Looks like my first post was to debate the merits of the Sword of Truth books.
TakerFoxx said:
Made an account for this topic, as it's something I've debated several times with other people. So here we go.
All right, back in highschool I was a huge SoT fan. And I'll admit, I still consider some of the books to be among the best high fantasy I've read (though not the best). Goodkind is an excellent storyteller (most of the time), and and put a lot of work into making his characters believable and his world plausible. I especially liked the detail put into the politics and the rules of magic. Made it feel more real.
But partway through the series, something bad happened. As was noted earlier, it seems like Goodkind was hit over the head with a copy of Atlas Shrugged and became bound and determined to turn what was a pretty sweet fantasy series into a vehicle for Objectivism. Now, I don't have a problem with incorporating philosophy into fiction. And while I don't necessarily agree with all of Objectivism, there are parts of it I can get behind. And even the parts that I don't I could mark them up to "Agree to disagree" and still enjoy the story.
Unfortunately it seemed that the story took a backseat to the philosophy as the characters had a permanent soapbox attached to their feet. Page after page after page of speeches, over and over again, oftentimes about things that were already preached about. Goodkind has all the subtlety of a megaton hammer being bashed into your skull, and seems to like to take every opportunity to shove Objectivism down his readers throats. It eventually got to the point where you can skip large chunks of the chapters without missing anything important.
Also, I dislike some of the extremes Goodkind is willing to justify because of his philosophy. While at first the heroes were morally complex who would struggle with the consequences of some of their harder choices, in time it got a little hard to swallow. I refer you to the infamous "Evil Pacifist" scene from Naked Empire, in which a bunch of naive and backward people are brainwashed by the Imperial Order are in Richard's way. The form a human wall to keep him from killing the bad guys, whom they are convinced are the good guys. He slaughters them. Now, this could be justified if Goodkind had pointed out that it was totally necessary given the wartime situation and pump it up as the lesser of two evils. But no, the justification was that they needed to be killed because they lacked, and I quote, Richard's "Moral Clarity". Give me a freaking break.
Another problem that has already been mentioned: the Deux ex Machinas. Now, some were okay. As you mentioned, discovering a new thing about magic makes it seem like there's more to the world that we don't know. But others were just plain stupid.
For example, I refer you once again to the end of Naked Empire. Richard is dying from a poison, and the final necessary antidote has been destroyed. What is Goodkind's answer? Have Richard magically pull the recipe out of his ass, down to specific instruction on how to make it. No buildup, no foreshadowing that his Seeker of Truth powers also extend to magical chemistry, it just happens. Come on, that's just lazy.
And on that note, I also didn't like how Goodkind kept changing his own rules in order to accommodate his philosophy. Here's just one example. For a good chunk of the series, Richard can't eat meat or cheese or anything that comes from an animal in order to balance all the killing he does. All right, I can get behind this. Realistic magic and actual consequences for the win. But then, in Naked Empire (wow, that one seems to pop up a lot, doesn't it?), he discover that nope, that's a bad idea, as it means he has to admit that there was something wrong with all the killing he does, and refraining from eating meat starts to kill him. Um, what? The first time around he didn't even know about the "don't eat meat" problem and spat out a piece of cheese or something. And he seemed pretty okay with killing the bad guys at the time. And yes, there is something wrong with all that killing. It's horrible. Necessary? Yes. Do many of the people he killed deserve it? Yes. Is there still something wrong with people being killed? Hells yeah. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of the death penalty, but even I can acknowledge that killing is a terrible thing, even when it has to be done. So yes, kind of pissed about how Goodkind felt the need to remove yet another cool aspect from his characters because it got in the way of making Richard out to be Objectivism's Marty-Stu of a Messiah.
Non spoilerish issues, I also had a real beef with the Chainfire Trilogy, in that Goodkind felt the need to recap what's happened so far over and over again, as if we've forgotten everything we've read. This happened constantly, to the point where I was again skipping entire pages without missing anything important. I also noted that as the series went on, he must have had a falling out with his editor or something because I kept catching grammar and spelling errors.
Another beef: The Imperial Order. Or just about every bad guy. Is making them so blatantly evil that necessary? I'm all for a twisted villain, but that just was ridiculous. Did he notice that his heroes were starting to become somewhat unwholesome that he felt the need to make them seem good by making the villains absolutely repulsive? I mean, come on! The last book descended into cannibalism and had the IO's children using severed heads as soccer balls! One of the reasons why the Galactic Empire from Star Wars is so beloved is that despite definitely being the bad guys, they still had a lot of good going for them as a political government. It made things a little more morally ambiguous and therefore more interesting. But hey, if moral ambiguity isn't you thing, then at least don't make things ridiculous by making the villains feel like something Ask That Guy With The Glasses might fantasize about.
tl;dr, a great series for the most part, but it jumps the shark in a huge way and degenerates into endless preaching and sloppy writing.
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