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Submitted by The Lord of the Morning 
(Feb 15, 2004)

Soul of the Fire, was an interesting book for me in the Sword of Truth series. At first I was thinking it was dull and going to be my least favorite of the series. I didn't care much for the new characters, but as the story went on I grew to like Dalton Cambell a lot. He was a very interesting character and I am sorry to know that he won't be in the rest of the story. I also thought the whole Ander/Haken part of the story was very interesting, and it was nice to get away from Richard for a while. I am glad it was the general happy ending like most Sword of Truth books have, it was a nice spin.

This book has done what the rest of the Sword of Truth novels have, it has created characters that you can't help but hate, as well as ones you cant help but love.

The biggest example would have to be the Anders. The Anders were pompous and were the antitheses to everything that Richard stood for, and Mr. Goodkind made me hate them as much as he made me hate Demmin Nass and Darken Rahl in the first book. I loved the themes dealt with in the book, like the ancient world of magic, the dreaded Dominie Dirtch and Richard's failing faith in people that creates that familiar, loveable rage into which he always falls. And in this book he falls into a somewhat disappointingly fast, but uncontrollably cool climax that I laughed in the middle of class while reading it.

I thought this was a great book, even though it lacked Kahlan-Action. All in all, this book was pure fun to read.

Soul of Fire is a bit of a change of pace. In Soul of the Fire, we are introduced to quite a few new characters. The aforementioned new characters (Fitch and Beata in particular) are, in my opinion, the most well-developed and human characters in the series. They behave as human-beings actually would when presented with the situations that Fitch and Beata are presented with.

SotF is also fraught with political intrigue. The intrigue is actually pretty well-thought-out and well-done. And, thankfully, SotF lacks the happily-ever-after endings that plague some of the SoT novels.

All in all, SotF is my favorite SoT novel. I'd highly recommend it.

Out of all the six books of Terry's I have read, this one was easily my favourite. The chimes made you think more on Richard's and the Sisters' of the Dark subtractive magic. I mostly liked this book because I thought the chimes were interesting. How they took away additive magic... in other words it was quite cool. The only thing I found annoying was Dalton Campbell and the Minister of Culture, the guys in Anderith. I personally thought them quite irrelevant. However the ending was good. I thought that Terry made the story worth reading and it was almost impossible to predict the ending. A good novel.

Chris Fourie (South Africa)

Many people believe this book is the worst in the series. It is slow. They spend a lot of time away from Richard and spend more time with Dalten Campbell, and his actions. They don't spend enough time with other characters. I agree with all these comments
But this book also had a much different story. With the chimes, Goodkind could not develop Richard as a wizard. What he could do though, was tie into the book Richard's true personality, not just his powers. This develops the entire series, making all the books better by enabling us to see Richard's true personality. Goodkind also lowers Richard's power over everyone. In "Temple of the Winds", and "Blood of the Fold", he took full command over units, living up to his name as Lord Rahl. In this book, he gets away from that and becomes more independant, letting the mord-sith and the generals to run the matters of D'hara and the Midlands.
Although many people may say that this book is slow and the worst in the series, I disagree and believe that it is a developing book, giving the reader a better understanding of Richard, and enabling his true self to get out, not his wizard self.