Running With the Demon by Terry Brooks

This, then, is the beginning of my plan to read all the Shannara books in chronological order. This is actually the start of Brooks’s three-volume The Word and the Void series -- and it begins in pretty much present-day America -- in a town called Hopewell, Illinois.

Here’s the summary from the back of my paperback copy:

Plagued by nightmares that tell him something evil will soon unleash an ancient horror upon the world, John Ross feels irrevocably drawn to the sleepy town of Hopewell, Illinois. In Hopewell, fourteen-year-old Nest Freemark also senses that something is terribly wrong, but she has not yet learned to wield the budding power that sets her apart from her friends. Now the future of humanity depends on a man haunted by his dreams and on a gifted young girl -- two souls who will discover what survives when hope and innocence are shattered forever.

What was most interesting to me was the way this is actually horror and not fantasy -- or at least a kind of merging of horror and fantasy. And that started me thinking about Stephen King’s similar genre-bending attempts with his Dark Tower series. And I was left wondering.

King is a better horror writer than Brooks, and Brooks is a better fantasy writer than King. But which one is better at the opposite craft? In other words, which is better? King’s fantasy or Brooks’s horror?

They are very similar stories, but based on this fresh read of Running With the Demon and my dim recollection of The Gunslinger, I’d have to give the nod to Brooks’s horror.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.