Looking for some interesting reads.

[Occhidiangela]

I have been recently plowing through the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.  Yesterday (more accurately this morning) I finished Faith of the Fallen which is the sixth book in the series.  I also recently finished Shadow of the Hegemon which is part of the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card.
[right][snapback]64340[/snapback][/right]

Why Goodkind, a popular writer, is not on my list of "to read" folks, ever.

1. Wizard's First Rule is a stroke book about bondage, some standard cliche fantasy stuff thrown in. He does create a few neat monsters, though not a coherent world in which to place them, as well as a very nice Peckinpaw moment where he describes the explosion of the head of one of the monsters Richard Cypher has just hit with his sword.

2. Shallow. I wrote a review on Amazon.com a few years back on it, wish I had saved the text.

3. In general, hints of very nice writing overwhelmed by filler. Goodkind has some talent, no question. What I did not see was his talent growing as he went from volume to volume. This is too bad, since he shows sparks of "the good stuff" here and there.

4. I got to page 50 of book 2 and simply could not force myself to pick it up any more.

5. Example of where he and his editor need a spanking.

Wizard's first rule is "people are stupid." This throwaway bit of prose shows, to me, a betrayal of his gift, and establishes his editor's status as an imbecile. "People are gullible" is both better use of the language, and more accurate, fits into the theme in his story of "folks will believe what they want to believe, what you have to do is lead them to it."

6. "Luke, I'm your father, give in to the dark side of the force." Sorry, "Richard, I'm your evil father, give in to the dark side after you've made it with that hot babe . . ."

I actually don't blame Mr Goodkind, I blame his editor for not motivating him to tighten up his prose. The talent it there, I'd say, what is lacking is the discipline to tighten up the story, and the prose.

There is hope. In that the collection of Short stories by varied fantasy writers, his short story, along with "The Hedge Knight" by George RR Martin, fit into a nice quartet of well written fiction. Terry Goodkind can hang with the excellent authors when he takes the time and effort to mine his talent.

Occhi