Reviews - Wizard's First Rule

1.33k reviews for:

Wizard's First Rule

Terry Goodkind

3.78 AVERAGE

sookie458's review against another edition

5.0

Legen - wait for it - dary!!!!

ckoldfield's review against another edition

5.0

The best of series, without a doubt.

knp4597's review against another edition

3.0

Could have done without all the CRYING every five seconds. Seriously. Every other paragraph someone's crying about something or other. They could have killed the bad guy and saved the day MUCH sooner if they'd stopped all their bellyaching.

Heroes don't cry over spilled milk

alloula's review against another edition

3.0

Wizard's First Rule was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago, and I was finally able to get to it, with mixed feelings. I didn't find the world very interesting, and the plot was very derivative and predictable. The worst part of this book was the badly written dialogue and character development. I probably wouldn't recommend it, but despite everything I do think that this book was enjoyable to read at times, and I liked the adventure aspect of it. It follows a formula that works for me I guess! I liked it enough that I may pick up the next one at some point.

glee_norto's review against another edition

4.0

I'll admit i have a soft spot for anything swords and sandals. And the Legend of the Seeker TV series was enjoyable enough that i wanted to check out the books, but woa. i mean, really, woa. First, the writing is so very choppy, and the continuity feels a bit off- but hey, first novel, and i know that i certainly could not do better, and wooo! dragons! (like i said, it doesn't take much to make me happy) Then, there is all the torture and explicit gore. these things don't bother me much; i read plenty of horror books and enjoy them a lot, yet to find it in a fantasy setting somehow throws me for a loop. odd, but there it is.

i will absolutely read and enjoy all the books in this series, i'm sure. but i am also pretty sure that they are not really all that good.

ariaslibrary's review against another edition

1.0

“A Seeker is a person who answers to no one but himself; he is a law unto himself. The Sword of Truth is his to wield as he wishes, and within the limits of his own strength, he can hold anyone to answer for anything.”

Flashback to 2012 and little twelve year old me, high on fantasy adaptations, discovered the series Legend of the Seeker (*cue* Richard Cypher, you are the true Seeker.),

Imagine my wonderful surprise when I found out there were books (now, I can find out what happened after the show was cancelled) and imagine my disheartened dismay when I found out the author was an awful human being. Seriously, a simple google search of Terry Goodkind brings a lot of results.

Regardless of all that, I decided to start this series and…

description

Basically: we follow our main character Richard Cypher as he discovers his destiny to kill Darken Rahl. There’s the all-powerful female love interest, Kahlan Amnell and of course the all-powerful wizard, Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. It’s your typical classical fantasy (which I love!) and I was looking forward to enjoying it.

“Wizard’s First Rule.”
Richard frowned. “What?”
“Wizard’s First Rule: people are stupid.”

No, everything about this was stupid.

i. Let me start with my biggest pet peeve when it comes to magic systems. I love both soft and hard magic systems but when it’s described like this: “He put a spell on this one to repel other clouds, and somehow hooked this one to you.”, it just tells me you were trying for a hard magic system but landed somewhere in between. It’s giving Star Wars

ii.The barrier was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. There’s no way you were able to get the entire continent in agreement like that.

iii. The pacing. We spent more time in the Westlands than necessary. It was basically: Richard meets a new person. Danger arrives. The person he meets SOMEHOW already knows he’s the Seeker. They run away. And repeat. For like a fourty percent of the book. I had loved the beginning but it went downhill so fast.

iv.The characters. Zed was a delight (as expected) but Richard and Kahlan made me want to pull my hair out. They’ve known each other for ONE MINUTE and Richard is already ‘I can’t live without her!’ GAG. Their first meeting was also strange as hell.
Kahlan: Thank you for saving my life
Richard: That’s what we do for friends
Kahlan: Friends?
Richard: What? You’ve never had a friend?
Kahlan: No
Richard: Well now you do :)
Kahlan: Yay, I have a friend :)

v. Whatever weird philosophical points Goodkind was trying to make with the whole truth and intention nonsense. Didn’t work.

vi. How trauma was handled. Richard literally went through some weird bad BDSM etiquette form of torture and bounced right back to normal afterwords. Try some therapy