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A review by biblionerdrflxn
The Third Kingdom by Terry Goodkind
2.0
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I don't even have the words to describe how much I disliked this book, which makes me sad because I used to love this series so much. I didn't think it could get worse than the last book, The Omen Machine, but I was definitely wrong. The writing and pacing were terrible. There was so much repetition I came close to throwing the book at the wall. I probably could have skipped over half the book and missed absolutely nothing. The dialogue was unnatural and mostly acted as a means to dump info. In fact, 75 percent of this 500+ page novel was nothing but a gigantic info dump explaining the setup for the new villain, which turns out to be a rehash of the last villain except now they have zombies. That's right. Zombies. My eyes rolled so hard so many times reading this book that I'm surprised they didn't roll right out of my head. Speaking of rehashing things, there were plenty of mini rants about Goodkind's simplistic, go-to thoughts about freedom and truth here as well because god forbid there be any progress in the complexity of how the main characters think. Maybe that is the overall problem here. The characters reached the pinnacle of where their ideals could take them at the end of Chainfire, and there really is no more room for growth unless they become more complex. In many ways, the characters actually lost the growth they had already achieved for no apparent reason, which left them seeming like hollowed out, neutered versions of themselves who lost their strengths to serve the ridiculous, contradiction-riddled plot. To make matters even worse, most of the main characters, except for Richard, weren't even in the novel for more than 50-100 pages, at most. The only saving grace here was the gore-filled fight scenes and interesting action of the last 50 pages or so. There was one emotion-packed moment toward the end that made my jaw drop, but the strange pacing didn't even let me think about that moment long at all, which was frustrating after almost 500 pages of nothing of importance happening. Ultimately, the characters were in the exact same position at the end as they were at the beginning of the book because almost nothing happened here except an extremely long-winded and repetitive introduction of the new big bad. To say I'm disappointed in the direction of this series would be a massive understatement. Therefore, I rate the book 2 out of 5 stars, and, quite frankly, I think that is being generous.
I don't even have the words to describe how much I disliked this book, which makes me sad because I used to love this series so much. I didn't think it could get worse than the last book, The Omen Machine, but I was definitely wrong. The writing and pacing were terrible. There was so much repetition I came close to throwing the book at the wall. I probably could have skipped over half the book and missed absolutely nothing. The dialogue was unnatural and mostly acted as a means to dump info. In fact, 75 percent of this 500+ page novel was nothing but a gigantic info dump explaining the setup for the new villain, which turns out to be a rehash of the last villain except now they have zombies. That's right. Zombies. My eyes rolled so hard so many times reading this book that I'm surprised they didn't roll right out of my head. Speaking of rehashing things, there were plenty of mini rants about Goodkind's simplistic, go-to thoughts about freedom and truth here as well because god forbid there be any progress in the complexity of how the main characters think. Maybe that is the overall problem here. The characters reached the pinnacle of where their ideals could take them at the end of Chainfire, and there really is no more room for growth unless they become more complex. In many ways, the characters actually lost the growth they had already achieved for no apparent reason, which left them seeming like hollowed out, neutered versions of themselves who lost their strengths to serve the ridiculous, contradiction-riddled plot. To make matters even worse, most of the main characters, except for Richard, weren't even in the novel for more than 50-100 pages, at most. The only saving grace here was the gore-filled fight scenes and interesting action of the last 50 pages or so. There was one emotion-packed moment toward the end that made my jaw drop, but the strange pacing didn't even let me think about that moment long at all, which was frustrating after almost 500 pages of nothing of importance happening. Ultimately, the characters were in the exact same position at the end as they were at the beginning of the book because almost nothing happened here except an extremely long-winded and repetitive introduction of the new big bad. To say I'm disappointed in the direction of this series would be a massive understatement. Therefore, I rate the book 2 out of 5 stars, and, quite frankly, I think that is being generous.