Radical History Review, Vol. 57 - Dimock - Paperback Book

This is my first foray into the frightful and bewildering world of Terry Goodkind. Goodkind has quite a following in the world of Fantasy fiction. (Though Goodkind claims not to write fantasy, but instead writes books with Important Human Themes. His interviews are the main reason I have avoided the books to this point.) I read a novella of his that was included in the Legends anthology and was not very impressed.

But the Law of Nines was a thriller/mystery novel, of course. So it couldn’t have anything to do with Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, could it? Well, the answer is yes apparently. I’m not familiar with SoT so the similarities are lost on me, though they are well documented in other reviews.

To the book then. The Law of Nines is not really a thriller; it’s more of an Urban fantasy Important Human Theme novel. It is set in what I can only assume is present day. The protagonist is Alex Rahl, a young artist who is turning 27 this very day. Alex paints only forest scenes, not stupid “impressionistic”, or “abstract” or “mildly interesting” stuff, oh hell no. Just Goddamned trees. Strangely he is not all that popular with the artsy crowd. Anyway, he has a girlfriend named Bethany who is just a giant pain in the ass. I mean she is gorgeous, appears to be smitten with him, wants to have crazy sex with him, but she sends him text messages. Alex is more of a “get off my lawn” 27 year old who hates text messaging and other things hated by the elderly. Alex has never been into Bethany so he has only dated her for “several weeks” and they have not had sex. This might be the least believable plot point in the entire book. He doesn’t like to talk to her, he doesn’t want to be around her and he won’t have sex with her. Why the fuck is he going out with her for “several weeks”.

Alex saves a beautiful woman from a runaway landscaping truck with a pirate flag on it. The woman is named Jax, and was so christened due to her amazing hand speed at the game of jacks. No I am not kidding. So Jax is from another world and so were the pirate landscapers. They were trying to kill Alex, Jax or both. Then Jax disappears. That’s OK though, because she comes back. She says she has very little time so they go to a café and talk about whether magic is like technology or not for three chapters. Then she leaves again.

****Spoilers from this point forward. ****

In the meantime, there are a bunch of evil people from the planet Jax is from. They are on Earth to try to get some gateway thing working so they can take weapons back to the other planet and be evil more. The leader of the evil guy group is named Cain. He was elected on a platform of change and what not, like Obama. All the change stuff is bullshit though because, Objectivism. So this Cain guy sends several waves of people over to kill Alex. Luckily, Alex’s grandfather was a “green beret” at some point in the past and has shown Alex some moves. This appears to be a far better training method than the thugs from the alternate planet have, because Alex just mows them down all book long.

So Jax comes back, they have to drive halfway across the country to sign some paperwork because, plot. They kill tons of people. There are at least two almost rapes, that I remember, and various scenes of torture. Alex is almost-raped by Bethany, who is apparently some kind of evil queen from the other planet but not working with Cain. Jax shows up and kills Bethany. Then Jax is captured by Cain’s folks who are all chuckling and being almost-rapey until Alex cleverly tells them to cut it out or he won’t cooperate. Curses, foiled again.

I really don’t have the heart to go through the rest of the plot such as it is. So I’ll cut to the chase. The spoilery, spoilery chase. They get to the gateway portal and are met there by a crapload of thugs from the other planet as well as Cain himself, who had been passing himself off as a much better painter than Alex. It turns out Alex is the only one who can open the portal. He is forced to because Jax has been captured and they threaten to rape her (sensing a theme here) and cut her up and what-not if they don’t get the portal open. Alex opens the portal…except. Actually the portal only kind of opens and ends up killing 3/4 of a crapload of bad guys. Jax and Alex kill the rest of the bad guys. Alex later explains that he was able to turn the portal into a killing machine after he noticed some trees painted on it. Because he is so goddamned good at painting trees, he noticed a tree was in a position that was all stupid looking or something, so he knew the portal would kill all those people. Again, I am not joking here.

I don’t use the word “flabbergasted” often, as I am not 75 years old. I was, however, flabbergasted at this ending. Incredibly stupid does not begin to describe it. What. The. Fuck.

Well, I can say that my first Goodkind novel was an experience I will never forget, no matter how talented the therapist. Goodkind seems to be able to move the story along in parts, then he invariably gets bogged down in some boring moral or pseudo-philosophical debate that goes on for page after page. Luckily these can be skimmed without missing any useful information, making the reading experience go very quickly. The more troubling aspect is that Goodkind seems to have no idea how humans act or talk. He may, in fact, be from another planet himself;A planet where a series of almost mind numbingly improbable events is believable even to children.

I would recommend The Law of Nines to virtually no one.