A while ago, I reviewed Wizard’s First Rule and later decided to read the whole series by Terry Goodkind. While there were some good points to it, I have no hesitation in saying that the latter half was predominantly bad. Now that all eleven books are over, I can pronounce my judgment. Unlike the Wheel of Time, I’m going to start with the bad since it stands out so much. In case you’re wondering why I went through and read eleven books, it’s because once you read the first 4 books, you have to know what happens!
Note: No specific spoilers here, but only a general commentary on the series.
The Ugly – Repetitive Sword of Truth Themes
Several things bug me about this series. One of them is that each book makes use of the same themes over and over again. For example, Terry Goodkind seems to be completely obsessed with people getting captured. In the course of the series, every single good guy has been rendered helpless in the hands of the enemy at least once, and many of them more than once. Each book contains people getting captured and then escaping. I’ve lost count of how many times the main protagonist (Richard) has been rendered helpless by someone or the other.
Also, Richard is somehow or the other deliberately crippled in each of the books. Either he gets debilitating headaches, or he’s prevented from using his gift (or forbidden from doing so), or he’s losing his magic or whatever. As a result, we never get to see him at his full potential as a war wizard.
And what’s with everyone being tired? I mean does no one sleep in the books? Whenever we see Richard, we hear about how he hasn’t slept well for weeks – or any of the main protagonists for that matter (Zedd is the only exception. He’s my favorite character). Another means by which Goodkind incapacitates his heroes. They’re always hungry or tired.
The next huge issue is the love story between Richard and Kahlan. Ok they’re in love. We GET IT! They behave like lovestruck teenagers. Whenever Kahlan isn’t present, Richard loses all capacity for thought and the world can go to hell. It’s sick. He doesn’t behave like an adult, but some moonstruck juvenile. Kahlan is a little (just about) better. At least she can operate cogently without Richard being around. Every book in the Sword of Truth series has to have at least one mandatory separation of Richard and Kahlan. Every single book. The two are so boring together that Goodkind is forced to pry them apart and thus provide the motivation for Richard to get off his butt and do something. Sometimes it seems that it’s the only thing that works.
Richard is supposed to be the most powerful wizard in 3,000 years and a war wizard to boot, and even at the end of the book, he still doesn’t know how to use his powers. Time and time again he gets an opportunity to learn about them from his Grandfather Zedd who’s the First Wizard of the land, and each time he throws away the opportunity – and for what? Yep – that’s right. To spend time with Kahlan. He doesn’t care that if he doesn’t learn, his gift will kill him. He just wants to be alone with Kahlan. But then hey! If he learns how to use his powers, he can actually ward off the threat from every Tom Dick and Harry who captures him! And we can’t have that can we? How will he get the motivation to rejoin Kahlan then hmm?
Just once in the series, he gets his wet dream. Kahlan is injured and she recuperates with him in a forest where it’s just the two of them. If it wasn’t for a nice evil sorceress who stole Richard away, he’d still be cuddling with her in his wooden shack in isolation. A pathetic hero to say the least.
I’ve saved the worst for the last. After the fifth book or so Richard who’s supposed to be the Seeker of Truth, mutates into the Preacher of Truth. Pages and pages (and pages) of the books are devoted to long winded black and white monologues by Richard who suddenly gets a Christ complex. The funniest part is that after dozens of pages of monologue, his listeners instead of going to sleep or throwing a rotten egg at him, stroke their chins and say “Y’know? I wish I had thought of that!” As if you can change a person’s entire nature by just boring them to death. I mean who talks like that? Goodkind tries to stuff his sickeningly righteous Ayn Rand bullshit down the throats of his readers over and over again. And then he does it again for good measure. Richard, who’s originally a nice sort of guy becomes this holier than thou – Oh I’m so wise and all knowing – jerk.
One final aspect of the entire series. What’s up with Richard losing his sword all the time? I mean I know that Goodkind has to do his usual thing of incapacitating his hero again and again, but why even bother to link the sword to Richard if just about anyone can take it and use it? Richard is separated from his sword over and over again (and Zedd even castigates him for it) – makes him seem careless you know what I mean?
Also, the whole Sisters of the Light concept was a knockoff of Robert Jordan’s Aes Sedai – complete with Sisters of the Dark resembling the Black Ajah.
The villains in the books also seem to be blessed with good luck. Somehow, the main evil guy (Jagang) repeatedly gets his hand on the rarest books in existence when they’ve been sitting right under the noses of the good guys all along. I mean his luck is simply unbelievable. All the books have a theme where things are going really really bad for the good guys and then in the last 100 pages or so, Richard the Preacher of Truth saves everyone with some jiggery pokery.
The Good
There are several really nice interesting characters in the book. They provide a refreshing break from the two main boring ones. Zedd, the First Wizard and Richard’s grandfather is the most entertaining, powerful and nicest old man in the series. Adie, the blind sorceress is an excellent complement. Nathan the powerful 1000 year old prophet is also a commanding character, but he doesn’t get much onscreen time unfortunately.
For me, the best concept was a set of scary guards called the Mord Sith. Fantastic addition. They really gave the entire series a breath of fresh air.
The villains were quite decent, though not as good as the one in Runelords (The villain called Darken Rahl however, was the match of Raj Ahten). I wish there were more good things to say about the books. I really do. After all, I spent a lot of time reading all eleven books. But I don’t feel sad that it’s over – unlike with the Wheel of Time series, or Runelords. I just feel relieved.
Very good review! I finished listening to the audiobooks of this series quite recently and just wanted to see what other people thought of it. This was the first place I ended up and was pleased to see your review match my feelings exactly. You had the perfect ratio of bad to good to match what was found in the books. Honestly if I hadn’t been listening to them as audiobooks so I could do other mundane things like driving or exercising at the same time I would never have gotten through them because there is no way I would have wasted my time actually sitting and reading all of them.
I feel a little bad about being so down on them because they have some really great moments in pretty much every book. The problem was they each had way too much boring, mundane buildup to the point where the payoff, even when it was a really clever and well thought out payoff, just did not make up for it. Things like the extremely cliche fantasy world and a magic system that was never explained so he could just use it as a crutch every time he wrote himself into a corner also made these books a hopeless bore 90% of the time.
The main character, Richard, was written as basically a perfect human male in every way and therefore lacked even the tiniest amount of depth. I got really sick of beautiful women trying to throw themselves at him just so he could show them how much better he was than them by shooting them down. Thats so relatable… Almost every single character in the series is defined by 1 or 2 traits that they never stray from. The Mord Sith are pretty much the only exceptions because they have to re-learn how to co-exist with normal people while struggling with a lifetime of being taught to be murdering torturing monsters feared by all.
I could seriously go on much longer than this review did on the reasons why this series was very ineffective, but I won’t. I have no doubt that many people will and have liked this series very much and that is perfectly fine, but I’ve just come to expect more from the fantasy genre.
If you like broad, common, and simplistic themes like love overcoming all obstacles, good winning over evil, and right prevailing over wrong then by all means read this series. If you’re looking for characters that aren’t just black and white, but venture into the gray. Characters that grow and change. Then stay away. Far away.
I think everyone should stop comparing this series to others and look at it in itself with an OPEN MIND. I get that parts remind people of other books but you can’t hold that against the series you’re reviewing. It needs to be unbiased, and I suppose there may be more negatives than positives in the writing style of the series, but that’s what makes it so genuinely GOODKIND. I don’t see why people call the long monologues a bad thing. Have you ever ranted? C’mon! These just proove the humanity of the characters and the passion they have for what they’re talking about.
Man, I just love critics. I think they almost all have inferiority complexes. They don’t seem to have much perspective either. Why not just slam Goodkind because you could never have that kind of an idea. Sure the monologues are long, but, they often cause you to see things in a new light. Your other supposed problems with the series are so ridiculous I can’t even get myself to take the time to refute them. By the way man, what is with all the swear words, do you think they somehow make you sound more intelligent; like you have a better grasp of how idiotic the series is compared to everyone else because your profanity somehow reveals what a low level Goodkind writes at or are you just trying to degrade his writing with your language by somehow causing people to associate his writing with such base words. You should consider waking up on the other side of the bed sometime, you might feel happy or something instead of the overwhelming need to demean others.
In reply to Anonymous
He just regurgitates Ayn Rand – I got over that junk in college thank you very much. And no one likes a preacher. I’m willing to bet you couldn’t have sat through Richard’s long sanctimonious passages if you were there with him.
In reply to bhagwad
It seems to me that quite a few people like the idea of a preacher, actually. Plenty of people spend tons of money so they can be preached to. You do realize, though, that I was only doing exactly as you did. You critiqued the books and I critiqued your poorly thought out and written critique. Really, I’m only giving you a bit of your own medicine. As for sitting through the speeches, I read them and had no problem with them which is one of the points I made earlier, so I’m not exactly sure how you came to the conclusion that that would be a good place to attack my argument. I also don’t really understand what you think makes the speeches so sanctimonious; Richard is promoting ideals that make good sense, not himself. The fact that he actually lives the ideals he purports just shows that he is not a hypocrite. Would you rather he was, would that somehow make him more humble in your mind? By the way, congratulations on not using a single swear word in your reply to me; honestly, I’m impressed that you would respect me enough to keep from using them even when you were annoyed with my response.
This is a pretty accurate summary of the whole series. I think the review is a little harder on the earlier book characters, but I agree the series completely went off the rails after book 6. I actually enjoyed the philosophizing in 6, but the speeches in the remaining were just completely useless and unnecessary. The author wasted two books trying to teach us about a gang of magic free pacifists and instead of organizing a revolution or going back to get his home country together, we get stuck with the kidnapped prisoner trope.
The series needed to either embrace its sword and sorcery roots, and get a big world changing campaign going with an invincible leader, or it needed to build on the revolution idea, but not with a bunch of stupid speeches. Revolutions aren’t won in the pulpit, but with action, which is why book 6 worked.
The good part is the mythology and world building. The bad part is the two main characters don’t turn into something interesting. But the minor characters are fun and the antagonists motivation up until book 4 or 5 at least make sense.
I just fail to see how an author avatar killing too-stupid-to-live political strawmen in increasingly despotic fashion after giving some sanctimonious objectivist apology is “the greatest book series ever”. Honestly, I don’t.
There are romances which don’t involve heavy sessions of sadomasochism and (attempted) rape. There are “heroes” who don’t advocate retributive genocide, slaughtering peace protesters, torture, and breaking children’s jaws even when facing adversity. There are in fact, people who can think and have opinions which are different than the author and yet are legitimate none-the-less — although they don’t seem to exists in the Goodkind-verse. Quite literally by the end of the series.
I should have stopped reading the series when Richard’s brother managed to make his audience weep in a speech about the evils of fire — you can’t make people that stupid just because it’s fantasy.
I don’t see how anyone could honestly defend the SoT series against criticism unless they are a fan of rape, pedophilia, and extreme violence.
Just finished the series and my opinion has not changed in the slightest. It is still in my opinion one of the best series out there, I know most of you may not agree with me but I think that those who don’t like the series should give it another shot. I agree with you that the sames themes are portrayed over and over ( such as rape) but I still think Goodkind is a genius and deep, thoughtful characters like Nicci (who happened to become one of my favorite characters) are proof that Goodkind is capable of creating deep characters and even though they are evil they can make you believe in their side, Nicci almost had me rooting for the Imperial Order, so those who didn’t like the series should give it another shot or perhaps try the TV show.
BHagwad,
I actually thought your review and opinions were very well formulated and pretty much spot on. However, since I did end up reading all 11 books, I can state that you may have been a bit hard on Goodkind… Yes, there were needlessly sappy, never ending, teenage love, puppy dog eyed passages that got reiterated time and again, and yes, at the drop of a hat Richard was again captured, duped, beguiled or incapacitated in some way. Overall though, I think the basic premise of the story and many of the characters were very well developed and rich in content. The preachy parts were difficult to take and I agree, Zed, Shota, and the Mord Sith should have been more thoroughly used and explored. Nonetheless, I liked many of the yarns (some of the series better than others) but, my biggest disappointment was the lackluster way they dealt with the ultimate villain “Jagang” in the end…. Such a huge build up to what was expected to be an epic battle and they made a mole hill out of it. Along with the fact that Richard never really used his wizardly powers to their potential… I kept wanting him to blast the heck out of bad guys at times, only to be disappointed again.
In any event, thanks for naming a few other series in your review… I’m going to check out the “Wheel of Time” series you mention…
I’m currently half way through book six and the series is really starting to lose its shine for me. Jumped online to check some reviews to see if it is worth persevering but your review has convinced me to call it quits. Shame, I did really enjoy the first four books and the fifth was ok. Goodkind does a pretty decent job of creating an interesting universe and lore but seems to run out of interesting plot lines to occur in it. I agree that it would have been nice to spend some more time with a few secondary characters, especially Zed, Adie, Shota, Chase and Nathan. Terry could have left Kahlan and Richard to make out in the woods for a couple of books while some of the other characters went on a more interesting adventure, would have kept things a bit fresher.
The anger you express at these books is rather odd. It’s evident you were looking for more basic “Sword and Sorcery” stuff, but these books are not that. The fantasy is a medium for the spreading of a philosophy and development of a more rounded hero than fiction can usually portray.
The “preaching” is in fact a powerful life code, that when it is let in and thought over, becomes the most important message of these books. Winning a sword fight or saving a damsel do not matter in these works in the same way the “Why?” does.
He writes an extension of early Randian Objectivism, whose aim is to create a hero out of any person. When one is willing to listen, it can do just that.