CHARACTER
The Grandest Gameby Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Knox Landry

Knox Landry

Quick Facts

  • Role: Player in the second annual Grandest Game; rival-turned-antihero
  • First appearance: The helicopter arrival, where he’s observed by Lyra Catalina Kane
  • Sponsor/Allegiances: Backed by Orion Thorp (Calla’s father), a deal that complicates every choice he makes
  • Key relationships: Gigi Grayson, Brady Daniels, Calla Thorp
  • Notable traits: Cutthroat competitor, razor-sharp with puzzles, intensely claustrophobic, secretly protective
  • Signature banter: Calls Gigi “half-pint,” “pipsqueak,” and “Happy”; she dubs him “Grumpy Knickers”

Who They Are

Fierce, calculating, and fueled by a need to control what pain has made chaotic, Knox Landry enters the Game as the guy you love to hate—until the story peels back the armor. He projects moneyed polish and ruthless efficiency, but beneath it is a bruiser’s readiness to fight and a survivor’s instinct to protect. His antagonism toward Gigi and his hostility toward Brady are less about cruelty than about guarding a devastating truth about Calla Thorp and maintaining a brittle sense of order. Knox embodies the pull of The Influence of the Past: every choice he makes is a negotiation with trauma he refuses to name.

Lyra’s first impression captures the tension between his veneer and his volatility:

Knox had frat-boy hair, gelled and combed back except where it fell artfully into his face. He was white, lightly tanned, and brunette with shrewd eyes, dark eyebrows, and a sharp jawline, and he wore an expensive fleece sports vest over a collared shirt. The combined effect of his outfit and his hair should have screamed country club or finance bro, but a nose that had been broken one time too many whispered bar fight instead.

Gigi also clocks his “impressive eyebrows,” permanent scowl, and honey-badger energy—small, sharp tells of a man always braced for impact.

Personality & Traits

Under the swagger, Knox is a knot of contradictions: a strategist who swings first, a cynic who quietly protects, a bully whose triggers reveal real fear. He channels pain into competition and control, making him both brutally effective and emotionally evasive—a living case study in how Competition and Ambition can double as armor. His secrecy, especially about Calla, turns him into the keeper of the story’s most dangerous information, aligning him with the book’s fixation on Secrets and Hidden Truths.

  • Aggressive competitor: Introduced threatening to block Gigi’s path until she surrenders the bag of Objects; boasts that his specialties include “identifying weaknesses” and “finding shortcuts.” Winning isn’t just a goal; it’s his coping mechanism.
  • Confrontational and cynical: Dismisses others as liabilities—calling Gigi “half-pint” and “pipsqueak,” and writing Brady off as “soft” and “weak.” He reads the world as a zero-sum game where mercy is a risk.
  • Traumatized and vulnerable: A claustrophobic panic in the metal chamber detonates his self-control and provokes a fight with Brady—his most human moment, showing aggression as a shield for fear.
  • Protective despite himself: He catches Gigi when she falls from a bookshelf and later carries her to safety even when it costs his team. His fiercest battles—especially with Brady—are waged to protect someone else from the truth.
  • Sharp and analytical: Excels at logic puzzles and spots the team riddle’s “clichés” pattern first. When emotions threaten to spiral, he falls back on pattern recognition and deduction.

Character Journey

Knox begins as the Game’s most visible antagonist, his swagger and intimidation tactics clashing with Gigi’s defiance and Brady’s idealism (Chapter 14-15 Summary). The facade fractures in the metal chamber, where claustrophobia overwhelms him and years of buried anger at Brady erupts into violence—a scene that reframes his brutality as brittle self-protection rather than pure malice (Chapter 41-45 Summary). The true fulcrum of his arc comes with his confession to Gigi: Calla wasn’t taken; she left, marking him with a triangular scar as a deliberate goodbye. His deal with Orion Thorp and his hostility toward Brady collapse into one motive—shield Brady from a truth that would break him. By the time Knox carries an injured Gigi to the dock, sacrificing his team’s chances to ensure her safety, the caricature of the “finance-bro bruiser” has become a tragic protector who can’t stop bleeding for people he won’t admit he loves (Chapter 76-80 Summary).

Key Relationships

  • Brady Daniels: Raised like brothers under Severin’s training, Knox and Brady are bound by shared history and split by a single secret. Knox’s contempt—calling Brady “soft”—masks a ruthless determination to spare him the pain of Calla’s choice. Their every clash carries the weight of brotherhood curdled by silence.

  • Gigi Grayson: What starts as snark and standoffs evolves into grudging respect. Knox sees Gigi’s tenacity and intellect, and she sees through his performance of cruelty. His decision to entrust her with Calla’s truth—and to carry her to safety at the expense of victory—marks a pivot from adversary to unlikely ally.

  • Calla Thorp: Calla is Knox’s hinge—the absence that defines him. He loved her, and her voluntary departure brands him twice: with a scar and with the burden of deciding who deserves the truth. Protecting Brady from that knowledge becomes Knox’s private penance and the architecture of his self-destruction.

Defining Moments

Knox’s most revealing scenes expose the motives under his menace and turn a villain profile into a tragedy.

  • The Bag Confrontation: He corners Gigi and threatens to block her unless she surrenders the Objects. Why it matters: It establishes his win-at-all-costs creed—and how intimidation is his first language.
  • The Chamber Breakdown: Claustrophobia spirals into a physical fight with Brady in the metal chamber. Why it matters: The panic punctures his image, showing a frightened human beneath the bully and hinting at old wounds.
  • The Confession: In the attic, he admits that Calla left of her own accord and shows Gigi the triangular scar she gave him. Why it matters: This reinterprets every hostile choice as protection, not malice, and reframes his alliance with Orion as sacrificial.
  • Carrying Gigi to the Dock: After Gigi’s fall, Knox carries her slowly, ensuring their team’s elimination to keep her safe. Why it matters: He chooses a person over the win—proof that loyalty, not victory, is his true north.

Essential Quotes

I play to win. And Brady here has always had a soft spot for spoiled little girls. This encapsulates Knox’s worldview: competition first, sentiment as liability. He weaponizes Brady’s compassion to justify his own ruthlessness, telegraphing the ideological rift that defines their relationship.

You won't make it two seconds in this game without me on your side. You're soft. Weak. You don't have the stomach for doing what it takes to win. Knox asserts dominance by framing himself as the necessary monster. The line exposes both his contempt for “softness” and his belief that survival requires moral compromise—an ethos he’s embraced to survive his past.

Calla wasn’t taken. She ran away. She wasn’t abducted. Her family isn’t holding her captive somewhere. She’s not missing. She didn’t meet with foul play. And I know that, because the night before Calla left, she came to me to say good-bye. The anaphora—“She wasn’t… She’s not…”—functions like a self-imposed trial, with Knox dismantling every comforting lie. The final reveal binds him to the story’s most painful truth and clarifies why he’s spent years policing Brady’s hope.

Maybe I’m telling you because I can’t tell him. And I have never and will never tell Brady, because Brady couldn’t even begin to understand a Calla Thorp good-bye. Knox chooses Gigi as a confessor precisely because she can carry what Brady cannot. The line reveals the paradox of his love: he protects Brady by isolating himself with the truth, accepting the role of villain to keep his brother intact.