14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not one of his best, May 15, 2005
I greatly anticipated Chainfire and even read all 8 prior books in preparation of reading it. Unfortunately it has left me "wanting more" and not because of the storyline. Although the last 100 pages were good, the first 500 had me continuously wanting to "skip ahead" to GET TO THE GOOD STUFF!
Terry seems to be obsessed with reiterating certain aspects of prior books. This detracts from the story and only "adds pages" without adding content. If a person is reading book #9 and has not yet read any of the prior 8 books in the SOT series, then I don't have much compassion for those people. Figure it out!
While there were a couple good twists in this book and a few things happened that I didn't suspect, I didn't feel there was much continuity to the Naked Empire. Also Richard has not progressed one iota as a wizard (nor as a human being for that matter).
I guess what I wanted for this book (eg begin to show Richard's skill and potential as a great wizard) as well as his ability to defeat Jajang on his own terms will never be realized. This book series has gotten more "preachy" as it's gone on.
Terry are you listening? Bring back the excitement of wizardry and magic, combined with a great love story. It's time to wrap up this plotline (with Jajang) and move on to other adventures with Richard and Kahlen.
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50 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An Epic that could have been..., May 2, 2005
I have always been an avid fan of the "High" Fantasy genre, which I've typically associated with the exceptional works of Melanie Rawn, Robert Jordan, Stephen Donaldson, Kate Elliot, Tad Williams and their contemporaries. High Fantasy incorporates art with complicated and enriched story lines, vision and characters that hold form and personality outside of the text. An author capable of this is a rare commodity and so when they are discovered, I hold dearly to their works and diligently read and collect every volume. When Terry Goodkind came to my attention with "Wizards First Rule", I was intrigued and thankful to add another author to my collection. He was talented and able to develop characters with a depth and substance that connected them to the reader.
I followed the story of Richard and Kahlan through their many disappointments and victories, enjoying the ever evolving relationship and the roles they each played in the government/leadership of a fractured nation. Even as the storyline began to over-run, threatening to become stagnant and bland, I stayed loyal and true. With his 9th work in this series the story, however, has evolved into something worse than bland, it has become mediocre. The story is a diatribe of philosophical gibberish that exudes existentialism with careless abandon making the volume, ironically, appear more prosaic rather than meaningful. It leaves the reader's thirst for development/progression, un-sated with characters reduced to flat and formless entities, interchangeable and amorphous.
I have never, in all my years, ever put a book down unfinished once I've begun...until now. Less than one third of the way to completion, I decided that I had read enough, and decided to waste my time no more. Mr. Goodkind, in his attempts to appease the public's thirst for more, has given them, instead, far less.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very refreshing, January 9, 2005
I'm one of those many who was not a big fan of the 7th and 8th books, so while I was hoping to be impressed I was not at all expecting it. But it is really truly good reading that has left me drooling for book 10. The stroy isn't as fast paced as the last book, and it's laden with little bits of goodness and food for thought all throughout. Goodkind said this was the first in a trilogy to end the series, and now all the loose ends are begining to come together. The characters once more have a nice depth of dimmension which just adds to the enjoyment. For those who reached a certain peak of disgust at all the preaching in previous books, this one is almost entirely story driven (the philosophy is still there; it's just worked into the plot like in the first part of the series). All in all, this has all the elements that made me love the series in the first place, and virtually none of what made me dislike later books.
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