Running With the Demon (The Word and the Void Trilogy, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Terry Brooks (Author), Gerald Brom (Illustrator) "Hssst! Nest!" His voice cut through the cottony layers of her sleep with the sharpness of a cat's claw..." (more)
Key Phrases: poisoning trees, staging crew, mossy beard, Old Bob, John Ross, Derry Howe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Legendary sf author Brooks here weaves a tale about an apocalyptic showdown in a small Illinois town between humans and the amber-eyed trolls from another realm that only a girl named Nest can see.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (May 27, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345422589
• ISBN-13: 978-0345422583
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,206 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different, but good, November 25, 1999

By	Jeff Edwards ([e-mail]) (Twin Falls, Idaho) - See all my reviews

I bought this Terry Brooks novel mostly out of habit since I am such a HUGE fan of his other fantasy works. Well I wasn't sure what to expect, because I waited until it came out in paperback, and then it stayed on my shelf until after 'A Knight Of The Word' came out in paperback as well. I started to get a little low on the choices of books to read in my personal library, and didn't quite have the money to buy the newest hardback that I wanted, so I finally opened it up and gave it a shot. It WAS a little slow to start, but it just kept me interested--facinated at the premise that the story was centered in the 'real' world, and THAT to me was unique (at least in MY reading circles). Nest is immediatly likeable and a great character. I was a bit sad hearing about Grandpa in the sequel, but Nest can hold her own. It IS different from probably ANYTHING else out there in the fantasy field, and rightfully so since Brooks is NOT one to copy others. I still think his first 3 Shanarra books are his all-time best works, but these certainly are entertaining. If you are a fantasy reader mulling over the decision to pick this series up, go ahead and give it a shot, and don't give up too soon. But also, DON'T expect Shanarra, either. It is SO different from those books as to make you wonder if they are even written by the same person. Terry, if you read this, kudos to you for doing it again, and by the way, WHEN can we expect another Shanarra book...?

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern horror in a positive vein, October 22, 2005

By	Ryk E. Spoor "Author, Gamer, Geek God" (Troy, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Capsule Summary: Rating: Excellent. A "positive horror" novel which is well-written, well-paced, and clever.

The spine of the copy of Running With the Demon that I have just says "Fiction"; associations with the author's name invoke a general "fantasy" expectation. Running With the Demon could be considered "urban fantasy", but to me, it's clearly in another genre.

This is modern horror. This is Stephen King's bailiwick. I found myself thinking a LOT of King's work while reading Running With the Demon, and King suffers badly in the comparison. In this book, Brooks gets to show off a somewhat different style of writing, and demonstrate his skills depicting "regular people". The Shannara books take place in an entirely different world (albeit with the conceit that they are actually this world, after a sort of mystical apocalypse), and the Magic Kingdom books have a comedy slant which drives much of the character action.

Here Terry is writing a serious "Novel of Good and Evil", and his characters have to ring true. They have to be people we can imagine living in this world, even if underneath the world we know there is Something Else. And those who are connected to the Something Else we have to at least believe as residents of this world, as capable of hiding their presence from the mundanes.

Running With the Demon presents us with a world like our own, but one that is, unbeknownst to most people, under seige; a battleground between Good and Evil, or perhaps between Growth and Creation and Decay and Destruction. The Creator-power, God if you will, is the Word, and the destructive is the Void. Agents for each are selected, or select themselves through their choices. The "demon" of the title is a man who has become a demon, something inhuman, through his own choices. His general approach is to manipulate others to perform destructive acts. His main adversary, a Knight of the Word named John Ross, was chosen for this duty by a sort of manifestation of the Word called the Lady (with connections to imagery from Welsh history/myth and, at least in general imagery, seems related to the Arthurian cycle as well).

In a sense Running With the Demon seems to be almost a combination of two King novels, or rather two King novels as they might have been written by a better writer. This is The Stand meets Needful Things, because we have both an apocalyptic threat, a confrontation which may lead to the end of the world, and a story of small-town events, of the ways in which evil can use our own fears and desires against us -- possibly with a soupcon of "The Dead Zone", because John Ross can see visions of possible futures -- terrible futures, usually, which it is his job to prevent, but for which he has only the most cryptic of clues as to HOW to prevent them.

But Running With the Demon is BETTER than these books. The Stand, in the end, had to use a literal Deus Ex Machina, or possibly Machina ex Dei, the Hand of God, to finish off everything -- and in doing so made virtually all the efforts of the people useless except as symbolic acts (i.e., choosing good over evil). Needful Things allowed the main hero to survive, but at the expense of not merely a few other people but an entire town. Running With the Demon is at least as well WRITTEN as anything King's done -- and if you have read "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", you should know that is high praise indeed -- but more importantly for me, it's a more optimistic book. The choices of humans -- even ordinary, non-powered, non-Chosen humans -- MATTER. Yes, evil is dangerous, and in any fight against it there will be costs, there will be sacrifices, but there can also be victory, and not just Pyrrhic victory, either.

There are indeed losses on the side of Good, and several of them are painful, but none of them are without value. This is a book that brought a tear to my eyes at a few points, and at one ultimate moment a triumphant and appreciative "YES!" for the cleverness of one part of the final resolution.

Thank you, Terry. That was a damn good read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Did You Sell Your Soul for So Little?", May 20, 2006

By	R. M. Fisher "Raye" (New Zealand = Middle Earth!) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Terry Brooks is best known for his "Shannara" series, which is immensely popular despite being rather obviously inspired by Tolkien's plots, characters and themes. For reasons even I can't explain, I've read quite a few of these novels (despite my distain for them) and so I can say with a fair amount of confidence that "Running with the Demon" is undoubtedly Brooks's best novel. Moving away from his fantasy subworld of dwarfs, elves, magical talismans and plucky young farmboys-cum-heroes, the only thing Brooks hangs on to is his good against evil theme, placing it in contemporary America.

Here good and evil are represented by the Word and the Void; the former benevolent and creative, and the latter destructive. The exact relationship of these two sides is only briefly touched on and as such never explored in any great detail; instead Brooks chooses to focus on one skirmish that both sides are deeply invested in: the fate of a young girl and the events that unfold over a four-day period in a small town called Hopewell, Illinois. Two representatives of the warring sides come here in the days leading up to the fourth of July; a demon who has returned in order to see a long-laid plan come to fruition, and John Ross, a Knight of the Word whose mission is to stop him. As a Knight, Ross spends his nights dreaming of the apocalyptic future that is in store for the world, roaming the wastelands and collecting information and clues of what has transpired in order for him to act in the present to prevent such horrors from ever occurring. At the centre of both their quests is a fourteen-year old girl named Nest Freemark.

Nest is a girl living a double life. On the one hand, she enjoys loving grandparents, a close knit group of friends, a comfortable home adjacent to sprawling parklands and a promising future in athletic competition. But on the other, she sees shadowy figures known as feeders who feast on human emotion, is best friends with a sylvan named Pick who acts as guardian to the park, and has internal magical gifts at her disposal. This situation is tricky enough, but she is often haunted by the fact her mother committed suicide when she was just a baby and the mystery of her completely unknown father; and her Gran (her one human confidant of the world of magic) is close-lipped about both subjects.

Brooks creates a carefully plotted thriller/fantasy that combines...well everything. A gruesome monster gradually breaking out of its tree-prison, feeders luring innocent children into danger, a love-interest that is under threat from a more mundane human-evil, a school bully who holds resentment toward Nest, a ghostly dog-wolf whose origins are a mystery, a steelworks strike that is eroding the well-being of the town and causing some to plot drastic action and a dark family secret are all intertwined wonderfully to create a sustained, exciting, poignant story, that ultimately culminates in a darn good read. Every single plot thread, down to a lost kitten, is wrapped up satisfactorily.

There is only one crucial misstep, and that is when the demon is shown as having enough power to instantaneously kill a human being with a simple gesture. By doing so, Brooks infuses the demon with too much power, making later parts of his plan illogical when he stages various ways to rid himself of enemies that involve more elaborate schemes. If he has that much power over life and death, why doesn't he simply eliminate everyone in his way? With this one exception, the story is tightly structured, with the agendas, motivations and goals of both Ross and the demon well-paced and understandable - and with a final twist that's immensely satisfying.

Whereas most of the characters in the "Shannara" series are standard sword-and-sorcery stereotypes (the wise druid, the mystical elf, the winsome love-interest, the gruff dwarf), Brooks presents here a range of three-dimensional characters who interact with each other realistically. Everyone is given a useful part to play within the context of the story and no one bond is given precedence over any other, whether it be the rocky marriage of Nest's grandparents, the tentative bond that forms between John and Nest, the secret but unified force of Nest and Pick, or the warm and bickering nature of Nest's friends Robert, Cass, Brianna and Jared. Everyone acts in the way one would expect from their character, and all come across as sympathetic, likeable, solid characters - ones that you'd like to meet in real life. Nest in particular shines as the confused, conflicted but ultimately brave young heroine, but other standouts are the grouchy Pick and his owl, Nest's befuddled grandfather Old Bob, her no-nonsense grandmother Evelyn, and her loudmouth friend Robert who comes closer than he realises in discovering the truth about Nest.

"Running with the Demon" was followed by two sequels which paled in comparison to the workmanship and characterisation of the first book. Reading this book left me uplifted and thoughtful, the others left me depressed and dissatisfied thanks to sloppy storytelling and the removal of many favourite characters introduced here. My advice is to read "Running with the Demon" as a stand-alone novel, as the sequels really aren't worth the effort.