Running with the Demon

Terry Brooks

ISBN 10: 1857236076 / ISBN 13: 9781857236071

Published by Orbit, London, 1998

About this Item

Unread copy - as new. On the hottest Fourth of July weekend in decades, two men have come to Hopewell, Illinois. One is a demon, a dark servant of the Void with a terrible secret goal. The other is John Ross, a Knight of the Word who, while he sleeps, lives in the hell the world will become if he fails to change its course on waking. At stake is the soul of a fourteen-year-old girl mysteriously linked to both men. And the lives of the people of Hopewell. And, while friends and families picnic in Sinnissippi Park and fireworks explode in celebration of freedom and independence, the fate of mankind itself.

Seller Inventory # 002025

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Running with the Demon
• Publisher: Orbit, London
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857236076
• ISBN 13: 9781857236071
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Illustrator: Cover: Brom
• Edition: First Paperback Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis

1st Pocket edition paperback fine (as new)

Review

Terry Brooks's Running with the Demon is billed as "A Novel of Good and Evil," but he could've called it "A Novel of Here and Now." The fantasy master behind the Shannara series switches his focus from neo-Tolkien jungles to the woebegone steel town of Hopewell, Illinois. Though Illinois teenager Nest Freemark (where does he get these names?) looks like your average kid, she spends her free time in the woods asking her 6-inch pal Pick for advice in dodging the Demon and his creepy Feeders, spirits who gobble the souls of humans. Nest is also being tailed by John Ross, a shining Knight of the Word who wants to keep her from the Feeders' jaws.

Meanwhile, in the real world that dominates the novel, Nest Freemark is being stalked by a handsome, evil classmate who she has rejected, and a pack of surly, insurgent striking steelworkers plot a bombing at the company's Fourth of July picnic. The boy and the bombers are unaware that they're being subconsciously manipulated by the Demon. The book's matter-of-fact take on the uncanny is a bit like The X-Files. (And if you want to compare the two, check out Ted Edwards's X-Files Confidential: The Unauthorized X-Philes Compendium.)

Brooks's plot has more strands than a plate of pasta, yet his mind is logical to a fault--he used to be a lawyer. There's something for everyone: gory monster attacks, a dread family secret, magical mind-game duels, even a (rather flat) teen-romance subplot. The setting has real grit and the countdown to the Independence Day bombing peps up the tale. Brooks sometimes prosaically explains things a better literary stylist would dramatize, and his minatory visions of environmental apocalypse are more fun than the obvious, nagging, don't-be-a-litterbug message they exist to convey. Brooks will never be as deep as Tolkien, and many readers will find him less awesome as their adolescence recedes. Still, he's the genuine article, and with this book, he raises the stakes he's playing for.