"The Law of Nine" is a thriller with some fantasy elements. The action was non-stop except for 30 pages of dialogue stuck in at 193 pages into the story to explain who these mysterious killers were, where they're from, and why Jax didn't like them. The story was fast-paced and exciting, but it wasn't very pleasant. It involved torture, attempted rape, brutal mass murder of children, and a great deal of other violence. The world-building was done well, bringing the story alive in my imagination--even the violence.

While Alex and Jax were interesting enough characters, we never really learned much about them. The bad guys were flat, generic characters. They were angry and cruel with little motive given beyond greed and little difference between them beyond their names and jobs.

There were a few inconsistent or implausible elements, like Jax being able to successfully and completely hide three knifes (one of them large) under skin-tight or form-fitting clothing. And many important things were never explained, like how the bad guy intended to use what it turned out he so deeply wanted. SPOILER The suggestion given was that he wanted to bring superior weapon technology into his world through the gateway so that he could stay in control after he beat the other side. But he wouldn't be able to make that technology himself, so he'd always be dependent on the gateway. The other side of the gateway was currently controlled by powerful enemy magic users, so he wouldn't be able to safely use the gateway until the magic users were defeated. But the bad guy definitely wanted the gateway open now. It just didn't add up. END SPOILER

The end was also wrapped up pretty quickly, with Alex only needing one glance at the desired object to go from ignorance to sudden and complete understanding of how it worked. But at least it was a happy ending.

There was a minor amount of bad language. There was one non-explicit sex scene and two vaguely explicit attempted rape scenes. There was a lot of violence (some of it fairly graphic and gory), and it was often against innocent or helpless people. I only read the first few books of Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series, but this book reminded me of that plot in some ways (Alex is a lot like Richard, and so on). I suspect that Goodkind fans who can't get enough of his books will probably enjoy this one.


I received this book as an unrequested review copy from the publisher.