Terry Goodkind

[borg48]

I think a little misleading is a "little" bit of an understatement if you go back and read your original post.  I guess you did not mean "read" but "people who read fantasy novels".  By the way you stereotype people who read something different than what you read I would still recommend you study logic some more cause you do not seem to be able to apply it very well

Secondly I'm not hating on the the books to show you that I'm enlightened.  I am hating on the books because they deserve it.  Yes I do enjoy parts of the books because parts of it are good, but parts of it are also really really bad, does that mean I should fanboy up and just tell everyone how good it was?  Since we are discussing the books I thought I should voice my entire, real, opinion about the series.  Books can be a lot like movies, you can hate an actor but like a movie they were in, and hate a movie but still like one characters acting / role in that bad movie.  I really liked Zedd's character in the early books, but as the series got closer to the end (basically all of the chainfire trilogy I believe) his character was basically relegated to screwing up a lot so that Richard could fix things and we could find out more about how Richards power works.  Anne was also effected by this too.  Nathan I assume would have been similarly effected but thankfully he had other roles in the book that led him out of being totally overcome.  I know part of this was because of the chainfire event but it just seems like bad writing to me.

   

I was going to add more to this but I have to go, please make another post when you are done with the book I would be interested to see what you thought of the ending.

[Moleman]

OK I can definitely see why you wanted to know what I thought of the ending.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT
I still haven't read the prequel novel yet but I am going to check it out and eventually get to this other book Goodkind wrote but for now I think I'm going to take a nice long break from reading.  Hopefully the opinion I wrote in the spoiler had enough negativity to be "complete" enough for you, borg48, so you don't think that just because I enjoy something I must be a mindless Terry Goodkind sicko-fan who doesn't understand logic.

[The Man in Black]

I get that Terry Goodkind uses strawman fallacies and sock-puppet characters as bullhorns for his ridiculous ideology.

What kind of series has a totalitarian leader that  both
1. Lectures people about how they should be independent and think for themselves and
2. Has them WORSHIP HIM for an hour each day.

I agree whole heartily with this. I have no problem with Rand's books, expect Atlas Shrugged where she pulled the same...thing..as well. In face the Fountainhead is one of my favorite novels of all time. It take the statement, "Being selfless is good", asked "WHY though? Maybe being a selfish prick is nice once and awhile too, if your not harming anyone by doing."

But yeah, the hypocrisy in this makes me want to hurl. It wrong when a king kicks in the face, and uses human shields...but WHEN THE HERO DOES IT, ITS GOOD AND YOUR WRONG TO QUESTION HIM!


If you want to read a good Randian work, read Anthem or The Fountainhead...avoid everything after that.

[Moleman]

  Three of you now?  You really can't look at a situation and make a judgment?  Oh well.  We're all different people I guess.


Anyways, I read the prequel and despite my love for the rest of this series this short little story was pretty pointless.  There is no real lesson in the book and its just a little story about how the boundary went up.  Its pretty hard to relate to the dilemma the main character goes through since we know the Lord Raul is evil and would never honor any bargain.  So this one is a waste of time.

I found out that the most recent book Law of Nines is actually a sequel to the series.  I thought it was a completely different book with no relation whatsoever but its a sequel of sorts and set some thousands of years in the future.  So I bought it, read it, and really enjoyed it.  This one seemed much more like a Sci-fi movie and I was much more interested in the actual story.  There's no wizard's rules in this one and I really don't remember any ideology other than one comment about gun ownership not being viewed as lightly in Boston as in Nebraska.  Other than that its much more of a standard story so far less people should have a problem with it.

Now that I've read all 13 books, here's how I rank them:

Book 6: Faith of the Fallen
Book 8: Naked Empire
Book 1: Wizard's First Rule
Law of Nines
Book 4: Temple of the Winds
Book 2: Stone of Tears
Book 11: Confessor (This would be 3rd if not for the ending)
Book 10: Phantoms
Book 5: Soul of Fire
Book 3: Blood of the Fold
Book 7: Pillars of Creation
Book 9: Chainfire
Book 0: Debt of Bones

All are great until Pillars of Creation which was OK. Chainfire was kind of "meh" and then Debt of Bones is just pointless unless you just want to have all the books and complete the set.

[AmazingThor]

Here's where I quit the series: Richard has "forced" S&M sex with a Mord Sith. Kind of pervy and juvenile but okay. Later, Kahlan is about to be gang raped in a pitch black dungeon and she thinks to herself that if Richard could "endure" his forced sex then she could endure her gang raping. Umm...no. No woman would ever, ever, ever think something like that. Goodkind's little bondage fantasy in the first book does not even begin to compare to being gang raped by filthy prisoners in a dank dungeon. I put the book down exactly at that moment and haven't given the series a second thought.


Although I actually like the TV series but mostly because I think the woman they got to play Kahlan is insanely hot

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I think that any rape is traumatizing, regardless of the setting, but it does illustrate the inconsistancy of his characters. Kahlan gets almost-raped a lot in the series, and as far as I know, she didn't display that 'Well, my boyfriend got raped, so I can survive this utterly violation of self and psychological torment no problem. Stiff upper lip and all!" on any other incident. Richard got extensively tortured with magical pain-zappers, but she doesn't think "Well, my boyfriend got the everliving shit beat out of him, so I shouldn't complain about these ruffians kicking me and grinding me into the dirt to the point where ."

It's a failure of character consistency and a failure of logic. That's the facts, as Sam the Keeper would say. The degree to which it offends or repulses is a subjective judgement. Terry is willing to employ gross narrative contrivance to get what he wants in his story, whether that's a dubious philosophical lecture or off-putting fanservice.  When a writer does that, the work suffers.

I wasn't turned on by the torture S&M stuff. I wasn't offended by it. I was bored and just wondered when it would end. Since I was doing shelving work and still had some narrative inertia and sunk-cost motivating me, I continued to the end of the audiobook, but if I was reading it today, that would make me give up. When you have a book that large, you had better make sure the material in it serves the purpose.

[Moleman]

I was bored

What's wrong with that?  You were bored and you didn't like it.  That's all you have to say.  You don't have to try to prove that the author has something wrong with him all because he wasn't able to write a story that satisfied you. *sigh.


I'll just say this for anyone who might be interested in checking out books by this author:

-If you think reading and education makes you "smarter" as opposed to simply more knowledgeable then stay far away from this author because you'll never get it.

-If you know exactly what I mean by the above sentence then this is a MUST READ.  You'll find something in these books so greatly lacking in most forms of media today.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

-If you think reading and education makes you "smarter" as opposed to simply more knowledgeable then stay far away from this author because you'll never get it.

I don't.

My boredom is relevant because I am analyzing the books as works of art, because there is no STAKE in that section of the novel, no plot progression, no relevance. I do have to explain and justify my position and why I think it is a bad book, rather than one that merely fails to entertain me, personally, because this is a discussion thread, and that is how the process of debate works. You don't need to presume that I'm an ivory tower scholar with an elitist ax to grind just because I have a rather roundabout way of talking.

-If you know exactly what I mean by the above sentence then this is a MUST READ.  You'll find something in these books so greatly lacking in most forms of media today.

I don't follow you. Pretentiousness, sketchy philosophical preaching, and quasi-randian bootstrap ideology are all present in contemporary media.


I object to his work as a reader, and as a writer, and especially as a fantasy writer.

Terry Goodkind claims that he doesn't write "fantasy," he writes "stories with important human themes." This is a load of pretentious bullshit. It aggrandizes himself by implying that he's "better" than the fantasy genre, and that fantasy authors do not write "stories with important human themes."  Also, you know, he's a guy who writes stories about prophecies, wizards, dragons, and magical swords, claiming that he doesn't write fantasy. Yeah Goodkind, you don't write fantasy, and Larry Craig reads issues of PlayGirl for the article, you hypocritical, condescending windbag.

[PantisMantis]

Well nobody's posted on here in a while but I thought I'd tag one on anyway. I read the series back when it first started and I had to wait for Stone of Tears to come out(well it wasn't a series yet but anywho) and was a huge fan. I still like the books as a gripping read with some great concepts about magic and all that but I gotta say, after Soul of Fire, the series went WAY downhill. I read Faith of the Fallen and almost stopped half way through. I mean, come on, carving a statue that makes everyone freak out like that? Total crap. Also, in between waiting on the newest book to be released(I think it was Blood of the Fold) I read a little number called Eye of the World. Now I'm not gonna go into it cuz this is a Terry Goodkind thread but lets just say Goodkind has SHIT on Jordan. I also noticed a whole bunch of similarities between the two that Goodkind ripped off from Jordan. Back on track, though, Goodkind entertained me for a while but in the end I have to say the books are pretty poor quality. First off I agree with the previous statement that people cry way to freakin much plus they hug, squeeze each other, hold hands, and in general are more touchy-feely than a womens retreat. Also, in the beginning Richard can't get with Kahlan because she can't hold back her power when she...well you know but she either loses her power or has it blocked in every one of the first five books! I mean, WTF?! It's just plain stupid.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

PantisMantis, I refer you to my earlier comment about Terry Goodkind's use of "Instinctive Magic", IE, magic that functions or fails to function based on what is most convenient to the plot. -_-