After hearing that Goodkind's new thriller possessed some "nuggets" related to The Sword of Truth series, I reluctantly decided to read the book. I've read all the Sword of Truth books and have a love/hate relationship with them. Some are absolutely fantastic. Some are slow, dull, and preachy.
I approached The Law of Nines as a completely different book with some allusions to Sword of Truth. What I discovered was that this book might as well be the sequel to Confessor, the last book in the Sword of Truth books, because it picks up where that book left off, only in our world. When Richard separated his world into two worlds at the end of Confessor, he created our world. It is our world that is bereft of magic, yet haunted by it.
In our world, one of Richard's heirs, Alex Rahl, is visited by Jax Amnell, a woman from another world who has learned to cross between the worlds. Others from her world have learned how to do this to, and hope to bring destruction to their world by ridding it of magic and replacing it with technology stolen from our world. This book is almost a retelling of the first Sword of Truth book, Wizard's Last Rule. And I found it incredibly enjoyable. I guess it re-awoke in me my love for the series - in spite of all its flaws. Even more important, the book was paced well: the story moved fast (which is not true of all of Goodkind's books).
Now that I know how connected this book is to the Sword of Truth, I actually long for a sequel. One quote from the book which resonates with me in regard to how we long for a glory we cannot quite communicate. Upon visiting a fantasy store, Jax tells Alex: "Don't you get it, Alex? Don't you see what was lost? Can you begin to imagine the wonder of what it must have been? People here can't remember it, yet they can't forget it. After all this time the world world still longs for it, still mourns what they lost. It was such a remarkable, magnificent, glorious part of life that they ache to have it back, even though they don't remember what it was" (219).
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