Desdichado
Hero
Really? You confirmed what I suspected about the book, and for the same reasons I would probably dislike the rest of it. We seem to be on the same page here, at least.takyris said:
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Wizard's First Rule
- Thread starter Desdichado
- Start date
Terry Goodkind... O. M. G. He is, by far, one of the most atrocious writers I've ever had the displeasure of reading. And I, like so many others, have read all but the latest book (more on my masochistic inclinations in a moment).
The first book, Wizard's First Rule, is utter garbage. There are a number of reasons for this. First, while I'm not frowing upon simplicity, I do ask for some kind of an attempt to have a degree of depth or at least breadth to my reading fare. Let's face it, Eddings' material is fairly simple. A few gods, one for each race, there's a prophecy and we wait and watch as the prophecy unfolds. However, there's this great degree of discovery along the way, a certain... depth to the material as you read along, and incredibly fun (although occasionally irritating) characters and dialogue. Sure, they're all archetypes, but there's so much humor injected into the dialogue, so much personality, that most can forgive and even come to appreciate the simplicity of the story. We don't have that with Goodkind. His simplicity is a clear result of a writer who really has no ideas beyond a general framework and comes up with ideas as he goes along (and after he reads someone else's material). The names of the sections of the continent for example... We have the Westlands (wonder where that is); then we have the Midlands (I'm getting lost); and then we have (que evil, musical bombastic creshendo) D'HARA! I wonder where the badguys come from. Then, we run into this huge world where there are only a few towns and cities... And the first of these outside of the magic-empty Westlands are the mudpeople... Whose leader is nothing like them. And, although they're the mudpeople, they like birds and live in the plains. Okay...
I loved how the characters just sort of get together and, after pseudo-philsophical conversations, decide to go on a quest. We learn a little about magic. This is perhaps the most pathetic kind of magic I've ever seen. Additive and Subtractive. Somehow, it's determined that one can sharpen a knife since one's adding an edge to it... HUH? But, you can't kill something since you're taking life from it (although, I'd say that your adding age to it which accelerates the process of life to its realistic conclusion...). But of course all of this is turned on its head in the next book when we meet the Aes Sedai and find out about the One Power... Oh, wait. I'm sorry, that's from Jordan's Wheel of Everlasting, Unending Time. No, Goodkind just bites from Jordon and uses essentially the same set up that completely muddles an already asinine concept.
Then the descriptions. We NEVER find out what Richard looks like, how old he is, or how he sounds until the very end of the book... I think... We may not find out this information until the end. We just know he's male and that's it. But, all of the other characters are brilliantly described. Somehow, I suspect that Goodkind thinks he's created some kind of Everyman with this concept, although there's little about Richard to support such a suggestion.
And the villains. They're all sexual deviants. The lead henchman is a pedophile and the Dark Lord is a sadomasochist. And the HUGE S&M sequence. This I can't describe in any other way. It's really outrageous.
On top of all this, Goodkind regularly offers very obvious socioeconomic commentary. While I generally applaud this effort, the fact that he offers this sort of thing in such a blatant manner with no degree of complexity makes it sound like he's preaching to a class full of ten year olds. While I don't mind what appears to be right-wing lecturing, I do mind it when there's no attempt to be remotely intelligent about it. As you read the series, this sort of thing becomes more and more obvious and almost frightening.
So, why did I read five of the six books? Because, I wanted to read what I should avoid doing in my own stories. I wanted to experience truly bad, but incredibly popular, writing in the genre. I wanted to see just how far this man could take his blundering. And clearly, he's taken it quite far. The man is worse than a hack because he takes himself and his work very seriously. Unlike WoT, the characters aren't interesting, there's no depth to the story, the world is not fleshed out, and there's no real driving force behind the prophecies (we get a new one each book). The villains are not consistent and generally make no sense; I suppose this is due to his inability to write complex characters. While I like to read villains that I want to loathe, at least make sure that their motivations make sense and that their portrayals are consistent across multiple books.
In the end, Goodkind... Well, he stinks. But, he's stinking all the way to the bank and people like me are/were part of the problem.
The first book, Wizard's First Rule, is utter garbage. There are a number of reasons for this. First, while I'm not frowing upon simplicity, I do ask for some kind of an attempt to have a degree of depth or at least breadth to my reading fare. Let's face it, Eddings' material is fairly simple. A few gods, one for each race, there's a prophecy and we wait and watch as the prophecy unfolds. However, there's this great degree of discovery along the way, a certain... depth to the material as you read along, and incredibly fun (although occasionally irritating) characters and dialogue. Sure, they're all archetypes, but there's so much humor injected into the dialogue, so much personality, that most can forgive and even come to appreciate the simplicity of the story. We don't have that with Goodkind. His simplicity is a clear result of a writer who really has no ideas beyond a general framework and comes up with ideas as he goes along (and after he reads someone else's material). The names of the sections of the continent for example... We have the Westlands (wonder where that is); then we have the Midlands (I'm getting lost); and then we have (que evil, musical bombastic creshendo) D'HARA! I wonder where the badguys come from. Then, we run into this huge world where there are only a few towns and cities... And the first of these outside of the magic-empty Westlands are the mudpeople... Whose leader is nothing like them. And, although they're the mudpeople, they like birds and live in the plains. Okay...
I loved how the characters just sort of get together and, after pseudo-philsophical conversations, decide to go on a quest. We learn a little about magic. This is perhaps the most pathetic kind of magic I've ever seen. Additive and Subtractive. Somehow, it's determined that one can sharpen a knife since one's adding an edge to it... HUH? But, you can't kill something since you're taking life from it (although, I'd say that your adding age to it which accelerates the process of life to its realistic conclusion...). But of course all of this is turned on its head in the next book when we meet the Aes Sedai and find out about the One Power... Oh, wait. I'm sorry, that's from Jordan's Wheel of Everlasting, Unending Time. No, Goodkind just bites from Jordon and uses essentially the same set up that completely muddles an already asinine concept.
Then the descriptions. We NEVER find out what Richard looks like, how old he is, or how he sounds until the very end of the book... I think... We may not find out this information until the end. We just know he's male and that's it. But, all of the other characters are brilliantly described. Somehow, I suspect that Goodkind thinks he's created some kind of Everyman with this concept, although there's little about Richard to support such a suggestion.
And the villains. They're all sexual deviants. The lead henchman is a pedophile and the Dark Lord is a sadomasochist. And the HUGE S&M sequence. This I can't describe in any other way. It's really outrageous.
On top of all this, Goodkind regularly offers very obvious socioeconomic commentary. While I generally applaud this effort, the fact that he offers this sort of thing in such a blatant manner with no degree of complexity makes it sound like he's preaching to a class full of ten year olds. While I don't mind what appears to be right-wing lecturing, I do mind it when there's no attempt to be remotely intelligent about it. As you read the series, this sort of thing becomes more and more obvious and almost frightening.
So, why did I read five of the six books? Because, I wanted to read what I should avoid doing in my own stories. I wanted to experience truly bad, but incredibly popular, writing in the genre. I wanted to see just how far this man could take his blundering. And clearly, he's taken it quite far. The man is worse than a hack because he takes himself and his work very seriously. Unlike WoT, the characters aren't interesting, there's no depth to the story, the world is not fleshed out, and there's no real driving force behind the prophecies (we get a new one each book). The villains are not consistent and generally make no sense; I suppose this is due to his inability to write complex characters. While I like to read villains that I want to loathe, at least make sure that their motivations make sense and that their portrayals are consistent across multiple books.
In the end, Goodkind... Well, he stinks. But, he's stinking all the way to the bank and people like me are/were part of the problem.
Maraxle, maybe this is a you/me difference. I don't skip pages. Not trying to mock. I just genuinely don't like skipping stuff. About the most I skip is poetry -- I'm not huge on poetry in most fiction, and I usually just skim the long poetic parts that the author probably slaved over and layered with amazing levels of subtext and discursive meaning. Blah, blah, light, blah, blah, pool, blah, blah, emptiness...
And, with respect, that seems like a lot of skipping. Like, what, the last quarter of the first book? And you miss the part where the sword gets to turn different colors depending on whether he's being phallocentrically violent or phallocentrically forgiving, which seems to be important.
And, with respect, that seems like a lot of skipping. Like, what, the last quarter of the first book? And you miss the part where the sword gets to turn different colors depending on whether he's being phallocentrically violent or phallocentrically forgiving, which seems to be important.
Ah, good clarification. That helps.
And really, I don't see it as a good/bad thing. I personally don't skip, but I also can't listen to theatrical soundtracks out of order, either -- putting "Les Miz" on shuffle is a good way to drive me crazy. I've got enough idiosyncracies that I'm not really in a great position to pass judgment on others.
In any event, I'm glad that Goodkind is working for you!
And really, I don't see it as a good/bad thing. I personally don't skip, but I also can't listen to theatrical soundtracks out of order, either -- putting "Les Miz" on shuffle is a good way to drive me crazy. I've got enough idiosyncracies that I'm not really in a great position to pass judgment on others.
In any event, I'm glad that Goodkind is working for you!
milotha
First Post
Save yourself. The first book is the best. It just gets dreadful the more of the books you read. I made it through the first three before I gave up. I kept reading because I was told it got better. It doesn't. In fact. It's awful.
What is it with fantasy writers and issues with women? IMHO:Terry, Donaldson, Stephenson, etc get some psychological counseling, please.
What is it with fantasy writers and issues with women? IMHO:Terry, Donaldson, Stephenson, etc get some psychological counseling, please.
Simplicity
Explorer
Terrible book. Terrible...
A fantasy book has to be pretty bad for me to just put it away without
finishing it. Usually, that would just happen because the book fails to
get read somehow. This one was just so utterly mindless I just couldn't
read it any more.
A fantasy book has to be pretty bad for me to just put it away without
finishing it. Usually, that would just happen because the book fails to
get read somehow. This one was just so utterly mindless I just couldn't
read it any more.
Dr. Talos
First Post
Other than the scenes from the book which played out like a MST3K version of the Spice Channel, the book overall was not too bad. You could clearly see his influences, Eddings, Jordan, and Harlequin Romance, but he brought them out in a unique way. I appreciated the lack of specifics as far as character description went, something Jordan could learn from. IMO the books that came after did two things. One Goodkind is a hack who copies Jordan and denies it. Since I no longer liked Jordan by the time I read books 2,3, and unfortunately book 4, I stopped reading him. Second, the books after book 1 actually make book 1 worse. They drag a decent (not good or great) fantasy novel into a dark deep pit from which it cannot or should not recover.
Just my opinion.
Just my opinion.
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