Seeker

Seeker is the first book in a new Nicholson trilogy, following the success of ‘The Wind on Fire’. It’s a contender in the middleweight category, sprightly at a little over 400 pages, and begins and ends with a sect of noble hooded warriors, the Nomana – Knights Templars meet Kung Fu mystics (only with women too) – whose members, because of their oneness with the All-in-One, need no weapons but overcome their enemies with sheer mind power. Most of the tale is concerned with an unlikely band of companions who are trying to gain the right to entry to the Order by locating and neutralising a terrible new weapon set to destroy it. The boy, Seeker, and the girl, Morning Star, have family reasons for their quest. Wildman, a former bandit, has been knocked back (literally) by a Noma when terrorising a village, and thinks it will be cool to be a ‘hoodie’. The novel creates its fantasy world from a number of inspirations, including Aztec sacrifice and plantation life in the American Deep South. It includes topical references, not only to ‘hoodies’ but, more seriously, to suicide bombing; and is realised in dramatic set pieces of cinematic clarity, with a breathless climax. There is plenty of action; characters whose acts of epic courage or calculated cruelty have recognisable human faces; comic relief, mostly provided by the Wildman; and an adventure at whose heart is the question of the use and abuse of power.