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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
medium-paced
See my blog post about this book at http://www.walckthisway.com/2015/11/which-is-better.html?m=1
adventurous
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This series is addictive. It's not particularly brilliant, but it is remarkably easy to read.
Had the hardest time getting into this one, stopped reading the series after this book.
*Big big Trigger Warning: this review talks a lot about misogyny and rape, including prostitution.*
*Not-so-big secondary warning: review is very long.*
Some people point to Naked Empire as the worst book in this series, but I would argue that Temple of the Winds is worse - far worse. Unironically, I like some of the books in this series. Temple of the Winds is not one of them.
There is a lot that could be said about Terry Goodkind's views on women. People will bring up his over-use of rape and sexual assault to prove he was some flavor of misogynist, but to focus on the really blatantly offensive stuff is to miss the bigger picture: I do think he had issues with women, but I don't think he thought he did. Every time he uses rape it is used to show that a man is bad, sure. But also: it isn't simply the over-use of it that trivializes it, it is the way he writes about it, and about the women both directly and indirectly affected by it.
It is sort of difficult to reconcile what I believe are actual enjoyable female characters with the fact that he was constantly setting them up to be creeped on, molested, and assaulted, or otherwise humiliated in a distinctly sexualized way. On the one hand, Kahlan being the most powerful woman in the realm and yet not being free of this kind of thing is depressingly realistic. On the other, it's interesting that Richard is such a blatant escapist character, yet a female reader cannot enjoy the same level of escapism via Kahlan, who has just as many words dedicated to her own adventures, or in any of the other female characters, who are always at risk of sexual violence.
Yes, Richard gets raped in the first book. But it was by a hot chick who wasn't actually a bad person. Nearly every man who tries to rape Kahlan is a hulking, ugly brute, who is definitely 100% evil. The hot ones are still 100% evil. I'm not trying to say I wish these rapists were nuanced or something, I'm saying that it's interesting that Richard suffered sexual trauma but in a way that wasn't really that terrible, especially not compared to Kahlan's, and his rapist gets forgiven and was in love with him. Note, too, that Kahlan suffers NO psychological effects from being molested or almost-raped, even though it happens about a trillion times. She isn't even fazed by the women around her being constantly assaulted, either, and threatens her own sister (a victim of gang rape) with rape two books after this one.
And it's also interesting that the thing people take issue with here is Denna's being portrayed as a sympathetic character ("Oh," they say, clutching their pearls, "what if the genders were reversed?? People would be up in arms!" To which I say: there are a lot of people who like the Thomas Covenant books, and many IRL rapists are lionized), when the real issue - to me, anyway - is that Goodkind actually did take the topic of female-on-male rape relatively seriously, certainly more so than the reverse.* In fact he treated his male characters much better than his female characters in general.
And once you start to notice that you see it every-frigging-where in his books. Temple of the Winds contains a few instances of this sort of thing, but I'll focus on what I call The Big Two:
1. Nadine. I actually kind of like Nadine as a character, but that's more or less because she is one of the few (relatively "good") characters in this series that aren't constantly huffing Richard and Kahlan's farts. I liked Chandalen, Verna, and Du Chaillu for the same reason. She is of course vilified by the narrative for daring to come between Richard and Kahlan's true love - even though she wasn't the one who came up with the idea - and just so you know this is an unambiguously Bad thing, her negative characteristics far outweigh the positive. If she was only jealous because she had some unrequited love for Richard, that would be entirely understandable; but no, she has to be petty, vindictive, opportunistic, and dumb, and is obviously not a very good person. Late in the book, she dies, and literally nobody cares.
Mind you, the book does sort of go out of its way to tell you that she's not *that* bad, she has her good points, etc. etc. That's fine, except the narrative also doesn't want you to believe that. The middle of the book - the absolute worst part of it - is to do with a plague, and the audience is first informed of this through scenes of children dying horrible, painful deaths... occasionally Nadine seems to actually care about all of this, but it's pretty blatant that she's using the situation to guilt-trip Kahlan and drive a wedge between her and Richard. This in itself, in my opinion, isn't horrible in terms of character writing, and in the grand scheme of things I actually like that Goodkind was willing to make his female antagonists as weird and depraved as their male counterparts. On the other hand, the way Nadine's little character arc resolves is pretty questionable, especially given that the male antagonist of this book is handled a lot differently.
Also introduced in this book is Richard's half-brother, Drefan, a serial killer who targets prostitutes. This is never outright revealed to the main characters, but he does do some depraved crap late in the book to them specifically: he murders Nadine, he tortures and nearly kills Cara, he tries to kill Richard, and is constantly threatening to rape Kahlan. He also paralyzes Kahlan from the waist down, but that's okay because Richard heals her like two seconds later. On top of this, a character tells Richard and Kahlan near the end that Drefan had a real weird attitude toward women, and implies that he's harmed women before.
But of course... in spite of all this... he gets forgiven, both by the narrative and by Richard: he was a good guy, he helped with the plague. Oh, the rest of that crap he did? NBD. That is not to say his actions are portrayed as anything but negative; it's just that the way they're written off kind of rubs me the wrong way, especially since Nadine's actions - which consist largely of petty but relatively harmless bullshit - are given the same narrative weight, and she never gets a "oh well she was a good person uwu" speech from the other characters. She's dead and that's it, no one mourns her. To say this is surreal is an understatement.
2. The B Plot. More specifically, the culmination of the B plot: Clarissa escapes the fate of the rest of the women in her city, which was to be enslaved by the Imperial Order; she is instrumental to saving the day in this book; she ends up dead anyway. She's never mentioned again in subsequent books.
The whole thing is so weird. Nathan picks her up as her city is burning and takes her on this crazy adventure to kneecap the Order. Fine. But the way it's written is so bizarre: Goodkind would frequently do this Thing where his characters would be very underhanded and manipulative, but because it was for the greater good, it was okay. And that would be fine if the series didn't run on black and white thinking, but it does. There's this huge disconnect here for me: the audience is constantly told there's no right and wrong in war, but also the good guys, even when they are being incredibly shady and outright murdering people and executing political dissidents - just like the bad guys, mind you - are unambiguously good, and the bad guys have absolutely no nuance. Being TOLD that Drefan had good points is fine - but he was also murdering vulnerable women and tortured Cara. "But he wasn't that bad, he tried to help with the plague!" These books are crazy-making.
Anyway, my issue with the Clarissa plot is that Nathan is very clearly manipulating her at every turn, and he even seduces her at one point; this is all written like some straight woman fantasy, where Clarissa was pretty all along and Nathan is her knight in shining armor. Early in the subplot he sends her to talk to some bad guys who almost rape her, along with the rest of the women of this city being brutalized, and his reasoning? To show her what's at stake. You know, when the bad guys psychologically torture women, it's portrayed as bad, but not so here. It's all in service of the greater good, so it's okay :-)
So after Clarissa dies, there is this part where Verna calls her a whore, and Nathan decks her. She goes flying. Her jaw is broken. Verna's boyfriend is horrified. But that's it. Verna apologizes to Nathan even though she had no way of knowing who Clarissa was to this man or what she had helped him to do. Mildly contrarian characters being browbeaten into submission and narratively punished for going against the protagonists is a running theme in this series. "There is no good and bad in war." Whatever you say, Terry. Do note that Chandalen, the OG contrarian character in this series gets "redeemed" without suffering bodily harm from another "good guy," or rape from the baddies. Funny how that works isn't it.
When I say I don't think Goodkind thought he was a misogynist, I do mean that: rape is portrayed as an unambiguously negative thing, that only Bad Guys do in this series; but on the other hand, narratively, he does use it to punish bad women an awful lot. There's a minor character in this very book who was a petty snot to Clarissa, and look what happens to her: husband murdered, gets gang raped, gets enslaved, dies at the end. Women who align themselves with Fantasy Satan? Fair game for rapists. Nadine is kind of a mean slut? There was only one way to handle her, clearly, and that was through Drefan raping and murdering her. Just to defend him a little here it's not always sexually active women getting raped and murdered, but it sure is a lot of them; whenever the "good" women enjoy sex it's with a good man (see: Denna and Richard, or Kahlan and Richard, or any of Zedd or Nathan's lovers) or within the bonds of marriage. What a strange coincidence.
What I'm trying to say, in far too long-winded a way, is that there is a clear trend of Goodkind suffering from a Madonna-Whore complex. It isn't just that he was writing about rape, it was how he used it in his narrative, it was how he treated his female characters. Do I think he was making a conscious decision to do this? If I'm being entirely honest, no. He was sympathetic to some of the rape victims in this series but only if they were ideologically pure. In other words: Terry Goodkind was a typical politically-motivated man.
* - Just to prove my various points here, Temple of the Winds contains a scene where Kahlan thinks she's being raped by Drefan, but it was really Richard the whole time. This is still rape-by-deception, mind you, and yet it's portrayed as an Okay thing to have happened. She wasn't really raped. Sure. Except it's established that, while Richard has some weird sixth-Kahlan-sense, where he can tell it's her just by the sound of her footsteps or whatever, she does not have the equivalent sixth-Richard-sense. He is fully aware of this. He goes ahead and has sex with her, while she is under clear distress. She is weeping while he does it. You know who's portrayed as being in the wrong in this whole situation? Kahlan. I guess you could argue that this is all vaguely in the same realm as what happened between Richard and Denna, but I don't know if I would argue that. It would be one thing if the book sympathized with Kahlan here in the same way the whole series sympathizes with Richard after his own rape, but it just doesn't. Richard spends most of the rest of the book angry at her (keep in mind, he raped her), and as is pretty typical for these books, she kind of tacitly gets blamed for all of the bad things happening in the last third of the book, especially those things happening to herself. Richard apologizes for being mad at her later but not for raping her, which he definitely did. She still marries this man. He's still the hero. But anyway, to the people who ask, "Well, what if the genders were reversed? How would you feel if a male rapist was portrayed sympathetically?" Are you sure you're not just asking that to be pedantic and maybe to virtue signal a little? The reverse of the Richard-Denna thing happens in this very series, so where are you? Or would you not consider this rape-rape because Richard was the guy Kahlan really wanted to have sex with anyway, so, no harm, no foul?
Anyway, besides all that: this book is just kind of a chore to read in general. The characters aren't very likable, even more so than the rest of the series, and what's worse is they aren't interesting or flawed; it's one thing if your cast is full of unlikable but interesting freaks, it's another if they're just DULL. That this book sits between Blood of the Fold and Soul of the Fire, which both had far more entertaining supporting casts, makes this unfortunately noticeable. Maybe that's a weird thing to say about a book with the fantasy equivalent of Ted Bundy in it, but it's true: Drefan is too depraved, and his actions are too disturbing, to be considered a high point.
I also think this book, out of all of the series, suffers the most from Deus ex Machina: the holy hand of Terry Goodkind sweeps in to introduce concepts never before seen and never explored again to kick off the third act, via some weird hivemind hamster people who hijack Cara to deliver a prophecy. I wish I was making that up. Even before then, though, you have things like Richard suddenly having an encyclopedic knowledge not only of plants but of every cure to every ailment you can think of. That, at least, you can dismiss as extrapolation: he was a woods guide, of course he knows how to make some curatives. On the other hand, this is but the beginning of a trend that gets completely out of control by the next book. (And you could argue that this started as far back as Stone of Tears, but that was comparatively tame.)
The writing and dialogue are both incredibly clunky, though now and again there are some real banger lines and snappy dialogue. But you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, and occasionally Goodkind rose above mere competence as a writer. I think he was great at crafting weird, entertaining stories, but also: every time Kahlan's wedding dress is brought up, it has to be qualified as "her blue wedding dress." "I want to see you in your blue wedding dress." "I can't wait to wear my blue wedding dress." That example comes to mind if only because it gets repeated so often. Other weird writing decisions: grinding the story to a halt so Cara can tell Kahlan her entire backstory; the Melodrama about Richard and Kahlan having to postpone their wedding; the entire B plot, which is just a very contrived way to have certain characters in the right place for Kahlan to meet at the climax, and, unlike when this happened in the previous book, ultimately comes to nothing.
The whole middle section, where everyone is constantly dying and talking about the plague, is also incredibly boring, and reads more like filler than anything else. I would argue this book is the closest this series ever got to having true filler, and yes, I am including Naked Empire and Soul of the Fire in that assessment. Stuff kind of happens in Temple of the Winds, but ultimately it's all for nothing: the characters leave the plague-riddled city at the end and don't return for several thousand pages. They kill a high-ranking representative, a relative of the royal family of one kingdom, and face no repercussions for this. One of the cities destroyed by the Order is mentioned off-hand once in the next book, but then you never hear about that - or Clarissa - ever again. One of Richard's bodyguards died but her girlfriend disappears from the story for several books afterward, in spite of being a relatively important character otherwise. The only thing that happens in this book that affects future books is Kahlan saying the names of the Three Chimes (and once again, it's Kahlan's fault every bad thing ever happens, lmao). A lot of the Drama in the last act is also just a lazy retread of the Drama from Stone of Tears: Richard gets mad at Kahlan because she does something he doesn't understand, and does he think to find out her reasoning before he has a mantrum? Of course not. He assumes she doesn't really love him (sadface) and goes off to sulk. It's resolved in a little more of a ham-fisted manner this time but it's pretty much a point-for-point repeat, and good lord is it tedious.
Okay, so, lots of negative stuff to say about this book, so why the two stars instead of one? What could I have possibly liked about this book?
Essentially, I gave it two stars for the two characters in this book that I actually liked: Nadine, and Tristan Bashkar, a minor character who shows up all of three times before he gets killed off. The main characters assume Tristan is the one murdering prostitutes, and look for absolutely no evidence that this is true, they just assume it's true because he also tried to assassinate Kahlan (allegedly). Drefan Bundy's crimes get excused because he was helping with the plague. Tristan gets executed because the main characters thought he was a nuisance. Did I say already that this series is crazy-making? Here's another example.
Anyway: if I were still inclined to write fanfiction, Nadine and Tristan would be riding off into the sunset together on a winged horse, and leave those losers Richard and Kahlan behind to have their own wacky adventures; and I recommend that you skip Temple of the Winds, unless you just really want to read the literary equivalent of a dumpster fire.
*Not-so-big secondary warning: review is very long.*
Some people point to Naked Empire as the worst book in this series, but I would argue that Temple of the Winds is worse - far worse. Unironically, I like some of the books in this series. Temple of the Winds is not one of them.
There is a lot that could be said about Terry Goodkind's views on women. People will bring up his over-use of rape and sexual assault to prove he was some flavor of misogynist, but to focus on the really blatantly offensive stuff is to miss the bigger picture: I do think he had issues with women, but I don't think he thought he did. Every time he uses rape it is used to show that a man is bad, sure. But also: it isn't simply the over-use of it that trivializes it, it is the way he writes about it, and about the women both directly and indirectly affected by it.
It is sort of difficult to reconcile what I believe are actual enjoyable female characters with the fact that he was constantly setting them up to be creeped on, molested, and assaulted, or otherwise humiliated in a distinctly sexualized way. On the one hand, Kahlan being the most powerful woman in the realm and yet not being free of this kind of thing is depressingly realistic. On the other, it's interesting that Richard is such a blatant escapist character, yet a female reader cannot enjoy the same level of escapism via Kahlan, who has just as many words dedicated to her own adventures, or in any of the other female characters, who are always at risk of sexual violence.
Yes, Richard gets raped in the first book. But it was by a hot chick who wasn't actually a bad person. Nearly every man who tries to rape Kahlan is a hulking, ugly brute, who is definitely 100% evil. The hot ones are still 100% evil. I'm not trying to say I wish these rapists were nuanced or something, I'm saying that it's interesting that Richard suffered sexual trauma but in a way that wasn't really that terrible, especially not compared to Kahlan's, and his rapist gets forgiven and was in love with him. Note, too, that Kahlan suffers NO psychological effects from being molested or almost-raped, even though it happens about a trillion times. She isn't even fazed by the women around her being constantly assaulted, either, and threatens her own sister (a victim of gang rape) with rape two books after this one.
And it's also interesting that the thing people take issue with here is Denna's being portrayed as a sympathetic character ("Oh," they say, clutching their pearls, "what if the genders were reversed?? People would be up in arms!" To which I say: there are a lot of people who like the Thomas Covenant books, and many IRL rapists are lionized), when the real issue - to me, anyway - is that Goodkind actually did take the topic of female-on-male rape relatively seriously, certainly more so than the reverse.* In fact he treated his male characters much better than his female characters in general.
And once you start to notice that you see it every-frigging-where in his books. Temple of the Winds contains a few instances of this sort of thing, but I'll focus on what I call The Big Two:
1. Nadine. I actually kind of like Nadine as a character, but that's more or less because she is one of the few (relatively "good") characters in this series that aren't constantly huffing Richard and Kahlan's farts. I liked Chandalen, Verna, and Du Chaillu for the same reason. She is of course vilified by the narrative for daring to come between Richard and Kahlan's true love - even though she wasn't the one who came up with the idea - and just so you know this is an unambiguously Bad thing, her negative characteristics far outweigh the positive. If she was only jealous because she had some unrequited love for Richard, that would be entirely understandable; but no, she has to be petty, vindictive, opportunistic, and dumb, and is obviously not a very good person. Late in the book, she dies, and literally nobody cares.
Mind you, the book does sort of go out of its way to tell you that she's not *that* bad, she has her good points, etc. etc. That's fine, except the narrative also doesn't want you to believe that. The middle of the book - the absolute worst part of it - is to do with a plague, and the audience is first informed of this through scenes of children dying horrible, painful deaths... occasionally Nadine seems to actually care about all of this, but it's pretty blatant that she's using the situation to guilt-trip Kahlan and drive a wedge between her and Richard. This in itself, in my opinion, isn't horrible in terms of character writing, and in the grand scheme of things I actually like that Goodkind was willing to make his female antagonists as weird and depraved as their male counterparts. On the other hand, the way Nadine's little character arc resolves is pretty questionable, especially given that the male antagonist of this book is handled a lot differently.
Also introduced in this book is Richard's half-brother, Drefan, a serial killer who targets prostitutes. This is never outright revealed to the main characters, but he does do some depraved crap late in the book to them specifically: he murders Nadine, he tortures and nearly kills Cara, he tries to kill Richard, and is constantly threatening to rape Kahlan. He also paralyzes Kahlan from the waist down, but that's okay because Richard heals her like two seconds later. On top of this, a character tells Richard and Kahlan near the end that Drefan had a real weird attitude toward women, and implies that he's harmed women before.
But of course... in spite of all this... he gets forgiven, both by the narrative and by Richard: he was a good guy, he helped with the plague. Oh, the rest of that crap he did? NBD. That is not to say his actions are portrayed as anything but negative; it's just that the way they're written off kind of rubs me the wrong way, especially since Nadine's actions - which consist largely of petty but relatively harmless bullshit - are given the same narrative weight, and she never gets a "oh well she was a good person uwu" speech from the other characters. She's dead and that's it, no one mourns her. To say this is surreal is an understatement.
2. The B Plot. More specifically, the culmination of the B plot: Clarissa escapes the fate of the rest of the women in her city, which was to be enslaved by the Imperial Order; she is instrumental to saving the day in this book; she ends up dead anyway. She's never mentioned again in subsequent books.
The whole thing is so weird. Nathan picks her up as her city is burning and takes her on this crazy adventure to kneecap the Order. Fine. But the way it's written is so bizarre: Goodkind would frequently do this Thing where his characters would be very underhanded and manipulative, but because it was for the greater good, it was okay. And that would be fine if the series didn't run on black and white thinking, but it does. There's this huge disconnect here for me: the audience is constantly told there's no right and wrong in war, but also the good guys, even when they are being incredibly shady and outright murdering people and executing political dissidents - just like the bad guys, mind you - are unambiguously good, and the bad guys have absolutely no nuance. Being TOLD that Drefan had good points is fine - but he was also murdering vulnerable women and tortured Cara. "But he wasn't that bad, he tried to help with the plague!" These books are crazy-making.
Anyway, my issue with the Clarissa plot is that Nathan is very clearly manipulating her at every turn, and he even seduces her at one point; this is all written like some straight woman fantasy, where Clarissa was pretty all along and Nathan is her knight in shining armor. Early in the subplot he sends her to talk to some bad guys who almost rape her, along with the rest of the women of this city being brutalized, and his reasoning? To show her what's at stake. You know, when the bad guys psychologically torture women, it's portrayed as bad, but not so here. It's all in service of the greater good, so it's okay :-)
So after Clarissa dies, there is this part where Verna calls her a whore, and Nathan decks her. She goes flying. Her jaw is broken. Verna's boyfriend is horrified. But that's it. Verna apologizes to Nathan even though she had no way of knowing who Clarissa was to this man or what she had helped him to do. Mildly contrarian characters being browbeaten into submission and narratively punished for going against the protagonists is a running theme in this series. "There is no good and bad in war." Whatever you say, Terry. Do note that Chandalen, the OG contrarian character in this series gets "redeemed" without suffering bodily harm from another "good guy," or rape from the baddies. Funny how that works isn't it.
When I say I don't think Goodkind thought he was a misogynist, I do mean that: rape is portrayed as an unambiguously negative thing, that only Bad Guys do in this series; but on the other hand, narratively, he does use it to punish bad women an awful lot. There's a minor character in this very book who was a petty snot to Clarissa, and look what happens to her: husband murdered, gets gang raped, gets enslaved, dies at the end. Women who align themselves with Fantasy Satan? Fair game for rapists. Nadine is kind of a mean slut? There was only one way to handle her, clearly, and that was through Drefan raping and murdering her. Just to defend him a little here it's not always sexually active women getting raped and murdered, but it sure is a lot of them; whenever the "good" women enjoy sex it's with a good man (see: Denna and Richard, or Kahlan and Richard, or any of Zedd or Nathan's lovers) or within the bonds of marriage. What a strange coincidence.
What I'm trying to say, in far too long-winded a way, is that there is a clear trend of Goodkind suffering from a Madonna-Whore complex. It isn't just that he was writing about rape, it was how he used it in his narrative, it was how he treated his female characters. Do I think he was making a conscious decision to do this? If I'm being entirely honest, no. He was sympathetic to some of the rape victims in this series but only if they were ideologically pure. In other words: Terry Goodkind was a typical politically-motivated man.
* - Just to prove my various points here, Temple of the Winds contains a scene where Kahlan thinks she's being raped by Drefan, but it was really Richard the whole time. This is still rape-by-deception, mind you, and yet it's portrayed as an Okay thing to have happened. She wasn't really raped. Sure. Except it's established that, while Richard has some weird sixth-Kahlan-sense, where he can tell it's her just by the sound of her footsteps or whatever, she does not have the equivalent sixth-Richard-sense. He is fully aware of this. He goes ahead and has sex with her, while she is under clear distress. She is weeping while he does it. You know who's portrayed as being in the wrong in this whole situation? Kahlan. I guess you could argue that this is all vaguely in the same realm as what happened between Richard and Denna, but I don't know if I would argue that. It would be one thing if the book sympathized with Kahlan here in the same way the whole series sympathizes with Richard after his own rape, but it just doesn't. Richard spends most of the rest of the book angry at her (keep in mind, he raped her), and as is pretty typical for these books, she kind of tacitly gets blamed for all of the bad things happening in the last third of the book, especially those things happening to herself. Richard apologizes for being mad at her later but not for raping her, which he definitely did. She still marries this man. He's still the hero. But anyway, to the people who ask, "Well, what if the genders were reversed? How would you feel if a male rapist was portrayed sympathetically?" Are you sure you're not just asking that to be pedantic and maybe to virtue signal a little? The reverse of the Richard-Denna thing happens in this very series, so where are you? Or would you not consider this rape-rape because Richard was the guy Kahlan really wanted to have sex with anyway, so, no harm, no foul?
Anyway, besides all that: this book is just kind of a chore to read in general. The characters aren't very likable, even more so than the rest of the series, and what's worse is they aren't interesting or flawed; it's one thing if your cast is full of unlikable but interesting freaks, it's another if they're just DULL. That this book sits between Blood of the Fold and Soul of the Fire, which both had far more entertaining supporting casts, makes this unfortunately noticeable. Maybe that's a weird thing to say about a book with the fantasy equivalent of Ted Bundy in it, but it's true: Drefan is too depraved, and his actions are too disturbing, to be considered a high point.
I also think this book, out of all of the series, suffers the most from Deus ex Machina: the holy hand of Terry Goodkind sweeps in to introduce concepts never before seen and never explored again to kick off the third act, via some weird hivemind hamster people who hijack Cara to deliver a prophecy. I wish I was making that up. Even before then, though, you have things like Richard suddenly having an encyclopedic knowledge not only of plants but of every cure to every ailment you can think of. That, at least, you can dismiss as extrapolation: he was a woods guide, of course he knows how to make some curatives. On the other hand, this is but the beginning of a trend that gets completely out of control by the next book. (And you could argue that this started as far back as Stone of Tears, but that was comparatively tame.)
The writing and dialogue are both incredibly clunky, though now and again there are some real banger lines and snappy dialogue. But you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, and occasionally Goodkind rose above mere competence as a writer. I think he was great at crafting weird, entertaining stories, but also: every time Kahlan's wedding dress is brought up, it has to be qualified as "her blue wedding dress." "I want to see you in your blue wedding dress." "I can't wait to wear my blue wedding dress." That example comes to mind if only because it gets repeated so often. Other weird writing decisions: grinding the story to a halt so Cara can tell Kahlan her entire backstory; the Melodrama about Richard and Kahlan having to postpone their wedding; the entire B plot, which is just a very contrived way to have certain characters in the right place for Kahlan to meet at the climax, and, unlike when this happened in the previous book, ultimately comes to nothing.
The whole middle section, where everyone is constantly dying and talking about the plague, is also incredibly boring, and reads more like filler than anything else. I would argue this book is the closest this series ever got to having true filler, and yes, I am including Naked Empire and Soul of the Fire in that assessment. Stuff kind of happens in Temple of the Winds, but ultimately it's all for nothing: the characters leave the plague-riddled city at the end and don't return for several thousand pages. They kill a high-ranking representative, a relative of the royal family of one kingdom, and face no repercussions for this. One of the cities destroyed by the Order is mentioned off-hand once in the next book, but then you never hear about that - or Clarissa - ever again. One of Richard's bodyguards died but her girlfriend disappears from the story for several books afterward, in spite of being a relatively important character otherwise. The only thing that happens in this book that affects future books is Kahlan saying the names of the Three Chimes (and once again, it's Kahlan's fault every bad thing ever happens, lmao). A lot of the Drama in the last act is also just a lazy retread of the Drama from Stone of Tears: Richard gets mad at Kahlan because she does something he doesn't understand, and does he think to find out her reasoning before he has a mantrum? Of course not. He assumes she doesn't really love him (sadface) and goes off to sulk. It's resolved in a little more of a ham-fisted manner this time but it's pretty much a point-for-point repeat, and good lord is it tedious.
Okay, so, lots of negative stuff to say about this book, so why the two stars instead of one? What could I have possibly liked about this book?
Essentially, I gave it two stars for the two characters in this book that I actually liked: Nadine, and Tristan Bashkar, a minor character who shows up all of three times before he gets killed off. The main characters assume Tristan is the one murdering prostitutes, and look for absolutely no evidence that this is true, they just assume it's true because he also tried to assassinate Kahlan (allegedly). Drefan Bundy's crimes get excused because he was helping with the plague. Tristan gets executed because the main characters thought he was a nuisance. Did I say already that this series is crazy-making? Here's another example.
Anyway: if I were still inclined to write fanfiction, Nadine and Tristan would be riding off into the sunset together on a winged horse, and leave those losers Richard and Kahlan behind to have their own wacky adventures; and I recommend that you skip Temple of the Winds, unless you just really want to read the literary equivalent of a dumpster fire.
Oh yes, here we are. The fourth book of the series and I was really hoping we’d see some better writing by now.
This one, however, took the series to new depths of awfulness.
My review contains spoilers. My review is a rant. You have been warned.
This is awful - Why?
Why is Kahlen weeping all the time? At first I was thinking, huh, maybe she got pregnant in the spirit world when she and Richard had their otherworldly moment of intimacy. She might be full of hormones and that’s why she’s so odd now. But no, it seems she just had a huge change of personality.
She is stupid, and weepy, and lashes out, and she has zero backbone. The woman who is above all people, Kings and Queens bow to Kahlen, but now a stupid village healer gets under her skin.
Why is she not telling Richard about how uncomfortable she is with Drefan?
Why?
Why is Nadine the stupidest woman to ever walk the earth? Why would she think she could seduce Richard by sleeping with his brother? Why would she insist that Richard was her “love” when he clearly said, without malice, that he didn’t like her, that he loves Kahlen. Why is she inserting herself everywhere when no one is asking for her? Why is she such a spiteful person?
Why?
Terry… Why can’t you write women? Why?
Why are we supposed to be surprised about Drefan’s evilness? He shows up, self proclaimed healer, and starts touching Cara’s chest while she’s unconscious and then proceeds to put his fingers inside her, because she might have been put into a magical state of continuous orgasm… What!? Why?
Every time the plague is mentioned Drefan is blaming it on prostitutes. Oh, and there are mystical prostitute murders at the same time that Drefan shows up in town… I can’t imagine anyone was surprised or fooled about who had killed them. Why would anyone? Why?
Why would Richard and Kahlen, that are very much in love with each other, be obliged to marry and consummate their marriages – to other people? Why? Why would the Temple of the Winds require that?
Why are The Winds so weird to match Richard and Nadine together, and Kahlen and Drefan? Plus we get to read about this from Kahlen’s point of view and the “consensual” part of this makes me want to vomit. It’s not consent if you don’t think saying no is a viable option. What is the use of coupling people up? Terry, STOP RAPING ALL THE WOMEN IN YOUR BOOKS.
There’s no logic to this. This is stupid plotting. Why would they have to shag other people to stop the plague? Why?
Why is Richard so stupid and possessive? Why is he so off character that he suddenly doesn’t understand Kahlen, at all? Why is there so much unnecessary drama? Why?
Why are we only killing off the lesbian? Why does she have to have a ridiculous death scene?
The dialogue is horrible. The plot is so flawed that I can’t even begin. The evil Jagang is using people as sock puppets, possessing then and being cliché evil, evil laugh and all...
If you got through to this point, congratulations, it’s over. Not because there’s no more to complain about, but because I got tired of ranting.
There are parts of this world and overall story that I like, unfortunately.
I will finish the series, it’s a matter of principle now, but I will take a short break so I don’t have to suffer constantly from this misogynistic nonsense.
This one, however, took the series to new depths of awfulness.
My review contains spoilers. My review is a rant. You have been warned.
This is awful - Why?
Why is Kahlen weeping all the time? At first I was thinking, huh, maybe she got pregnant in the spirit world when she and Richard had their otherworldly moment of intimacy. She might be full of hormones and that’s why she’s so odd now. But no, it seems she just had a huge change of personality.
She is stupid, and weepy, and lashes out, and she has zero backbone. The woman who is above all people, Kings and Queens bow to Kahlen, but now a stupid village healer gets under her skin.
Why is she not telling Richard about how uncomfortable she is with Drefan?
Why?
Why is Nadine the stupidest woman to ever walk the earth? Why would she think she could seduce Richard by sleeping with his brother? Why would she insist that Richard was her “love” when he clearly said, without malice, that he didn’t like her, that he loves Kahlen. Why is she inserting herself everywhere when no one is asking for her? Why is she such a spiteful person?
Why?
Terry… Why can’t you write women? Why?
Why are we supposed to be surprised about Drefan’s evilness? He shows up, self proclaimed healer, and starts touching Cara’s chest while she’s unconscious and then proceeds to put his fingers inside her, because she might have been put into a magical state of continuous orgasm… What!? Why?
Every time the plague is mentioned Drefan is blaming it on prostitutes. Oh, and there are mystical prostitute murders at the same time that Drefan shows up in town… I can’t imagine anyone was surprised or fooled about who had killed them. Why would anyone? Why?
Why would Richard and Kahlen, that are very much in love with each other, be obliged to marry and consummate their marriages – to other people? Why? Why would the Temple of the Winds require that?
Why are The Winds so weird to match Richard and Nadine together, and Kahlen and Drefan? Plus we get to read about this from Kahlen’s point of view and the “consensual” part of this makes me want to vomit. It’s not consent if you don’t think saying no is a viable option. What is the use of coupling people up? Terry, STOP RAPING ALL THE WOMEN IN YOUR BOOKS.
There’s no logic to this. This is stupid plotting. Why would they have to shag other people to stop the plague? Why?
Why is Richard so stupid and possessive? Why is he so off character that he suddenly doesn’t understand Kahlen, at all? Why is there so much unnecessary drama? Why?
Why are we only killing off the lesbian? Why does she have to have a ridiculous death scene?
The dialogue is horrible. The plot is so flawed that I can’t even begin. The evil Jagang is using people as sock puppets, possessing then and being cliché evil, evil laugh and all...
If you got through to this point, congratulations, it’s over. Not because there’s no more to complain about, but because I got tired of ranting.
There are parts of this world and overall story that I like, unfortunately.
I will finish the series, it’s a matter of principle now, but I will take a short break so I don’t have to suffer constantly from this misogynistic nonsense.
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes