Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind

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Submitted by Wally 
(Jun 16, 2009)

Not a bad series bit to preachy to the end but mostly fun to read best part the first 6 books worst part the last 5 books.
Story line is solid till he hasty wraps it up in my opinion.
Romance is nice world building is almost not in it.
Magic system is a bit sloppy for the main hero for others its reasonable and logical.
There are some simularity's with Jordan so if you like that you might like this series.

I really don't like this series, I started it on the recommendation of a friend and have been mildly bored with it for a long while now. I have this thing that once I start a series I tend to finish it. So I'm a quarter of the way through Chainfire now. The series is written for teenagers at best, with practically no development of characters or storyline. Most of the characters are weak and inhuman, Richard most of all. He just comes off as a pompous know it all throughout the entire series. Kahlan is a decent enough character but nothing special. The minor characters are more interesting than the mains. Cara, Nathan, Zedd these are fun characters that one can identify with, and Goodkind does nothing with them. I purposely avoid people like Richard that I meet in real life. The entire series is over analytical in the extreme. The world is decent enough, I have little issue with the combat described in the series, but the magic? That's a real problem. Goodkind tries too hard to explain it with science. Explains EVERYTHING too much with Richard's totalitarian rationality. My latest analogy is that Goodkind is to fantasy novels as metachlorians were to Star Wars. Add to that the books should have ended a long long time ago. Pillars of Creation is horrid! I'm so tired of Richard being a "wizard" and still not knowing how to use his gift. Harry Potter would whip Richard's raging butt. It's one pathetic excuse after another for not learning. Richard is obsessed with telling people to learn and yet never tries to do it himself. He's a close minded, hypocritical knowledge nazi.

It is all agreed that the first 2 books were rather decent for a fantasy novel, however the rest of the series itself was just like a bad movie, its keeps getting worse and worse. The lack of common sense, the pure stupidity, and the amount of redundant and excessive wasted space of descriptions every other chapter when a new character is introduced or reappears within the story line or when RR arrives at a new location is just, well LAME. It looks like this was written with young people in mind, but even at those ages they have more intelligence and common sense then Richard and Kahlan, especially since one is supposed to be well educated and the other supposed to be a wizard, Harry Potter had more brains and he was just a teen in those novels, the cicadas put him in his mid-late 20s.

The supporting cast around Richard was a little better written then some authors do but that was still lacking common sense when it comes to being involved in the main story line. The over all length of each novel was padded by the excessive use of redundant descriptions of each character and the interaction and thoughts with others, dragging the storyline on in this manner is just bad planning, a waste of a tree, poor form on Mr. Goodkind's part. This shows T.G. lack of imagination or immaturity as an author, difficult to tell which. IMHO, its quite obvious T.G. can write, he just doesn't know how to structure a book/series for a good read. Lastly, Bags is not a bad word when there is no source for it becoming a bad word.

The good side to this series is the concept of the story is great, magic and romance and a ton of bad things happening constantly to the main characters and matching evil characters, a nice "balance" actually, the amount of drama involved is overwhelming at times but well played and even intelligent.
I would recommend reading this, if, you like wasted space and throwing money down just for the sake of having this on your bookshelf, not worth a repeat read.

I started out really loving this series. There was some repetition from Jordan especially, but overall, interesting reading. I stopped reading it for a while after Faith of the Fallen, but only because I had already read the exact same book 20 years ago by Ayn Rand called "The Fountainhead". This was a little too much for me. It's one thing for fantasy series to borrow from each other and the classics, but to blatantly steal from Ayn Rand, without even giving her credit defeats the purpose of parroting her philosophy; unless it is to prove her point that those who lack greatness must steal from the ones who do.

I got over this disgust, however, and plowed on, especially when I realized the target audience is in their teens and are not old enough to have heard of Ayn Rand. I finished the SoT series and started Chainfire. I may not complete this series, however, because Richard has lost Kahlan----again!!! Don't these two ever get to spend any time together?? The series is just very repetitious and in your face. Great for younger readers, but mature readers may grow tired of being beaten over the head with Goodkind's cheap imitation of Ayn Rand's excellent philosophy.

I have to disagree with some of the good news I've heard about this book.
I've read the first book Sword of Truth and the second novel The Stone of Tears and I have to say that they were predictable. Okay just to let you know yes if there is more than one novel in the series then you can easily guess that the hero survives to fight another day.
It wasn't that this book wasn't a good read - I read the first one twice - its just that all of the odds are stacked in the hero's favor. For example - his grand dad the oldest and most powerful wizard. His dad is/was the most powerful wizard. He has a magic sword his girlfriend has magic that terrifies everyone he has a pet that, under normal circumstances, would have you for dinner. In addition he finds magical tokens and talismans underfoot nearly every chapter and I must have forgotten his pet dragon - one that brethes fire.
While the hero has allies magic the villan fights alone. Yes Darken Rahl had his minions but the forgone conclussion, even his torturer was stymied by the fact that he had a hidden asset that no one could have predicted.
While he has his moments when he is tortured and run ragged trying to save the world you can see that he amasses so much power that you can never really worry if he'll make it throught the situation.
After the reading the second book I didn't want to go any further with him and Gratch going to find Kahlan.
I'm sorry it is the classic fantasy tale but I was hoping , vainly, that Goodkind would stretch the genre make it so that the ending or the hero was at odds with the majority were he was at the disadvantage that some 'tragic flaw' would criple him and I don't mean his sense of honor.
Overall a good meaty read but predictable