Thursday, March 10, 2011

Law of Nines

I was quite skeptical of this book as soon as I started reading it and realized that there were people traveling through different, parallel worlds.  The premise for this book is that everything surrounding this man, Alex's, life is affected by the number 9, a multiple of nine, or a factor of nine and that he is solely responsible for saving the entire civilization of a parallel world that is completely unknown to him.  This world is somehow tied to land that he is set to inherit when he turns 27 (9 times 3, 3 being a factor of 9).

I found myself reading far longer than I thought I had been each night trying to figure out what was going on throughout the book.  The plot sounds pretty straight forward, however, the author adds elements at times that don't seem to fit, but in the end, all the pieces fall into place.

The author was able to incorporate magical elements through the use of the parallel world.  This world used magic for the things that we use technology for.  It was really amazing to hear the character, Jax, describe the technology that she saw in our world as seemingly impossible and that she viewed it as we would view magic.  After reflecting on this, I realized that the things that we take for granted in our lives that we don't understand how they work, are like magic.

A part of the book that I found frustrating was that people could travel from this parallel world into our world, however, when Alex wanted to travel to Jax's world, he was unable.  Jax was even unable to bring things from our world into her world.  How did she manage to travel between worlds without suffering a fate worse than death?

Terry Goodkind is definitely on my list of authors to read in the future.

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