I just finished with pic related.And by "finished" I decided that I got far enough that I don't feel guilty at dropping this thing. I got to the end of chapter 21, or nearly 300 pages in, and all it's done is alternate between boredom, confusion, and annoyance.I looked at a few reviews to see if it gets better at this point. They just made it to the weird new land which normally means the adventure's finally getting going, but it's about 40% through the book, and it sounds like it doesn't get any better from here.
>>25556362Lol. I'm actually sad you didn't decide to finish it. Years ago Terry Goodkind got made fun of on a lot of book forums. I'm old enough that I was laughing with them since his characters tended to be rather pompous and ridiculous, the situations extremely contrived in a way to best show off his real world ideology, and the writing sometimes rather poor.Goodkind died a few years ago and I was genuinely sad, both for his fans, of which he had more than a few and because over the years I had grown to enjouy his books the way I would enjoy movies featured on Myster Science Theater.I'd encourage you to finish the book if you. The books in the series get more preposterous as time goes on.
>>25556362These types of books were essentially my "young adult" genre back in the days before that was a thing.Male version of romantasy, really.
>I tried to read something universally regarded as terrible and it was bad, how could this have happened?
>>25557448My mom has been shilling it to me for years, saying it would be perfect for me.She was saying that it was better than Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time by a wide margin.I read The Hobbit just before this one, so my initial assumption was that I was just more used to Tolkien's excellent flowery prose and narration. I thought I'd just need to set my standards to a reasonable level.For months now, I've been in a cycle of: Remember that I'm supposed to be reading this thing, picking it up for a couple chapters, realizing I'd rather do anything else, and putting it down for a few weeks.It was a poor choice for the second in a personal initiative to do more reading. I'm still trying to decide whether to next go with Lord of the Rings, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I read a short Sherlock Holmes story last night to tide me over though.
>>25556362The central weakness of SoT, as I remember reading the first 5 novels in the series, is the worldbuilding. Man that continent feels dead. On the west coast is forest, then practically nothing until the mud people village (very important location for some reason), then more nothing until the Rahlian Empire. Goodkind just didn't bother.At the same time, it's his amateurness that makes his novels fun. He was following his own rule of cool, running on pure passion for his shitty and confusing world full of rape magic and the sword of 'truth' which actually operates on anger. At the end of the day he made the Mord-Sith which fuelled endless adolescent fantasies, so I can't hate him.
>>25558222That's pretty much my impression of the book. It feels like what a teenager would write while trying to be mature.If it just tried to double and triple down, I might have enjoyed it a lot more. Make rule of cool the real driving force. It's the half-hearted attempts at being intellectual and smart that just come off as so insincere. Like the author is more so trying to convince himself than convince others. (and from what I've heard, that only gets worse and worse as the series goes on.)
Jerry Badmean
>>25557205Agreed 100% with this, reading them is like watching the development of Terry's objectivism psychosis.
I remember the endings of the 3rd and 8th novels being euphoric experiences for me as a teenager. It taps a root masculine energy - what it feels like to feel completely justified in slaughtering people.
Anytime I see a book series that's multiple volumes with each one being half or more the length of lord of the rings I always lose interest. All this says to me is that the author has no idea what his story actually is.
I am this poster >>25557205 chiming in again.>>25560233>Anytime I see a book series that's multiple volumes with each one being half or more the length of lord of the rings I always lose interest. All this says to me is that the author has no idea what his story actually is.I will defend Terry Goodkind and say that this is ABSOLUTELY not his problem. He has exactly the opposite problem. This anon said:>>25558222>The central weakness of SoT, as I remember reading the first 5 novels in the series, is the worldbuilding. Man that continent feels dead.YES. Every single character is not a character. They do not have emotions, thoughts, or motivations. Every character is a tightly wound spring that when activated springs into action to announce OBJECTIVISM GOOD. COLLECTIVISM BAD.That's why everything else in the world feels so flat, and lifeless. You know how JRR Tolkein spent years, decades devising languages and histories for his characters and stories? Goodkind actually despises that. Every character, every plot, every location, every scenario is there because it exists to showcase his ideology. Anything extra is superfluous.In those book forums I mentioned before there were often close, line by line mocking readings (and parodies!) of Goodkind's books.Over the course of the series these readings drew the conclusions that in Mr. Goodkind's worldview these things were BAD:CollectivismLack of moral clarityRapeLemmingsChickens (an evil chicken served as an antagonist in one of the books)Things that were GOOD according to Terry:Objectivism Having moral clarityRape (under certain highly specific circumstances)Goats
>>25560805Let me ask this then. If I read the first book, will it feel inconclusive and require me to read the next?
>>25561034>If I read the first book, will it feel inconclusive and require me to read the next?The first book was written with no expectation that there would be any more. The rest of the series only got greenlit after the first book was a success. The first book in the series is self contained.
