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A review by angrbotha
Soul of the Fire by Terry Goodkind
2.0
Right now I'm having a really hard time continuing with this series. This book, like the previous one, had so many things wrong with it it's hard to even know where to start with a review.
I think I'm mostly tired of everyone in the books being so stupid. People just randomly refuse to listen to reason in order to make things more complicated. And the female characters are the WORST. All the women in this universe do is cry, wail, moan, giggle, and throw themselves under any man who is moderately powerful or goodlooking. Not that that matters since they're just going to get raped anyway. But even the main characters seem to have no real connection... Richard and Kahlan repeatedly don't trust one another...and of course the worst possible thing happens when they don't.
The whole Anderith section of the book really just failed to get me to care. The new characters went nowhere, and weren't particularly interesting. We basically spent 300+ pages of setting up characters just to be part of an object lesson. The only saving grace of the Anderith stuff was that since it was new it was free of the reiteration that plagues the rest of the books.
Also, most of this book just felt like a re-hash. Once again, the world is doomed and Richard is the only person who could ever possibly save it. Once again, magic is failing. I believe every magical character has lost their magic at least once... and Zedd had at least 4? times. I think he is more often without magic than otherwise. Once again, we can't use fire. I almost laughed when everyone was shocked by this idea... even though fire was outlawed a few books ago. The betrayal of Anne by the sisters was a complete redo as well. It's like Terry Goodkind ran out of ideas and just remixed a bunch of old ones.
I will end by pointing out what was to me the worst section in the book. When (ex)prelate Anne is infiltrating the enemy camp, filled with soldiers that want to grope her, whom we have been reminded (over and over and over again) butchered and gang-raped an entire city, who want to conquer the entire world and kill the babies - she says to herself (paraphased:) "Well, these guys are kind of bad, but BEGGARS. Beggars are way worse, because they LIE. I really really hate BEGGARS"
I think I'm mostly tired of everyone in the books being so stupid. People just randomly refuse to listen to reason in order to make things more complicated. And the female characters are the WORST. All the women in this universe do is cry, wail, moan, giggle, and throw themselves under any man who is moderately powerful or goodlooking. Not that that matters since they're just going to get raped anyway. But even the main characters seem to have no real connection... Richard and Kahlan repeatedly don't trust one another...and of course the worst possible thing happens when they don't.
The whole Anderith section of the book really just failed to get me to care. The new characters went nowhere, and weren't particularly interesting. We basically spent 300+ pages of setting up characters just to be part of an object lesson. The only saving grace of the Anderith stuff was that since it was new it was free of the reiteration that plagues the rest of the books.
Also, most of this book just felt like a re-hash. Once again, the world is doomed and Richard is the only person who could ever possibly save it. Once again, magic is failing. I believe every magical character has lost their magic at least once... and Zedd had at least 4? times. I think he is more often without magic than otherwise. Once again, we can't use fire. I almost laughed when everyone was shocked by this idea... even though fire was outlawed a few books ago. The betrayal of Anne by the sisters was a complete redo as well. It's like Terry Goodkind ran out of ideas and just remixed a bunch of old ones.
I will end by pointing out what was to me the worst section in the book. When (ex)prelate Anne is infiltrating the enemy camp, filled with soldiers that want to grope her, whom we have been reminded (over and over and over again) butchered and gang-raped an entire city, who want to conquer the entire world and kill the babies - she says to herself (paraphased:) "Well, these guys are kind of bad, but BEGGARS. Beggars are way worse, because they LIE. I really really hate BEGGARS"