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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
A pretty fun fantasy adventure with a likable cast of characters and an interesting world. I found the pacing to be pretty inconsistent; sometimes I'd get whiplash with the book moving from one scene to the next without much time for the characters to react to or discuss the previous events. And as much as I love Richard (I really do love that his primary character trait is just being a good person), at some points, it felt like everyone else around him was going on their own journeys and rounded arcs while he remained pretty static for most of the story. And for how much the book was building up for the final battle at the end, it all wrapped up way quicker and smoother than I was expecting. And also Overall though I really did enjoy this, after so much Game of Thrones where everybody's morally grey and there's no one you can easily root for, it was really refreshing to read a fantasy novel where the main cast are just genuinely good people and are actually friends with each other.
Spoiler
extremely minor gripe, but why did Scarlet suddenly come back at the end? She leaves Richard saying that their agreement was fulfilled and that she'd eat him next they spoke, but then not that long later she's eagerly taking Richard and his friends around D'Hara and saying that she'd do anything he'd tell her to? Idk just kinda contributed to the entire super-happy-perfect ending thing I was talking about.
We both tried to like the story, since we enjoy the tv series (hubby more than me), but we couldn't get into it.
With the current popularity of fantasy novels, this one ended up falling a little below the bar for me. It's a decent story but I had a hard time connecting to the story and the events that the characters went through. The writing overall felt very flat. I started this book with the intent to read the entire series but I no longer have those intentions anymore - this is it for me.
If you are a fast reader then this novel won't seem as daunting but I read at a slower pace and I really struggled with interest and momentum. Particularly the parts that seemed very cliché, such as dragons and weird habits of evil people, the romantic interest. I can see why it's iconic. It felt dated to me and I just wasn't vibing with it.
If you are a fast reader then this novel won't seem as daunting but I read at a slower pace and I really struggled with interest and momentum. Particularly the parts that seemed very cliché, such as dragons and weird habits of evil people, the romantic interest. I can see why it's iconic. It felt dated to me and I just wasn't vibing with it.
Nothing about this book captured my attention, except the fact that it was surprisingly badly written. There was a lot of passive voice which lent the characters a feeling of being passive caricatures rather than active agents. Events just “happen” to them rather than they make choices which drive the plot forward. There were a few times, usually during descriptions of the landscape, where something about the writing gave me the distinct impression that the author was very smug about his own turn of phrase. The description itself was okay, but certainly never touched the skill of some authors whose writing is just beautiful no matter what they’re writing.
I abandoned this at only 20% because I have a long too-read list and this one wasn’t interesting enough to hook me. I did hop onto wiki to read ahead in case it got better, but it looked like a combination of more of the same “lots of stuff just happens” and a rip off of Wheel of Time. I guess that’s been said a lot in these reviews but having just read the Wheel of Time made me immediately see where the same things happen but nothing unique is added that would differentiate this series from every other similar fantasy story.
Disappointing, and I went in not expecting much.
I abandoned this at only 20% because I have a long too-read list and this one wasn’t interesting enough to hook me. I did hop onto wiki to read ahead in case it got better, but it looked like a combination of more of the same “lots of stuff just happens” and a rip off of Wheel of Time. I guess that’s been said a lot in these reviews but having just read the Wheel of Time made me immediately see where the same things happen but nothing unique is added that would differentiate this series from every other similar fantasy story.
Disappointing, and I went in not expecting much.
I wish Kahlan was a strong character - she seemed kinda weak for a Mother Confessor. So many tears... from everyone! It was kind of strange to have someone crying in every odd chapter.
I have been listening to this of audio for the last 2 or 3 months or so. I had heard a lot of bad things about this book, and a few good things, and figured, eh why not find out myself. In some ways I was expecting it to be worse, I think the two most common criticism were a little bit overblown, but there were also a ton of things I hadn't heard about that were pretty rough.
Overall, I didn't like it, and I thought it was bad, but not the worst book I have ever read, and it had some good qualities. So lets talk about the good qualities, and then add a million asterisks to it. This book didn't have 1 big issue that ruined it for me, but a huge abundance of smaller issues.
I think it is written in a way that is very clear. I don't think anyone would ever really be confused about what is going on, the author did a good job at telling the story in a clear voice. I have other issues with the writing that I will talk about later, but that at least is a pro.
Another thing this does well, that I hadn't heard is the humor. This book in general doesn't have a lot of jokes, but when it has humor it worked pretty well from me, and one scene actually got me to laugh out loud.
There is about a 150 page section, about a third of the way into the book. That 100 page section involves crossing the boundary, and going to a culture called the Mud People. I enjoyed reading this section of the book.
Zed is an interesting take on the old wise wizard, I found the fact that he was a lot more Machiavellian compared to the stereotypical old wise wizards interesting. Also some of the humor with Zed worked.
Kahlan at times was also an interesting character. My thoughts on her relationship with Richard kinda went up and down. At it's best though I thought it was.....above average.
If you are a fan of Wizards first Rule I recommend you turn away now.
really just leave.
Ok now time to add asterisks to a lot of the cons, and talk about a lot of the stuff that really ruined my enjoyment of this book.
While the writing style was clear, it accomplishes this by being very redundant. There are so many sentences that just tell us stuff that were pretty obvious from the context. Someone will be talking, and there dialogue will abruptly end mid sentence. This makes it pretty obvious the other person is interrupting them. We will also be told directly that the other person started talking when the other took a small pause. This was way more prevalent for the first third, and I think the writing does improve somewhat as the book goes on, but man for a large portion of the book it is clunky, and full of redundancies. There are also some stuff that are just painfully unpolished, it makes me wonder who edited this. This is an actual analogy that made the published version of this novel.
"The pain hit him like a waterfall of icy water."
come-on, what the hell is this, how did this not get changed to
"The pain hit him like an icy waterfall."
While there was some good humor, there just isn't that much. I think humor is something that Terry Goodkind was good at, but he didn't really try to be funny for large portions of the book.
Alright now time for the sea of things that I didn't like.
There is an entire section of PoVs from someone called Rachel, and the characters in this section are some of the most 1 dimensional , boring, and clishe characters I have ever had the misfortune to read. They are not even cardboard cutouts of people who are obvious clishe communists, because cardboard cutouts have 2 dimensions. The entire section of Rachel point of views was mind numbingly boring, she is the least interesting Point of View character I have read about this year, and it isn't even close. Terry Goodkind tries to write her as a child, and all he really does for that is removes any personality, and uses the word bestest a lot.
As for Richard, there are time when he is interesting. For the first 2 chapters he is a flawed character, then he is a Gary Stu for who is amazing at everything for 600 pages, then he is a complete moron who just forgets super important conversations he had for like 150 pages, then he goes back to being perfect for a while. He is written with personality, but ultimately fails to be a compelling protagonist to me. At one point in the story I was happy to get to his PoV chapters, but that is only because it was alternating between Richard and Rachel point of views.
I also want to talk here about Richards relationship between Kahlan. Again there was a section where it felt like a well developed relationships. However for the first quarter of the book it was painfully clunky. Richard keeps referring to Kahlan as his friend, he starts doing it right away when he meets her. I am supposed to be convinced they are friend pretty early, and there is just a painful lack of actually showing them being friends. If I had to rank how good of a Job this book does at showing instead of telling for the Richard and Kahlan relationship for the first 200 pages, I would give it a 0/10. It does actually become not horrible right about when they cross the boundary, then it is decently compelling for a couple hundred pages, and then it devolves into 100% total commitment, which is neither realistic, or compelling to me.
Alright time to talk about the magic system. For most of the magic there really isn't one. There is only a couple hard rules, and the author completely fails to consider the effects of these rules to the world. I think one thing that makes a magic system well written, is that the author understands the consequences of the rules, whether those rules are hard or soft. In this aspect this book fails horribly.
As an example the hardest part of the magic system is a group of people who can defeat others with a touch, they are seen as unbeatable in a 1v1 fight. they wear dresses. BOWS AND ARROWS EXIST DAMMIT. There are so many completely obvious counters to this, it is mind blowing. Also for all the magic, there are like 2 super hard rules, and he completely shatters 1 of them, in a deus ex machina moment to solve a problem.
Ok time to talk torture. I mentioned before that I laughed out loud reading this book. I actually did a few times, once was because of a really funny moment that landed. the other few times where during the torture scene, when I was laughing at how ridiculous it is. I'm in general not a big fan of torture scenes, but this was some of the worst torture I have read. The author tries to sell the torturee becoming attached to the torturer, and there are cases where this is done well. When the torturer punishes some behavior and rewards others, they can condition a specific response. That doesn't happen here. The torturer just tortures the torturee, no matter what. It was painfully terrible.
Now time to talk about the most common complain, that is originality. I actually think this complaint is a little overblown. Is this a particularly original story: no. I also don't think it does much blatant stealing. There is one thing that is blatantly stolen, and that is that Sméagol is in this book. Well budget Sméagol, as he isn't as well written. The characters origin, motives, way of talking, and description is the same, and the characters introduction is beat for beat the exact same as Sméagol's introduction. As in I could describe the scene, and and you might think I am describing the scene for The Two Towers. However I have heard some complaints that I think are unfair.
Richard is not Rand, Zed is actually a decently original take on a wise wizard, and in some ways the opposite of Gandalf, who really focuses on empathy, and the wisdom of the heart. While Zed focuses on logic, and reasoning. The Middenlands are pretty generic, but I thought the idea of the boundary was interesting.
Anyway, I am getting impatient, but i'm just going to give you the cliff notes of the rest, I don't want to go over the character limit.
-some of the antagonists are painfully mustache twirly
-not particularly cohesive pacing
-Retconning things, I.E A person panics and is sad about something in their head, then 10 minutes later they knew that it was all fine
-People teleport, or maybe space time is curved in a weird way, so some travel faster then others, and maybe this is secretly the deepest and most well thought out book I have ever read.
Overall this book was bad, not the worst book I have ever read, but still quite terrible, the couple upsides do not redeem it
2.5/10
Overall, I didn't like it, and I thought it was bad, but not the worst book I have ever read, and it had some good qualities. So lets talk about the good qualities, and then add a million asterisks to it. This book didn't have 1 big issue that ruined it for me, but a huge abundance of smaller issues.
I think it is written in a way that is very clear. I don't think anyone would ever really be confused about what is going on, the author did a good job at telling the story in a clear voice. I have other issues with the writing that I will talk about later, but that at least is a pro.
Another thing this does well, that I hadn't heard is the humor. This book in general doesn't have a lot of jokes, but when it has humor it worked pretty well from me, and one scene actually got me to laugh out loud.
There is about a 150 page section, about a third of the way into the book. That 100 page section involves crossing the boundary, and going to a culture called the Mud People. I enjoyed reading this section of the book.
Zed is an interesting take on the old wise wizard, I found the fact that he was a lot more Machiavellian compared to the stereotypical old wise wizards interesting. Also some of the humor with Zed worked.
Kahlan at times was also an interesting character. My thoughts on her relationship with Richard kinda went up and down. At it's best though I thought it was.....above average.
If you are a fan of Wizards first Rule I recommend you turn away now.
really just leave.
Ok now time to add asterisks to a lot of the cons, and talk about a lot of the stuff that really ruined my enjoyment of this book.
While the writing style was clear, it accomplishes this by being very redundant. There are so many sentences that just tell us stuff that were pretty obvious from the context. Someone will be talking, and there dialogue will abruptly end mid sentence. This makes it pretty obvious the other person is interrupting them. We will also be told directly that the other person started talking when the other took a small pause. This was way more prevalent for the first third, and I think the writing does improve somewhat as the book goes on, but man for a large portion of the book it is clunky, and full of redundancies. There are also some stuff that are just painfully unpolished, it makes me wonder who edited this. This is an actual analogy that made the published version of this novel.
"The pain hit him like a waterfall of icy water."
come-on, what the hell is this, how did this not get changed to
"The pain hit him like an icy waterfall."
While there was some good humor, there just isn't that much. I think humor is something that Terry Goodkind was good at, but he didn't really try to be funny for large portions of the book.
Alright now time for the sea of things that I didn't like.
There is an entire section of PoVs from someone called Rachel, and the characters in this section are some of the most 1 dimensional , boring, and clishe characters I have ever had the misfortune to read. They are not even cardboard cutouts of people who are obvious clishe communists, because cardboard cutouts have 2 dimensions. The entire section of Rachel point of views was mind numbingly boring, she is the least interesting Point of View character I have read about this year, and it isn't even close. Terry Goodkind tries to write her as a child, and all he really does for that is removes any personality, and uses the word bestest a lot.
As for Richard, there are time when he is interesting. For the first 2 chapters he is a flawed character, then he is a Gary Stu for who is amazing at everything for 600 pages, then he is a complete moron who just forgets super important conversations he had for like 150 pages, then he goes back to being perfect for a while. He is written with personality, but ultimately fails to be a compelling protagonist to me. At one point in the story I was happy to get to his PoV chapters, but that is only because it was alternating between Richard and Rachel point of views.
I also want to talk here about Richards relationship between Kahlan. Again there was a section where it felt like a well developed relationships. However for the first quarter of the book it was painfully clunky. Richard keeps referring to Kahlan as his friend, he starts doing it right away when he meets her. I am supposed to be convinced they are friend pretty early, and there is just a painful lack of actually showing them being friends. If I had to rank how good of a Job this book does at showing instead of telling for the Richard and Kahlan relationship for the first 200 pages, I would give it a 0/10. It does actually become not horrible right about when they cross the boundary, then it is decently compelling for a couple hundred pages, and then it devolves into 100% total commitment, which is neither realistic, or compelling to me.
Alright time to talk about the magic system. For most of the magic there really isn't one. There is only a couple hard rules, and the author completely fails to consider the effects of these rules to the world. I think one thing that makes a magic system well written, is that the author understands the consequences of the rules, whether those rules are hard or soft. In this aspect this book fails horribly.
As an example the hardest part of the magic system is a group of people who can defeat others with a touch, they are seen as unbeatable in a 1v1 fight. they wear dresses. BOWS AND ARROWS EXIST DAMMIT. There are so many completely obvious counters to this, it is mind blowing. Also for all the magic, there are like 2 super hard rules, and he completely shatters 1 of them, in a deus ex machina moment to solve a problem.
Ok time to talk torture. I mentioned before that I laughed out loud reading this book. I actually did a few times, once was because of a really funny moment that landed. the other few times where during the torture scene, when I was laughing at how ridiculous it is. I'm in general not a big fan of torture scenes, but this was some of the worst torture I have read. The author tries to sell the torturee becoming attached to the torturer, and there are cases where this is done well. When the torturer punishes some behavior and rewards others, they can condition a specific response. That doesn't happen here. The torturer just tortures the torturee, no matter what. It was painfully terrible.
Now time to talk about the most common complain, that is originality. I actually think this complaint is a little overblown. Is this a particularly original story: no. I also don't think it does much blatant stealing. There is one thing that is blatantly stolen, and that is that Sméagol is in this book. Well budget Sméagol, as he isn't as well written. The characters origin, motives, way of talking, and description is the same, and the characters introduction is beat for beat the exact same as Sméagol's introduction. As in I could describe the scene, and and you might think I am describing the scene for The Two Towers. However I have heard some complaints that I think are unfair.
Richard is not Rand, Zed is actually a decently original take on a wise wizard, and in some ways the opposite of Gandalf, who really focuses on empathy, and the wisdom of the heart. While Zed focuses on logic, and reasoning. The Middenlands are pretty generic, but I thought the idea of the boundary was interesting.
Anyway, I am getting impatient, but i'm just going to give you the cliff notes of the rest, I don't want to go over the character limit.
-some of the antagonists are painfully mustache twirly
-not particularly cohesive pacing
-Retconning things, I.E A person panics and is sad about something in their head, then 10 minutes later they knew that it was all fine
-People teleport, or maybe space time is curved in a weird way, so some travel faster then others, and maybe this is secretly the deepest and most well thought out book I have ever read.
Overall this book was bad, not the worst book I have ever read, but still quite terrible, the couple upsides do not redeem it
2.5/10
After ALL of the negative reviews, after all of the postings and other bad stuff that there was to say about The Sword of Truth, it took a commercial on WGN advertising a TV show called Legend of the Seeker to intrigue me about Terry Good kind’s works. I figured hey, if they’re making a syndicated TV show based on the series, that it can’t be that bad. And it sure isn’t—conversely, it’s fantastic. The first volume reads as a lengthy, well-paced fantasy epic that focuses on character and plot and not on setting—it read quite fast, and its pacing and story far outreach Robert Jordan’s series, to which Goodkind’s is typically compared. Richard Cypher/Rahl is a virtuous hero who wants to help people, Kahlan is a mysterious woman who has a secret, and Zedd is Gandalf. I had a pretty good idea of the landscape, but most of the writing was spend in dialogue and action and events important to the plot. I found Richard’s time with the Mord-Sith to be quite unsettling, but Goodkind’s exploration of human mental toughness was quite extensive—he drew stunning parallels between Kahlan and Denna, both of whom had the power to make another person become totally devoted to her—one naturally, and one artificially. I can’t decide which is which, however—the distinction is clear, but its application not quite so. I like that Richard chooses to recognize Denna as a victim, of a person simply acting out what she had been taught, and how he credits his experiences with her as a bridge to his consummate love of Kahlan. It will be interesting to see if Goodkind will choose to explore the Mord-Sith trauma in later experiences that Richard will have—I would imagine he would, with the complex exploratory nature of the chapters of Richard’s captivity and torture. The end wasn’t quite as spectacular as I might have wished, as everybody got a plate of food and then headed off their own ways, but what else does a person do after killing after a wizard?
I thought the story was good, but sometimes rather lengthy. I felt myself losing interest a few times when the author spent too much time on imagery and not enough time on the story. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I can't say that I have that burning desire to dive into the next one. I will continue the series, but will probably take a small break with another book first.
Trigger warning: rape
If you're looking for an epic fantasy series and have already read Robert Jordan, Patrick Rothfuss, GRRM, Patricia McKillip, and David Eddings, then this will do.
If you're looking for an epic fantasy series and have already read Robert Jordan, Patrick Rothfuss, GRRM, Patricia McKillip, and David Eddings, then this will do.
Surprisingly, very good. Not what I normally read but this really held my interest. Meticulously plotted. And even though it's the first of a series, it's a complete story within itself.