THE LAW OF NINES

Alex is a young artist with a family history of early death and mental illness. When he turns 27, he begins to understand why. THE LAW OF NINES has great potential as a fantasy thriller. At times it’s tense and action packed, but these traits get lost in too much exposition and a tendency toward the silly. If ever a book were crying out for abridgment, it’s this one. Particularly irritating is the character of Jax, a powerful woman from another world who arrives to help Alex and then handicaps him throughout much of the story like some nineteenth-century heroine in constant need of rest and rescuing. Mark Deakins cannot be faulted in his efforts to rescue this audiobook, but for all his valiance, it fails. C.A.T. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2010]