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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
Wizard’s First Rule is, without a doubt, the worst epic fantasy novel that I personally have ever read.
Reasons why Wizard’s First Rule is Terrible, in order of appearance.
1: The Protagonist.
Richard Cypher has three personalities that he shifts between depending on what the story demands: childishly innocent, obstinate dickhead, and tactical genius who understands the culture and mental state of places he has never been and people who he has never seen. These three personalities conflict, when he is innocent he idealistically assumes the best of everyone, when he is a dickhead he is “patient, but not tolerant” (quote direct from the book), and when he is a genius he understands every intricacy of how every person will react to everything. This is true of him from the beginning, and I’m not sure whether he substantially changes by the end. After all when a character has multiple personalities how are you supposed to know?
2: The Writing
A paragraph, in the mind of Terry Goodkind, is written by restating or rephrasing two sentences, three times each, so that they become six sentences. This problem is especially common during dialogue and fight scenes. A common prosaic flow in this book would be: “We shouldn’t go there, if we go there we will die. It would be very bad for us to go there. We should not go there.” Things are not always written this way. But they are written out like that 50% of the time or more. Especially because, unsurprisingly, the paragraphs with repetitive sentences tend to be the longer ones. I wonder why?
3: The Tone/Target Audience
I do not know who this book is for. Like Richard Cypher, it starts childishly innocent, and I was convinced that it was a young adult novel, and the emotions of the characters seem very simple throughout. This isn’t bad if you’re writing a novel for young readers. But no. WFR is graphically sexual and violent, and extremely sexually violent. Villains are not just evil, but ridiculous. An example of this is how Darken Rahl (Yes, this is the antagonist’s name) enchanted all red fruit in a third of the world to be poison, with the absolutely bizarre justification that children like to eat red fruit (???) and he really wants to kill children. His main lieutenant is a child molester, and when they kidnap children to sacrifice for dark rituals he must regularly ask him if he messed it up by “playing with them.” This perfectly encapsulates the NSFL nature of WFR’s depiction of evil. No emotionally mature person would be able to take it seriously, but it is too dark and disturbing for children. So who is it that is meant to endure this? Seriously, who?
4: Eroticized Torture
You did not read that wrong. Out of its 820 page length, WFR contains nearly 100 pages of graphic sexualized torture that are written in such a way to titilate people with the most extreme dubcon dominatrix fetishes, and horrify anyone else. Again, this is in a book that I thought was a young adult novel at first, because of how childish the tone and the protagonist were. The less said about this, the better. (I wish that Goodkind’s editor had told him that)
5: The MacGuffin is stupid. The magic is dumb. The worldbuilding sucks.
With everything else wrong I didn’t realize until near the end how stupid the object that the entire plot is based around is. They are three boxes. If you open one, you destroy the world, if you open another, you destroy yourself, if you open the third, you rule the world...Why? Who tf made this and why would they make it? It’s never explained. Something something wizards of old. Magic just kind of does whatever it needs to. Sometimes it’s based on emotions. Sometimes it’s based on weird mind games that don’t even seem magical. Similarly, there’s literally a map in the front of the book, but I have never had less of a visual sense of where people live in this world or how. There are supposedly three parts of this world that exist completely independently of each other, cut off by magical barriers. The social and economic ramifications of that never really get examined, it mostly serves as a mechanism by which Richard doesn’t know anything.
Other people have complained, at length, about how this book is cliche. I suppose it is. But for the most part, it is deeply stupid in its own little special ways that set it apart. Anyone who thinks that fantasy is “getting worse these days” should read Wizard’s First Rule (not all of it, save yourself) and remember that it was popular in the 90s. If the test of time is really going to be the perfect judge that it should be, this book should no longer be in print.
Reasons why Wizard’s First Rule is Terrible, in order of appearance.
1: The Protagonist.
Richard Cypher has three personalities that he shifts between depending on what the story demands: childishly innocent, obstinate dickhead, and tactical genius who understands the culture and mental state of places he has never been and people who he has never seen. These three personalities conflict, when he is innocent he idealistically assumes the best of everyone, when he is a dickhead he is “patient, but not tolerant” (quote direct from the book), and when he is a genius he understands every intricacy of how every person will react to everything. This is true of him from the beginning, and I’m not sure whether he substantially changes by the end. After all when a character has multiple personalities how are you supposed to know?
2: The Writing
A paragraph, in the mind of Terry Goodkind, is written by restating or rephrasing two sentences, three times each, so that they become six sentences. This problem is especially common during dialogue and fight scenes. A common prosaic flow in this book would be: “We shouldn’t go there, if we go there we will die. It would be very bad for us to go there. We should not go there.” Things are not always written this way. But they are written out like that 50% of the time or more. Especially because, unsurprisingly, the paragraphs with repetitive sentences tend to be the longer ones. I wonder why?
3: The Tone/Target Audience
I do not know who this book is for. Like Richard Cypher, it starts childishly innocent, and I was convinced that it was a young adult novel, and the emotions of the characters seem very simple throughout. This isn’t bad if you’re writing a novel for young readers. But no. WFR is graphically sexual and violent, and extremely sexually violent. Villains are not just evil, but ridiculous. An example of this is how Darken Rahl (Yes, this is the antagonist’s name) enchanted all red fruit in a third of the world to be poison, with the absolutely bizarre justification that children like to eat red fruit (???) and he really wants to kill children. His main lieutenant is a child molester, and when they kidnap children to sacrifice for dark rituals he must regularly ask him if he messed it up by “playing with them.” This perfectly encapsulates the NSFL nature of WFR’s depiction of evil. No emotionally mature person would be able to take it seriously, but it is too dark and disturbing for children. So who is it that is meant to endure this? Seriously, who?
4: Eroticized Torture
You did not read that wrong. Out of its 820 page length, WFR contains nearly 100 pages of graphic sexualized torture that are written in such a way to titilate people with the most extreme dubcon dominatrix fetishes, and horrify anyone else. Again, this is in a book that I thought was a young adult novel at first, because of how childish the tone and the protagonist were. The less said about this, the better. (I wish that Goodkind’s editor had told him that)
5: The MacGuffin is stupid. The magic is dumb. The worldbuilding sucks.
With everything else wrong I didn’t realize until near the end how stupid the object that the entire plot is based around is. They are three boxes. If you open one, you destroy the world, if you open another, you destroy yourself, if you open the third, you rule the world...Why? Who tf made this and why would they make it? It’s never explained. Something something wizards of old. Magic just kind of does whatever it needs to. Sometimes it’s based on emotions. Sometimes it’s based on weird mind games that don’t even seem magical. Similarly, there’s literally a map in the front of the book, but I have never had less of a visual sense of where people live in this world or how. There are supposedly three parts of this world that exist completely independently of each other, cut off by magical barriers. The social and economic ramifications of that never really get examined, it mostly serves as a mechanism by which Richard doesn’t know anything.
Other people have complained, at length, about how this book is cliche. I suppose it is. But for the most part, it is deeply stupid in its own little special ways that set it apart. Anyone who thinks that fantasy is “getting worse these days” should read Wizard’s First Rule (not all of it, save yourself) and remember that it was popular in the 90s. If the test of time is really going to be the perfect judge that it should be, this book should no longer be in print.
The first book in the epic Sword of Truth series…I have some very good memories with this book and this series. 2006-ish, Freshman year of college, I started my first read of this series, and I powered through them without any issue or thought of the length, as I could just read them through my mandatory physics or chemistry lectures. Fast forward to now, 2024, with a full time job and 3 kids, I don’t have the same free time as I used to have, but Terry Goodkind’s writing still makes the length an afterthought, and I finished this behemoth quickly.
My motivation for starting this again was two fold: 1. I needed an easy read to get me out of a lull I’ve been in with my reading. 2. I didn’t capture thoughts or reviews on my first read, and this series really re-introduced me to reading fiction for fun and had a big impact on me, so I wanted to relive that in a way while getting my thoughts down on paper.
Overall, Goodkind was a great storyteller. This book captures your attention early, and throws you into a massive adventure quickly. Richard, a basic woods guide whose father was recently mysteriously murdered, runs into a beautiful and intriguing lady in mortal danger and he decides to help her escape from enemies. Before you know it, you’re in the middle of a forbidden love story, a clashing worlds story (magic and non-magic), the creation of a massive fantasy world, and a very powerful wizard that needs to be stopped to save the worlds story. All of these stories and more are told with a straightforward plot structure and style, while letting you into the protagonist’s inner dialogues and thoughts often, which allows for the exploration of morality and adding some depth to the book.
While the story is cleverly built and moves at a great and even pace (for the most part), there are some traits of Goodkind’s early style that may be a bit off putting. Some of the inner dialogue and thoughts being shared are over the top obvious. In some cases, re-telling of basic character connections like “Richard loves Zedd” (we know) and at other times “Richard was furious at so and so for doing that to his friends”, all things that could seemingly be edited out. This is a big reason for some of the length. Goodkind also doesn’t hold back on making the evil characters evil. There are a lot of gruesome acts piled on to the bad guys’ rap sheets which don’t always feel natural (necessary or adding to the story). There are also long sequences of the book for sharing details in this realm (mord siths!), which I actually had to change to speed read during those sections. And finally, there are some cringy/dated things here (Rachel’s speaking style, ‘bestest’, and the like). Regarding an even pace for the most part, the final 25% of the book packs in an Odyssey like solo adventure for Richard, which felt a bit packed with information and hurried.
That’s enough for negatives, as there are plenty enough positives to make up for them. Although Goodkind might not say the fantasy elements are what bring people to the novels, there are some cool ideas in this. The magic creature, the Gar, has a substance on its body that attracts flies. The flies leave the Gar and look for prey to bite, which cause the prey to make noise by swatting or just being agitated, attracting the Gar. And the twist is that there are two types of Gar’s identified by their tail length and intelligence: the short-tailed Gars count their flies. There are several details like this that are pretty cool. Prophecy is also central to the book and is a part of the world in an intelligent way: the various magic creatures have different ways of obtaining visions or derivatives of prophecy, and none of them are clairvoyant. Their tellings usually come true in broad and unpredictable ways. This adds a nice element of mystery to go along with the adventure and other qualities.
The story itself centers around an evil wizard who has discovered long lost powerful magic in the form of 3 boxes. He has 2 of the boxes and needs to obtain the third and the instructions on how to use them. Richard, the protagonist finds himself as the key to stopping this from happening. The book is an end in itself, but also leaves a clear and open canvas for continuation which is very satisfying. There isn’t a huge cliff hanger, giving you an easy decision on if the next book is for you.
One final note on Goodkind and Objectivism (Ayn Rand). His reviews on this book and several others take a hit for this association, but this particular book has 0 connection to the philosophy. So either way: if you are just reading this as an Objectivist looking for inspired fiction or an Objectivist hater who can’t stand to read anything associated with the concepts of Rand, you will be disappointed, because at this point in his life he was clearly not writing the philosophy into his protagonists. I would be very surprised if he had fully read the Objectivist literature at this point. This is not a knock or anything but to say: just read the book for what it is and make up your own mind.
I don’t know if I’ll make it through the entire series again, but after this reread I feel at least up to the task to finish the first 3 (which if I recall form a nice trilogy). I definitely recommend giving the series a try.
My motivation for starting this again was two fold: 1. I needed an easy read to get me out of a lull I’ve been in with my reading. 2. I didn’t capture thoughts or reviews on my first read, and this series really re-introduced me to reading fiction for fun and had a big impact on me, so I wanted to relive that in a way while getting my thoughts down on paper.
Overall, Goodkind was a great storyteller. This book captures your attention early, and throws you into a massive adventure quickly. Richard, a basic woods guide whose father was recently mysteriously murdered, runs into a beautiful and intriguing lady in mortal danger and he decides to help her escape from enemies. Before you know it, you’re in the middle of a forbidden love story, a clashing worlds story (magic and non-magic), the creation of a massive fantasy world, and a very powerful wizard that needs to be stopped to save the worlds story. All of these stories and more are told with a straightforward plot structure and style, while letting you into the protagonist’s inner dialogues and thoughts often, which allows for the exploration of morality and adding some depth to the book.
While the story is cleverly built and moves at a great and even pace (for the most part), there are some traits of Goodkind’s early style that may be a bit off putting. Some of the inner dialogue and thoughts being shared are over the top obvious. In some cases, re-telling of basic character connections like “Richard loves Zedd” (we know) and at other times “Richard was furious at so and so for doing that to his friends”, all things that could seemingly be edited out. This is a big reason for some of the length. Goodkind also doesn’t hold back on making the evil characters evil. There are a lot of gruesome acts piled on to the bad guys’ rap sheets which don’t always feel natural (necessary or adding to the story). There are also long sequences of the book for sharing details in this realm (mord siths!), which I actually had to change to speed read during those sections. And finally, there are some cringy/dated things here (Rachel’s speaking style, ‘bestest’, and the like). Regarding an even pace for the most part, the final 25% of the book packs in an Odyssey like solo adventure for Richard, which felt a bit packed with information and hurried.
That’s enough for negatives, as there are plenty enough positives to make up for them. Although Goodkind might not say the fantasy elements are what bring people to the novels, there are some cool ideas in this. The magic creature, the Gar, has a substance on its body that attracts flies. The flies leave the Gar and look for prey to bite, which cause the prey to make noise by swatting or just being agitated, attracting the Gar. And the twist is that there are two types of Gar’s identified by their tail length and intelligence: the short-tailed Gars count their flies. There are several details like this that are pretty cool. Prophecy is also central to the book and is a part of the world in an intelligent way: the various magic creatures have different ways of obtaining visions or derivatives of prophecy, and none of them are clairvoyant. Their tellings usually come true in broad and unpredictable ways. This adds a nice element of mystery to go along with the adventure and other qualities.
The story itself centers around an evil wizard who has discovered long lost powerful magic in the form of 3 boxes. He has 2 of the boxes and needs to obtain the third and the instructions on how to use them. Richard, the protagonist finds himself as the key to stopping this from happening. The book is an end in itself, but also leaves a clear and open canvas for continuation which is very satisfying. There isn’t a huge cliff hanger, giving you an easy decision on if the next book is for you.
One final note on Goodkind and Objectivism (Ayn Rand). His reviews on this book and several others take a hit for this association, but this particular book has 0 connection to the philosophy. So either way: if you are just reading this as an Objectivist looking for inspired fiction or an Objectivist hater who can’t stand to read anything associated with the concepts of Rand, you will be disappointed, because at this point in his life he was clearly not writing the philosophy into his protagonists. I would be very surprised if he had fully read the Objectivist literature at this point. This is not a knock or anything but to say: just read the book for what it is and make up your own mind.
I don’t know if I’ll make it through the entire series again, but after this reread I feel at least up to the task to finish the first 3 (which if I recall form a nice trilogy). I definitely recommend giving the series a try.
až na to, že mi to trvalo fakt hrozne dlho (a nechápem prečo) to bolo fakt skvelé :)
Richard, Kahlan a Zedd su proste super!
Richard, Kahlan a Zedd su proste super!
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Be nice if someone took this first book, and then just rewrote all the books after it without the Ayn Rand political idiocy and constant rape and kidnapping and all the other massively pointless plotlines.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
I thought this was a really good book. Keeps u entertained the whole way through. Goodkind brings you into his world!
Juvenile, repetitive writing and dialogue and one-dimensional characters. I'm sure there's a great story buried in here somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
Another series I had started because of the TV show. For a low-budget fantasy show in the early 2000s, I personally loved it. I was so excited to see the source material.
The book is entertaining enough. I will warn that these books contain a lot of violence, especially body mutilation, when it comes to female characters. I'm not a supporter of using rape as a literary device unless it really brings something to the story. This series writes it an unnerving amount, including a high ranking general who likes children waaay to much.
The female characters are also disappointingly created for the male ego. It was a shocking find because the women in the show were wonderfully developed and strong.
However, I do enjoy the world building. It contains quite a bit of original bits.
The book is entertaining enough. I will warn that these books contain a lot of violence, especially body mutilation, when it comes to female characters. I'm not a supporter of using rape as a literary device unless it really brings something to the story. This series writes it an unnerving amount, including a high ranking general who likes children waaay to much.
The female characters are also disappointingly created for the male ego. It was a shocking find because the women in the show were wonderfully developed and strong.
However, I do enjoy the world building. It contains quite a bit of original bits.