just want them to shut up.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in this book is that it feels like only half a story. Most of the important stuff is going on in the "Sword of Truth" world, but Goodkind never SHOWS readers any of this. All we get is Jax throwing out hints and half-sketched stories.

Even worse, Alex is a pretty boring hero who doesn't seem to feel anything other than spurts of rage, even when his ex-girlfriend tries to rape him. Jax is a more intriguing character (a butt-kicking woman stranded in a strange world) but Alex seems more interested in her sex appeal than her actual problems. As for Cain, he's a 2-D villain who wants to rule the world. Yawn.

"The Law of Nines" tries to mingle fantasy with "Bourne Identity"-style suspense, but the whole thing ends up being boring, repetitive and feeling like only half a story.

The Law of Nines
I class Terry Goodkind as a five star author and normally rating his books is a simple matter. The Law of Nines has come as a bit of a shock as, while it is not a bad piece of work, it is significantly deficient relative to his other works.

While I was tempted to give a single star rating, which would be justified relative to the expectations his previous works have created, I resisted this knee jerk reaction as it's certainly not the worst book I've ever read.

I hope that this is not a prelude of things to come where an author starts churning out mediocre work after producing some wonderful and engaging works.

Hears hoping

SW

A stinking pile of garbage
I hesitate to give this book even 1 star, frankly, as it is a stinking pile of garbage.

Goodkind demonstrates no ability to create believable characters, no control of narrative pace, no good ideas and (worst) no respect for his readers:

* Artist of 27 able to instantly transform himself into a dispassionate killing machine at the drop of a hat - well, my granddad told me lots of stuff too, but I still can't drop grown men with my bare hands... not to mention the most boring evil genius in this world or any other !

* Long periods of tedium punctuated by moments of sheer...boredom, actually.

* Technology indistinguishable from magic - who'd a thought it ?

* Forcing his half-baked notions of free speech & gun control onto the reader every couple of pages.

A lazy book by a lazy writer. I will never spend another cent on anything he has written.