Warrior of Light
Adam Brady

BookSurge, an imprint of Amazon.com

Rating: ****

Reviewed by Grandmaster Patty Inglish, MS; 9^th Dan Jidokwan Taekwondo, Yudo, Hapkido, Jujutsu, Combat Self Defense; US Representative to the Supreme Council or Sports in Africa Zone-3
 

How does one learn a language and its inseparable culture when one is permitted solely to recite its alphabet? –

A, B, C, D, E, F, G…
A, B, C, D, E, F, G…
A, B, C, D, E, F, G…
A, B, C, D, E, F, Gee, I don’t care any longer…

How may one build a house if permitted only the use of one layer of crumbling bricks? How will a tropical garden flourish in rocky soil? It will not.
 

This is the type of question asked and answered by Mr. Adam Brady in his fantasy fiction novel Warrior of Light. The protagonist hero Kaladin tired of practicing only a limited set of marital arts movements without relevant meaning, application, and greater purpose, as did the renowned Jeet Kune Do leader Bruce Lee. The experience is like chanting scriptural liturgy in Latin when one does not know the language and does not see any results from it. It is like speaking into an empty closet, expecting some one to answer and not receiving even an echo in reply.
 

Like his real life counterpart Lee – and others - Kaladin leaves his home and martial arts community in order to continue pursuing the truth of martial arts practice on his own, unrestricted. He finds a deep well of inquiry within his own essence and follows it on a pathway toward enlightening and continued iterations of truth to be passed on along life’s infinite, repeating string of pearls. The vessel changes, but the basis of truth does not.
 

In each messenger, the next recipient can sense the generations of envoys that preceded the current herald to this point in the continuum of all that is and all that is not. Many times is and is not are the same.
 

My instructor long ago lifted a new, unsharpened pencil to his students’ eyes and intoned that martial arts is like this pencil:
 

“I will give you the eraser part, and you must find the remainder of it.”
 

A very few of us Kaladins did so. Most quit altogether, never grasping the concept that martial arts and life were neither a sometimes hobby. Kaladin is in the minority that understand this lesson, having never been given it by outside resources. He found that proverb within himself. So it is all with life — We are taught only so much and must use initiative to find the rest.
 

Warrior of Light contains many aspects that some readers will recognize, including the family martial arts institution and tradition, the insistence of the Old Guard on control and the limited distribution of truth,  Bruce Lee’s break with the Old Country masters, the quest for knowledge and fulfillment, the martial arts showdown, mysticism,  and even the faint frayed edges of “You killed my brother” are threads in the undercurrents within this novel.
 

The lesson to be gleaned from Warrior of Light is that we must find the remainder of the pencil and use it to its fullest extent and fullest positive effect, without abusing it. What we learn in the process is that the pencil is infinite in length.
 

Anyone interested in martial arts, truth, and something better than the B movie karate story will benefit from the saga Warrior of Light.

What is the most effective martial art for 10-year-old girls?