About Terry Goodkind

The links in this article lead to Wikipedia (English).

Terry Goodkind is American fantasy author. His story's main character is Richard Cypher, who lives in continent divided to three parts; in the western part (his home) there is no magic; this part is also mostly forrest and smallest of the three; people hunt and have small villages and some sort of council, but thats it. The middle part is much bigger, with kingdoms, magic and magical creatures and such. And to the east there is one more area, which is one huge kingdom ruled by Lord Rahl.
The parts are divided by barriers, which now come crashing down. Lord Rahl attacks the Midlands, and the Spokesperson of the Council of Midlands (that has representative of the kingdoms), the Mother Confessor, goes to West to found the First Wizard, who left Midlands years ago. Only he would appoint a new Seeker of Truth. With Seeker and the First Wizard, maybe Midlands could fight back...

Richard Cypher gets to be the Seeker. With Mother Confessor and the First Wizard, he travels thru the continent. Lord Darkhen Rahl is trying to find the Boxes of Orken, which would, with proper rites, make him the ultimate ruler - indeed, the God - of the world. One of the boxes must be secured until one year has passed - thats the timelimit to Rahl to do the rites, if he fails he will die.

The first books are really interesting, and I kept my nose deep in the books till I had them read. While the writing wasnt exactly superb, they had this spirit of joy in them. You usually knew what happened next, but that didnt stop the books from being fun.

Each of the books is more or less stand-alone. Darkhen Rahl meets his fate in the first book, and the next book starts immediately after, by revealing the new threat to be solved. This works pretty well.

Then happens so that Mr. Goodkind finds Ayn Rand's books Atlas Shrugged and the philosophy of Objectivism*. He is so deeply taken by the idea that he has to corporate them into his own books. And so he has to start doing retcons, usually pretty bad ones. In the end this leads to the point where Richard, in the beginning of the series pretty blue-eyed "let's help people", "killing and slaving people is wrong" and "there is more than one truth", becomes very like how Lord Rahl is potrayed. [ Though the writer himself dosent apparently realize this ]

I stopped reading in the book eight, Naked Empire, where Richard finds a large valley where people live in undeveloped community. They have houses, they farm, have cattle, but they tactics are primitive, making, for examble, houses with two or more floors impossible. The people used to be really happy. While most people have their own house for privacy, they prefer to sleep together in big barracks, to streghten the community. Everything important is shared, owned by community. Everyone is happy, no one is violent. This changes as the "villain of the week" has found the valley and promptly went on to make the people there their subjects. The subjects dont rebel; they believe that if they do what they are asked to do, maybe the bad men go away. Even the deaths and rapes of their wives and children are not enough to make them forsake their peaceful philosophy.

Richard finds the valley, promptly agitates several people to rise arms. In one scene, he and his men attack the building where the enemy is hiding. However, the villain has sinister tactic; instead of attacking (he knew Richard was coming), he has alerted the locals of the coming attack. They promptly make signs and make human chain that circles the building. They shout stuff like "KILLING IS WRONG!" "DONT DO WAR!" and so on. The enemy soldiers keep their swords in their sheats, as Richard attacks. Seeing how the locals dont step aside, he orders his men (family and neighbors of the protestors) to kill the demonstrators, which they do (cos Richard has magnetic personality).

All in all, the last books are more and more manifests for the case of Objectivism; Richard might stop to make speeches that are nearly ten pages long; someone counted that nearly half of the book eight is such speeches.

However, the first books are really interesting reads, and while not that well written, they have energy that might make them worth your while. Book six is clearly affected by the philosophy, but Richard still goes and finds more or less peaceful way to solve the problems; later he just kills everyone who dosent see the the world like he does. Because only he is right; and if others dont see it, they are wrong and have done their choice and deserve death.

*In case you are not interested in the Wikipedia link, all that needs to be said is that the philosophy is "each for themselves, and screw the others". You cant depend on other people, and neither should you depend on others; that makes the dependant weak, and will never grow strong. While Rand has a point, her view is hard and offers no compromise. The philosophy dosent recongize "helping the other back on its feet".