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447 of 504 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
the end is nigh, December 1, 2007
This review is from: Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy, Part 3 (Sword Of Truth, Book 11) (Hardcover)
Lets take a look back at the series so far:
1 Wizard's First Rule - great book, Richard meets Kahlan and defeats Darken Rahl.
2 Stone of Tears - even better, Richard captured by sisters of light, Kahlan leads a ragtag army to victory.
3. Blood of the Fold - good book, enter new villain Jagang, Gars vs. Mirswith.
4. Temple of the Winds - ok book, evil brother, cool plague, Kahlan uses chimes to save Richard. Why did he not know the consequences of this while in the Temple?
5. Soul of the Fire - another mediocre book, wedding, Anderith, Fitch gets killed.
6. Faith of the Fallen - back to a good book, but Richard is getting a little preachy, Nicci captures Richard (kind of like he was captured in books 1 and 2), carving the statue.
7. Pillars of Creation - I don't know how to rate this one, I admire an author of a series like this to take a big chance and set a whole book around a new character (Richard's sister) but she doesn't play much of a role in the next two books, so what was the point?
8. Naked Empire- The worst of the bunch, we were introduced to the idea of the supremely ungifted and their threat to magic in book 7. This book just reiterates that and contains some of the worst preaching by Richard.
9. Chainfire - Kahlan missing, only Richard remembers her. The sisters of the dark have used an incredibly complex spell with huge side effects to do something that Zedd did simply in the 2nd book. Richard goes to Shota then to Zedd looking for answers but they cannot help him. Ok now you know what happens in the first 564 pages. I would recommend skipping those first 564 pages other than a few good scenes that are recycled from earlier books. Richard's meeting with Shota plays out very similarly to the one in Wizard's First Rule including an attack by the Golem-like Samuel. Nicci rides into the Imperial Order Army to take out their wizard just like Kahlan did in Stone of Tears.
10. Phantom - Rachel is back, Richard keeps looking for a way to save Kahlan and gets captured in the process in a familar way in a familiar place.
11. Confessor - To the end, Nicci becomes Richard's mouthpiece for sermons, Kahlan looks deadly but does not get anywhere until Richard saves her. Richard is of course a great Ja'La player. Zedd does not do much, Rachael is more effective. Richard gives us a decent fight toward the end, but he is conveniently separated from his sword and other powers. Neither Richard or Kahlan ever live up to their potential powers. Shota becomes a deus ex machina showing up just in time to save several people including Richard. Some extraneous cameos by popular characters and quick uneventful deaths for others. The end comes with a twist but not much of a climax. Loose threads, questions? What about the disasterous baby born of a war wizard and confessor? Did the boxes of Orden fix not only chainfire, but also the chimes? With the chimes destroying magic, why did we need the pristinely ungifted to threaten magic as well? Did we really need 11 books to tell this story?????
Looking back over the more than a decade I spent with this series, I think it was the repetitions that killed it. Repetitions in plot, repetitions in dialog, repetitions in themes. Don't get me wrong I mostly agreed with the themes. I liked the plot and dialog, Goodkind can write a great scene. There was just too much repetition of similar scenes, dialog and themes.
You could probably get by with skipping several of the medicore books in the series and still get a good coherent storyline. Here is my recomendation, read the series but skip #7, #8 and #10. Find a summary on wikipedia or something, I just saved you a bunch of grief and hours of your time better spent.
If you are looking for consistently great fantasy without all the hang-ups inherent in this series I would recommend the Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.
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68 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Why this review doesn't matter, February 6, 2008
This review is from: Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy, Part 3 (Sword Of Truth, Book 11) (Hardcover)
I'm under no illusions: this review is almost perfectly irrelevant. It's irrelevant because if you have enjoyed Goodkind's Sword of Truth up until now, there's no way you're going to read the first ten books and then not finish the final novel. There is nothing bad that I could say that would keep you from seeing how the story resolves. If you've started the series but have misgivings about how preachy and tiresome Goodkind has become, the books that preceded this one were probably enough to deter you. Rest assured, Goodkind does not magically change his tone in this book. Thus, if you like the previous books, this will be a fitting conclusion. If you were fed up with Goodkind, you'll find more of the same dreck.
There is a small subset of people who might benefit from a review of this book. Two subsets, actually. The first is comprised of people who have not yet started the series, and are reading reviews of the last book to see if the series is worthy of their time. (Short answer: NO.) The second is a group that I'm a part of: people who were initially entertained by Goodkind's story, but think he totally jumped the shark and now read purely from a sense of morbid curiosity about where Goodkind will take this absurd screed next.
In this final book, Goodkind manages to plumb depths of awfulness not yet explored. Some of the failings are familiar: he attempts to be poignant and is instead awkwardly maudlin; he attempts to be profound and deep but is instead narrow and shrill; he attempts to create richness of character and instead renders his cast as absurd cartoons. But as he wraps the series up, Goodkind slips even further as he ham-handedly ties off the lingering loose ends.
The fact that Terry Goodkind is writing a book to illustrate his pet themes is never more obvious. Anyone who has ever pondered writing can't help but be distracted by the smears of Goodkind's literary fingerprints, pulling you right out of the story to wonder what on earth he was thinking. We're treated to everything short of an author theophany in the story, perhaps with Goodkind's ponytail swinging to and fro as he shakes his villains until they finally see that people are beautiful and life is important and blah blah blah. Even if I completely agreed with Goodkind's philosophy, I think I would come to hate it after the wooden endorsement these books provide.
It's worth noting that even if we ignore Goodkind's endless sermons (which would reduce the work from a book down to more of a pamphlet), the book fails on some rather basic levels. For example, John Galt--er, Richard Rahl cannot tell Katlin that he loves her even after they are reunited, because of the "sterile field." I won't explain what this means, other than to say that it is nothing more than Goodkind blatantly making up arcane rules left and right to ratchet up the emotional tension. To be fair, this is a fantasy novel and Goodkind can make up whatever rules he so desires. But if the story is to have authenticity, the imagined rules have to follow a coherent pattern that at least seem to transcend mere whimsy. So when Goodkind allows his characters to discover about the "sterile field," it proves to be a clumsy deus ex machina that is grossly manipulative. This doesn't even begin to get into what happens with the Boxes of Orden, which (unsurprisingly) prove to be the greatest I-can-do-anything-I-want plot cheat since the holodeck.
Goodkind does manage to make this book awkward and hilariously contrived in one new way undiscovered in the previous books. Because this is the final book of the series, Goodkind decides it is a good idea to take Richard on a grand tour of all the places he visited in the previous books, stopping by to say howdy to all our old friends. It's like the series finale of a cheesy 80's sitcom. Why look, here's Uncle Bill! We haven't seen him since Season 3! How nice of you to stop by! The irony is, my attempts to mock Goodkind fall short of the actual absurd contrivance of the novel. Look, Gratch has come by to lend a helping hand! Jenn shows up and has a nicely satisfying destiny! Violet gets her comeuppance! The Mud People make a cameo! Characters that I can't even remember any more come to a good or bad end, as appropriate!
I hope it doesn't spoil the story for you to know that Goodkind wraps everything up (I won't say he wraps it up neatly), and all the characters who follow Goodkind's nutty philosophy live happily ever after. The same cannot be said of the readers, who are left wondering why they ever bothered to continue reading.
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296 of 373 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I jump for joy as the series finally ends!, November 25, 2007
This review is from: Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy, Part 3 (Sword Of Truth, Book 11) (Hardcover)
I was a huge fan of Goodkind through the first four books, then I began to dread a new book by him. It seemed that with each new book his writing became worse and worse. Knowing that this was the last book in the series I became hopeful that he would pull a rabbit out of a hat and finally write the way he did in the beginning and allow the reader to become invested in the plot again. It was this very hope that I allowed myself to feed off of that let me down and brought me back to the realization that Goodkind has fallen off his rocker.
Goodkind's writing style can be summed up easily. First, he takes a monotone style of writing about characters and their dialogue and doesn't inject anything into the characters. You could be reading a line from Jagang, from Richard, Zedd, Six, Khalan, Rachel or any character and without the reference to the storyline you wouldn't be able to tell who was talking! There is no character development that distinguishes one from another. And his attempt at characterizations are childish. Take, for example, an interaction between Richard and a bunch of rough and tumble tough guys who are captives or soldiers. Richard is trying to explain why they need their faces painted and one of the men pipes up "Do me next, will you, Ruben?" then another says "Then me" and Richard says "One at a time". These supposed tough guys are acting like 3 year olds with their mother, and this is Goodkind's attempt at characterization?
Then Goodkind needs filler, so he writes and writes about nothing. A typical conversation is actually a 2.5 page monologue without a break or a stop at all. They just keep talking. Or sometimes he will try to explain something over and over again in different ways. You know, to make you understand. That way if you understand you will know, just as sure as you were born. Right, and if I explain it to you four different ways back to back to back then maybe you might understand? Oh, and then the other person will start a monologue and the previous person will patiently stand aside. Or here is the most annoying. Goodkind explains how terrified Rachel is of Six and then Six asks a question and scared, timid Rachel pipes up and delivers a monologue explaining all the details of how she knew how to paint. Yeah, great job Goodkind, she is really afraid.
Finally, it is the philosophic tirades and monologues that ultimately kill this book. These monologues go on for pages and you could honestly skip ahead three pages and you wouldn't have missed a single thing. Or this was the best. In the end Richard gives a 5 page monologue without a single break. The whole thing is him talking. Ridiculous. Where did Goodkind think that that is good writing? When did he think that a whole book should be one big long explanation after another?
One redeeming value of the book was that we did see a hint of the old Goodkind after the last Ja'La match and I was finally able to read through it all without wincing at the horrid writing.
Finally, the most redeeming value of the book is that it is finally over and Goodkind can quietly live his life on the millions he is probably making in quiet seclusion, hopefully never writing another book. I for one will never read another Goodkind book now that the series that I had already invested so much time into and therefore had to finish is over.
.5 stars.
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