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Submitted by Jack Webdale 
(Oct 19, 2003)

At first, i did not expect the book to meet the standards of a few other authors who write fantasy genre; Terry Brooks, Raymond E Feist, Tolkien are some of these who write wonderfull books. However, the book went beyond what i had expected, and in my personal opinion was a more enjoyable read than other books from the other authors.

The plot in this book was a huge web carefully weaved by Terry Goodwind, and the way links are made is stunning, keeping me guessing from start to finish. The book is unique with it's references usually avoided by other authors, and is not for the light hearted or weak stomached. It's a strange thing to say, but the gore and disgusting material is appealing, and made the book seem more realistic. Maybe it's because i'm 17, but i'm sure it would be appealing to most people.

I can not think of one critisism to make with this book, and look foward to picking up the next in the sequel. It is original, unstereotypical of the fantasy genre, and extremely entertaining. buy it!

I have to admit that I was a little excited to start reading this book on my summer vacation last year. I'd heard a lot of praise for the book, and I'd always seen it well stocked in the book store, usually a good indicator.

But I was very disappointed. On a positive side, the book seemed to come through with some amazing ideas in the first half of the book. The problem is that all of my supposition about the direction of the book was better than where the book actually went.

I was particularly annoyed at some fairly early wording. I'm paraphrasing here, but at one point the hero is being overwhelmed with fear or doubt or whatever, until he suddenly "remembers that he's always been good at overcoming fear". It turned my stomach. I kept thinking that I misread it, and even though it's not as bad as I first thought, it's still horrid writing. Basically, Hero is being beaten by X, and then Hero remembers he's good at fighting X, and he so he does. Ridiculous.

By the end of the book, I was praying for some sort of payoff and begging that the author wouldn't go for the cliche. Unfortunately, my prayers weren't answered. I won't say what the cliche is, because it's so crucial to the story that mentioning it would ruin the book for those few people who don't see it coming. And at least for those people, it will probably seem like a good book.

I don't know what else to say. There ARE good things in this book, but when you have to drag yourself through chapter after chapter of torture methods, each "even more painful than before"...well, it's hard to remember the good things. I recommend this book only to highlight those things that you shouldn't do when writing a fantasy. It's proof that you can't judge a book by its first few chapters.

When I bought this book I had read the prequel "Debt of Bones" and really liked it, a nice short story with good likable characters, so I went to Amazon.com and got this. IMO this book has some serious problems, I could never get into the story, especially the last part of the book. The world Terry has created has real potential, we see a lot of new fantasy elements introduced, but the characters are impossible to get into (once again this is my personal opinion). I really looked forward to this series but just couldn´t keep going onto book 2. I´ve read a lot of fantasy and this really is the first negative review I have ever gave.

Garbage, though readable garbage. The lead characters nearly escape death about seven times in the first hundred pages of this book (once because a cat makes a noise, once because they "sense something is wrong," once because they see a fly), so it is clear that Goodkind is making the audience suspend disbelief even more than fantasy typically requires. How many times should the lead characters almost die? I'd say less than the thirty plus times Goodkind brings them to the brink of death (yawn). What happened to pacing?
Every character is broadly sketched and looses his temper in a predictable and annoying way. When an author has his "intelligent" characters yelling and behaving rashly all the time, I start to draw negative conclusions on what the author perceives to be "intelligent human behavior." I don't want to ruin this book for you, but the big twist at the end is the same as the one in Star Wars. I will give Goodkind minor credit for creating an unbelievably long and harrowing torture sequence (and the gars are pretty neat), but The Wizards' First Rule of "people are stupid" is one the author seems to apply to his own writing techniques and appraisal of fantasy audiences. Please email me with book recommendations if you know what I'm saying is true.

This book is the BEST fantasy book I've ever read! Unlike LotR it doesn't drag on with unreasonable historical knowledge, and the suspense keeps the reader begging for more. I am currently reading book 3 (Blood of the Fold) right now, and still can't get over the epic story. I suppose this is what intrigued me to begin writing my own novel. Terry Goodkind's books have become top on my list of books. Kudos to Terry!!!