SFF Author: Terry Goodkind

THE SWORD OF TRUTH (books 1-10) by Terry Goodkind

Terry Goodkind’s first book, Wizard’s First Rule, was entertaining many years ago when I was a relatively new adult epic fantasy reader. Except for the actual First Rule (“People are Stupid”), which was… stupid. The story had some fascinating characters (mostly the secondary ones — I could never muster up much care for Kahlan) and Richard started out as a pretty good hero. The next couple of books of The Sword of Truth were also fun for someone who is not particularly demanding (which I wasn’t at the time).

Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind

The Sword of Truth, though a bit derivative, started off well and, while it has had its stops and starts, it has generally been well-worth reading.

Sadly, Naked Empire fails even the minimal standard of “if it’s in a series, you’ve gotta read it if only to know what happens.” So little of import happens here, and it’s so painful to get to what little does, that it simply isn’t worth it. The book is preachy, talkative, dogmatic, repetitive, one-sided, and simplistic,

Confessor by Terry Goodkind

Confessor is the last book in Terry Goodkind’s epic fantasy/philosophy series The Sword of Truth. When the series began, many readers thought this book would be a great fantasy trilogy, short and sweet. It quickly blossomed into eleven novels, each 500 or more pages in length, and the novella Debt of Bones. Throughout that time, it generated a lot of criticism from fans of speculative fiction and professional critics. Yet each novel has consistently stayed at the top of many bestseller lists,