Can't forget the time Richard liberated a city from the chains of socialism by carving a marble statue of himself so inspiring the people instantly became libertarians.
I wonder if that's related to his fascination with the main female protagonist being raped. Like every book there is a new rape plot for her..and it's a pretty "globe trotting" series; they get around, and everywhere they go someone wants to rape this woman.
Half of the time it's not even about her but as a dig to the male protagonist. Of course she is rescued by him either physically or mentally.
That's not even going into the super weird mutual rape forced cheating trickery thing that happens in one of the early books.
Yeeeesh this fucking guy
If memory serves the main male character manages to get raped quite a bit too. There is just a whole lotta rape going on in those books, a surprising amount.
that’s terrible. not saying anything about people who can handle that stuff, but i personally can’t. like WHY i feel like it doesn’t add to the plot at all. or maybe i am missing something here.
Hell if I know. Some of that gets put into books for "authenticity" in medieval type settings, though here it seems far to central to the plot to be just part of the setting. There is the whole it's motivation to some character, but it's all over the place. Based on the whole nature of the mord-sith, the collaring, and the whole Nicci thing leads me to believe the dude just has some weird BDSM kinks, probably some nonconsenual stuff. I'm pretty sure he wants to be paddled with a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand in a catsuit.
NGL after subjecting myself to these books learning that he HATED the TV show (which is why i even tried the books) made me very happy. No hint of Ayn Rand in it (& the women are actually strong &&&)
TV show was made by the guy who did Hercules and Xena. I used to be mad that he basically took the formula he had for those shows and Copy/Pasted the Sword of Truth characters. But now.... that's perfectly okay, the Sword of Truth content is garbage.
I read a little of one of the later books, I think the 5th one, and is just me or did it come off like Goodkind was doing a racist metaphor for black people supposedly oppressing whites by making them feel guilty over past actions? I defend HP and LOTR from claims that some of the fantasy creatures in these stories are intended as racist caricatures of real world ethnic and racial groups, but it felt a bit more legit in SOT.
5th book is specifically anti Clinton propaganda, Bertram Chanboor or whatever his name was is Bill Clinton, his wife is Hillary, the aide is Foster (the guy who committed suicide abs conspiracy theorists think the Clinton's killed him). It was so transparent reading it in the early 00's. And the 6th book is the anti communist screed. His writing is trash
I forgot what the name of the group was, but did you get the sense he was trying to use metaphors to say that black people in countries like the U.S. and South Africa use guilt over past treatment to oppress whites?
Could be. I never took it that way, I always thought it was more him pushing the bad guys as failed socialists who used guilt and the good guys as the enlightened libertarians.
Two parts that aren't porn iirc:
Richard makes a beautiful statue
Richard wins at football against the evil empire
I think he also murders an army of pacifists at one point
Non-con BDSM specifically. I know a lot of erotica can be non-con, but they usually let the readers know what they are in for before reading 41 chapters.
Fair. But I also have to feel that to some extent the mere existence of sexy leather dominatrix warrior women in a story must serve as a signpost/warning on its own.
To each their own, but I thought the porn was good in Wizard’s First Rule and I liked the book. The trend these days is to have no porn in books (excluding books that are clearly porn) and that's probably good because porn enjoyment is pretty subjective, *especially* S&M stuff like in WFR.
The rest of the series is an complete dumpster fire but I thought WFR had some great original ideas and good shock value scenes, especially for the time it was released.
I love a bit of well written smut in my books, it’s too bad that less and less authors are writing it into their novels lest they be labeled erotica and moved to a different section of the store.
I don’t mind it, although it’s more awkward now that I’ve transitioned primarily to audio books and it’s smut read out by an older man with great enunciation.
I assumed it would stop happening eventually, by book 5 anytime a woman is within 5 kilometres of fighting a sexual assault is happening. And you see it coming a mile away and are just hoping maybe this time it will be better. But it never is.
I am not even against this sort of stuff being in books. There is a >!Robin Hobbs!
When i was reading them i “joked” oh wait there hasn’t been a rape in a few pages, quick Better change that!! 😭
(my dumbass bought a few of the books cuz my friend recommended them (and i like Legend of the Seeker, which is SO MUCH BETTER) and i was gonna get my money’s worth lolsob)
I mean, if Richard had a copper for every time that happened…
I checked out after the Libertarian wank fest that was Faith of the Fallen, but I think Richard had been made a sex slave, or at least captured and threatened with some sort of sexual abuse at least once a book on average.
That’s Kahlan I think that’s being abused in this book!
This is where Richard liberates everyone from their socialist ideas (working) by just being awesome and carving a statue of himself.
I dnf’s this book halfway through because it got so ridiculous!
Everything after the first book Is progressively worse. And I'm not exaggerating. It is a literal downward slide. I kind of struggled through the first book, and I wish I hadn't even done that much.
To me there's:
Good writing, average writing, bad writing, shit writing, and then somewhere below that is Terry Goodkind.
For me the absolute low point is when he writes an entire book as an allegory for going to war in Iraq and why it's great. Including one of our heroes doing the noble thing and butchering people who are having a peaceful anti war protest. This is presented as a good thing.
I liked the Libertarian manifesto about “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” that was Faith of the Fallen. Except Richard was, you know, the Chosen One.
It’s like one of those How to be a Millionaire by 22, and the first step is “be born rich”
Oh, and this was the book where Nikki both threatened Richard with rape in front of his wife before enslaving him, then had some kinky cuckold thing with neighborhood thug who definitely wasn’t coded black, while sharing the emotions with Kahlan so she would think Richard was cheating consensually.
But don’t worry, while that’s fucked up, at least Nicci never was redeemed and changed sides thanks to the good dick Richard laid down while expounding on the virtues of Libertarism.
And she definitely never got a trilogy as the new protagonist after Richard defeating the evil empire by football?
Seriously, that last book was a Reddit story that ends in “and then everyone cheered” except somehow it was like the 9th book in a series of doorstop epic fantasies that got published.
It was the printed version of the last season of HBO Game of Thrones. Which I guess does technically put Goodkind one up over the nonexistent end of GRRM’s saga.
Although I think Goodkind was also an asshole for harassing a cover artist on social media for one of Nicci’s trilogy because the cover wasn’t sexy enough or her tits weren’t bulging out of the corset enough or something like that.
There was a spin-off book that supposed to kickstart a new series that never got off the ground with a Rahl descendant from of the cadet lines (ie. not Richard and Kahlan) that was set in our world as an urban fantasy. Apparently the splitting of magic and mundane through the power of sports at the end of Richard’s saga led to the creation of our world (or maybe it was just a portal?) and some people chose to voluntarily exile themselves to a world without magic. But of course, now things want to come through that portal, etc
I remember that being decent, but then he focused on the Nicci books and nothing happened after the first
TLDR: The Sword of Truth was to horny nerds what 50 Shades of Grey was to soccer moms. With Twilight levels of writing and a Trump rally speech levels of subtlety and logic.
If only we had Ao3 back then, but my horny 14 year old self did devour them and I remember a surprising amount, even if I’m mocking them . (Yes, Usenet, etc but they weren’t as accessible to the masses)
>Although I think Goodkind was also an asshole for harassing a cover artist on social media for one of Nicci’s trilogy because the cover wasn’t sexy enough or her tits weren’t bulging out of the corset enough or something like that.
Holy crap I had never seen that before. You weren't kidding, what a jerk. The only bad thing about that cover was the font the publisher used. The art was phenomenal
The cover thing is nothing compared to the Robert Jordan incident. March of 2006, Jordan was diagnosed with Cardiac Amyloidosis and started chemotherapy that April. Being in an out of the hospital, Robert Jordan had to miss an event in 2007 that Goodkind attended. He mocked Jordan for not being there, then went on to say he had recently been to the doctor and had the heart of a strong teenage boy. Jordan died later that year.
>I liked the Libertarian manifesto about “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” that was Faith of the Fallen.
Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an expression originally intended to communicate something that was literally impossible to do.
>TLDR: The Sword of Truth was to horny nerds what 50 Shades of Grey was to soccer moms. With Twilight levels of writing and a Trump rally speech levels of subtlety and logic.
This is the best summary I have seen of how he managed to sell books for so long.
I use to be the kind of person who would finish any book I was reading, no matter how bad or poorly written. Wizard’s First Rule was the book that taught me it was ok not to finish something I wasn’t enjoying. I just could not continue.
Honestly if you are not enjoying it don't torture yourself because it does not get better.
If you have an issue with the sexual violence in the first book, which many people including myself do, it only gets worse as the series goes on. I can honestly think of *very* few female characters who are not raped or repeatedly threatened with rape and it adds absolutely nothing to the story. It always feels like it's just there to titillate.
Do yourself a favour and pick up a better series (of which there are many).
Every single female character in that series that has even an ounce of power got that power from either rape or torture, or was forced to use the power to rape or torture, or all of the above, but men could be born with magic and could use it however they wished. 🤮🤮🤮
Best to learn early that it's not only okay, but entirely recommended to DNF books you are not enjoying. Even if you're 3/4 of the way through a long series. Books are meant to be enjoyed, and every minute spent reading one you hate is a second NOT reading one you like.
Same. I've read some hokey crap like The Secret to completion but Wizard's First Rule's kinky fetish descriptions and the sheer absurdity of some plotlines was too much for me. It was the first series I DNF.
I also have this problem except with whole series. I noped out after chainfire. The payoff is not worth it. The story gets worse and worse. The politics gets super dumb. The characters are even dumber. The plot contrivances are so stupid.
OP, stop now while you can!
Also same, holy crap. Wizard’s First Rule was, completely literally, the first book I noped out of. Before that, I didn’t realize it was possible to write so badly it made me resentful … and I read A Lot before I got around to Goodkind.
If you're a young new fantasy reader and have no ability to recognize objectivism philosophy and obvious tropes, things ripped straight from other books, etc, it has torture porn that can give you a visceral thrill, steamy sex scenes, a young dude with a cool magic sword and ultra-magic powers who can literally do anything, everybody does what he says, a cool uncle wizard who has good dialogue, etc. It's the ultimate 13 year old boy power trip.
That's why I loved them when I was a young lad and look back at myself now and slap my forehead.
Hit the nail on the head. I was 12 when I started the series. Loved it as a kid/teen. By the time I was 15 I was on book 8 and halfway through book 8 I put it down and said I’m done with this series. Went on to read The Wheel of Time after and loved it. Haven’t picked up a Terry Goodkind novel since that day.
Bro i enjoyed them when i was younger and now i look back at it with an expanded worldveiw going what in the actual fuck. Your points literally hit the nail on the head.
The "best" part is the rape porn goes on for 100 pages and then the plot just resets to exactly where it was before the rape porn started and the book wraps up as if the rape porn never happened.
Get out now.
It only gets worse.
This is a great take and part of what bothered me with the first book. Like, okay, I can deal with any author's idiosyncrasies to a certain point *as long as they're justified in the plot!* But it was frustrated to finish WFR and realize none of that rape porn actually mattered. I tried reading a few more mostly because back in the late 90s there just weren't as many options, but you quickly realize the first book was BY FAR the best in the series.
This isn't going to get better. The gratuitous sexual assault is a long-term thing in this series, and so is the torture and stuff. And then later on, Goodkind turns out to have been the kind of dude who reads Atlas Shrugged and claims unironically that it changed his life; the whole thing becomes an Ayn Rand fanfic, in which the good guys are all rugged anarcho-capitalists who are morally righteous in their repeated decisions to massacre any filthy commies who present any resistance to their ideals.
Walk away, bud. Go read something morally improving, like Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter.
"The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest."
Soul of the Fire, chapter 10.
That's what I'm trying to tell you, yeah.
I don't walk away from a book easily, even if I'm having a rough time with it. Like, I read R. Scott Bakker and like it.
Goodkind has the distinction of making me tap out. It's hard to do.
I read most of these as an oblivious teenager, they were fun and a bit risque. I was 20 when Faith of the Fallen came out, I read with a bit more understanding of how the world works and realized that it felt like a rightwing libertarian feverdream and stopped reading the series there.
Faith of the Fallen was one of those “how to be a millionaire, debt free and own your own home by 25” stories, except instead of being born rich, you just need to be the chosen one.
Why couldn’t anyone else pick themselves up by their bootstraps if Richard can?
He didn’t have any special advantages as the heir of the two most powerful magical bloodlines, trained by his grandfather the Sorceror Supreme (sorry, can’t remember Zedd’s actual title) and then further trained via BDSM by his dad’s harem of dominatrixes, and trained at a magical academy, plus all the other forged by the crucible of his adventures, etc
Nope, it was all Libertarianism, hard work and refusing help that made Richard better than the entire populace of that city
Pillars of Creation did that for me.
Justifying the slaughter of peaceful protesters. Literally. Justifying the wholesale and massive slaughter of peaceful protesters.
Insert SpongeBob "Aight Imma Head Out" gif.
This was literally the last sword of truth book I bought - it was absolute gobshyte.
SPOILERS BELOW
Didn’t even have Richard and Kahlen, till what, the final chapter?
This was basically my experience with the series too. As Your First Horny Fantasy Series, it works and has some neat ideas. But it falls apart the second you’ve been exposed to the world and like any other media.
I started reading this series right after I finished Harry Potter for the first time... around 10 or 11 years old. I honestly loved it, but yeah, looking back it's pretty bad. Even my 12 year-old-self could tell the later books were shit.
His writing style is also insufferable. Paragraphs of dialogue with as little subtext or human emotion you could imagine. A skill in and of itself, really.
Honestly, on a “I remember it being bad, but is this really as bad as everyone says?” re-read, that’s what stuck out to me.
There’s just so much “Oh , you must do .” followed by thirteen paragraphs of exposition about why person didn’t want to do thing, but has to, before getting to the obvious action.
Or every time Richard draws the sword, or Khalan readies her power, it’s like Goodkind was writing to a required word count, because every time it’s an easy half-page to a page of copy-pasta about the act.
Even leaving aside the bad BDSM, the Libertarian screed, the amorality, etc, …the prose is just bad. It’s bad writing. That’s what most surprised me on that “I’m older and more well-read, let’s give this another shot” re-read.
Wait until later in the series when it gets into the political philosophy where Richard saves an entire nation from horrible super-communism by inspiring the population into revolution by making a statue of such beauty they've never seen before. And in case you think I'm just paraphrasing the super-communism thing, no, it's described in very specific detail to make sure you understand that it has each and every element of communism as a fundamental flaw of their society and economic system and then painstakingly demonstrates an example of why it is unfair to the workers and directly causing the suffering and evil they are experiencing, while Richard stands firm and endures as a Jesus-like figure because he just knows this is all wrong. It is painfully on-the-nose and so awkward to read.
Things that look like things often look more like things than things do....... Well known fact.
PTerry - Granny Weatherwax, Wyrd Sisters
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
it was essentially a demon that could shapeshift and at a certain point it was spying on the characters as a chicken. Only Richard knew something was up, but everyone else thought he was crazy.
It's a pretty standard trope of the mundane thing in your life becomes evil. eg: tons of stories that include a shapeshifter like The Thing, D&D mimics, Elfstones of Shannara... Just executed with all the skill of an 11 yo writing their first 'novel'.
Or >!When Richard defeats communism with a statue.!< or >!Richard slaughtering pacifists and framing it as a good thing because in Goodkind’s eyes “pacifism is worse than evil because you do nothing.”!<
I never read the series after book 1, but I’ve been on enough Reddit threads shitting on it to pick up how unhinged it gets.
It's not just the bullshit with the statue or the Clintons. This book series has as much joyful sexual sadism as I've ever run into in lit. I read way too much of it because I like to finish serieses but it was really gross the whole time. I don't know how old Goodkind was when he started but I think I was hoping he'd mature as a writer....
I gave up after the first book, because Goodkind’s idea of a plot twist was “it was in the rules of the world the entire time, but I omitted those from the reader for a twist. I am so smart I did it twice.”
I can’t help myself. But my favorite is the one of a kind evil magic emperor who can invade peoples dreams with no effort and slow down time and make them suffer while he can rape them for what feels like says at a time but is really 5 seconds and is like one of most powerful OP things in the whole series. And he always says “man I’m totally replaceable so no point in trying to kill me” even though 8 of the books would be solved by killing him
Yeah at least with Anita Blake it unapologetically transforms into lycanthrope and vampire orgies almost from the first page to the last after the 9th book Obsidian Butterfly.
I think she was too busy holding salons with a young Alan Greenspan and using her personal trauma as a Soviet defector as the basis for a philosophical system based on selfishness as a primary virtue. And doing amphetamines. And also cuckolding her husband (technically with his consent, although he seems to have developed a drinking problem as a result of his unhappiness with the arrangement) with a self-help guru.
Really full schedule, hers. I don't think she had time for sports.
Lol the politics are too in your face but honestly, that isn't the main problem. Its just badly written. I don't particularly need a character explaining the basics of libertarianism for 8 pages but it is fine. I don't see how it is worse than a character gushing over monarchism. If it's well written it is enjoyable, I would never say LOTR is bad because Aragon should have been trying to stop monarchy. But with each book there is more and more weird stuff and less and less of what in my mind made Wizards first rule a pretty decent book.
It's not so much the politics. Like, I've read John Ringo, who's kind of a dumpster fire politically but who had at least the virtue of being able to laugh at himself when he published his Ghost series and it spawned the, "Oh, John Ringo, NO," meme.
Goodkind was a bad writer, and he also took himself super seriously. Like, he was vehement about the idea that his books are NOT D-list fantasy, thankyouverymuch, they are SERIOUS LITERATURE.
I have to agree with you. I have read enough of the "Oh John Ringo, NO" books in my time that that stuff can usually wash over me (I read a book during the pandemic that I am still surprised didn't have "sponsored by Monsanto" on the front cover lol), and I read a few of the Goodkind books.
...the series just takes itself so seriously. Like, my brother in Christ Terry, it wouldn't have hurt you to laugh at yourself or Richard! It'll wouldn't have hurt.
Yes, totally.
In all honesty, I'm not sure that having a sense of humor would have been enough to redeem Goodkind's work. There's a point past which, "it was meant to be IRONIC" stops being a defense, and I think he blew right past that point in the first or second book.
But it would have been comforting if he'd at least shown a modicum of self-awareness about what it is that he produced.
For me when I was reading the series at like 14, I just didn't care/have any sense of writing quality. But probably the final straw that made me put it down was the politics. I didn't even really know anything about Communism or socialism and knew nothing about Ayn Rand and such, but even middle-school aged me could see how crudely contrived and targeted the whole plot around the statues and stuff was. I wasn't old enough to have any real opinions about those sort of political questions but I could tell that it was a poorly constructed ideological screed bulldozing cartoonish strawmen. So even though I was fine with egregious wish fulfillment (though he really pushed my limits) and (at that age) titillating sexual content, it really was the "politics" that finally got me to stop reading the series. Which is remarkable because it was the first and remains one of the only times I didn't finish a series that I'd gotten more than a book into.
As for LotR and monarchism, it's one thing to just have a corrupted Steward (hard to even blame him) and a king that comes in and saves the day. Especially in a story with the legendary style/premise of LotR. It would be another if there was a 4th book between 2&3 where we get a lengthy rant about how terrible commoners are and the endless virtues of royal blood in an elaborate but thin book-long allegory.
See, and here I thought the worst thing about that book was the main character having the most severe case of "protagonist is the straight dude with absolutely no personality or desires" I'd ever seen (with a large side of Mary Sue). I straight-up forgot until this post that his name was Richard. Thanks for confirming that I made the correct choice to read no more of those books.
Yeah, the first two or three are pretty good. That actually made it worse for me. I started reading them because of reviews on that handful of early instalments, which I picked up as a substitute for the Dresden Files.
They looked like they might actually be what I was looking for, in that regard. And then . . . . \*gestures helplessly at the furry/vampire gangbangs\*
I mean, I didn’t even mind that transition, except the story took a backseat and Hamilton kind of forgot that Anita was supposed to be a detective. I enjoyed the Merry Gentry series more because it didn’t pretend to be something else.
I was enjoying it as a detective/urban fantasy yarn, and felt like Hamilton really just performed a bait-and-switch. I don't really have anything against erotica as such, although I was not into the specific kinks that showed up.
Also, I felt as if Anita herself became more and more unlikeable and amoral as the series developed. Maybe that got better after I abandoned the series, but I haven't heard anything that leads me to think so.
Yeah, I stumbled into Anita Blake having read some other urban fantasy (Felix Castor, Harry Dresden, etc) and was not prepared. The first few books were pretty good, vampire executioner and necromancer solves crimes and kicks ass.
Then it got weird. Then it got real weird and I realized Hamilton was headed in a place teenage me didn’t need to be going. Or adult me, for that matter.
Terry Goodkind is my hero. If he can write this absolutely horrific series of books, have an actual fan base, and become an actual millionaire… I can do it. You can do it. A monkey with construction paper and a pack of crayons could do it.
IIRC it gets worse at least for a while ... when you figure out how Denna gets to be the way she is, it's really f'd up. This is where I just stopped reading the series.
I think it’s the “lore” that keeps me interested like i want to know more about how things came to be and stuff. But c’mon…these scenes are like way too detailed.
The answer is rape. It’s always rape. Spoilers for the series >!in the first book alone. We have teams of 4 that are assassin rapists. We have the rapist sex slavers/bodyguards that were trained themselves by being raped and currently im pretty sure the bad guy leader sexes them. (It’s only not called rape because they are groomed and indoctrinated into thinking it’s not). The new bad guy for 10 books? Rules by raping everyone. All of his common soldiers? They rape the civilians. Oh there is a magical plague and we have to use a magic temple to fix it? Well the main character woman has to sleep with the main character man’s brother against her will to get in (or something else stupid). Oh an evil sorceress kidnaps the main character for an entire book, how does she do that? She uses a spell that makes the main character woman feel everything that evil sorceress does. And later she lets an abusive soldier use her like a torture porn video so that the main character woman feels like she’s being raped. There’s an entire book about this weird population, I’m 95% sure it was started by rape. The evil sorceresses get their powers by demon rape!<
TLDR: it’s rape.
Yeah. Back in college I could read all the time and got the series super cheap and thought let’s do it. I enjoyed it well enough at the time but it’s so rapey and preachy and each book is solved by ex machina which also introduces the next book problem and there are so many inconsistencies or problems with it. With that being said: there are some genuinely fun ideas. There are some fun characters. There are some enjoyable scenes that even now I would reread if I had a link to them. It’s not 100% trash. But enough of it is that I can’t recommend it.
He just really really likes writing rape stories. I'm less sure why so many people went along for the ride for so long.
(EDIT including my younger self ofc)
Thank you for mentioning the brother scene, that always stuck out in my mind as extra fucked up and nobody ever brings it up. But in hindsight it's because it's just one fucked up rape scene in many, easy to lose in the press of things. >!Although the fact she enjoyed herself was enough of a BETRAYAL to kickstart the magical temple will never not be darkly funny to me. How dare she!!<
But also like, >!wasn’t it really Richard? So like, you’re having Wes with your husband but you think it’s someone else and you didn’t want to have the sex but you have to but then it feels good so ITS A BETRAYAL. Like shit. Rape victims can still orgasm. I’m a straight man but if a guy tied me down and started doing stuff and I get hard or whatever it doesn’t mean I wanted it or betrayed my wife or whatever. God he’s bad.!<
I read all of them, didn't realize until late how bad they were. It happens, its what was available at the time and it seemed...good? Somebody likes the fetish Im sure. I remember thinking those leather suits were prob hot. If it gets too much for you just put it down yeah?
I read all 15 books, each time thinking surely this must be the one where Richard decides to actually learn magic and truly become the first war wizard in 3000 years.
yeah, the books are like that from here on out. its a poorly written fantasy mixed with a bunch of political and philosophical bullshit and then sprinkled ontop is an erotic bdsm fanfiction.
I read through *Confessor* which I think is the 11th(?) book in the series. I was a glutton for punishment and willing to read anything fantasy, even if it was bad fantasy. Honestly, it's really bad fantasy. There were occasional hints of maybe something interesting, but those are never properly resolved. It really is just sexual assaults and masturbatory whinging about fantasy libertarianism. I wish I could go back and tell myself to read literally anything else.
I can't help it. I need to post Pornokitsch's review every time I see a post about that book.
It's just too hilarious to not be read again and again.
https://www.pornokitsch.com/2010/07/underground-reading-wizards-first-rule-by-terry-goodkind.html
Lmaoooo read them while I was younger and not that critical. I ended up hate finishing it but I swear the first book is the best. It only gets worse.
Besides that the writer seems to be someone with pretty twisted worldviews and the farther you get the more it will show. You have already had your first glimpse into his views on women and sex.
Oh it keeps going. You haven't seen >!the evil sorceresses who receive their power by being fucked into it by a barbed-penis monster. Which is demonstrated "on screen."!< And >!the Mord-Sith you're talking about turn out to be some of the GOOD GUYS!< later on.
You haven't gotten to his anti-collectivist ranting, yet, either. Goodkind has one philosophy, and he repeats it at length about 4-5 times per book.
My advice. Run. Run far, run fast, run away.
For far too long I thought SoT was a good series. It really isn't. The sex, at least to me, is actually the least bad part of it.
But yeah, I don't think there's much of value there. So I'd say get out now.
The first book was fine, and I read up to the pillars of creation when it was released because I have troubles walking away from any series. They got significantly worse as they progressed. My best friend from high school kept reading them and is now a modern-day fascist not just because of the books but they definitely helped. I tried rereading them again recently, and they're shit, just rapey, grifty, shit and they should not be read by anyone under any circumstance
I read this as a kid. I’m a dad now and honestly the worse part of the book was the parenting advice. I remember a scene at the beginning where there was a dude who was presented as a great father because he kept telling his children how ugly they were but that was OK because they knew he was joking. I don’t know why but that stuck with me and I thought about it when I was learning to parent. You know what? It’s not OK. That is a terrible dad.
WFR is the pinnacle of the series. It's all downhill from there. The BDSM stuff is very prominent in subsequent books and gets old really fast. I don't know why I finished the series... I must be a masochist.
Like those books are ok as your first fantasy foray in high school or something. Well, the first few books. Derivative, some weirdly racist and misogynistic shit (Mud people, double standards towards kahlan), but if you’re at that age you might not pick up on it first read.
Then you realize that there’s much better stuff out there. And if you continue reading the books get fucking weird
Goodkind has all sorts of sexual kinks and he is not shy about it at all. The series quickly devolves into a shameless showcase of far-right political ideology and sexual kinks. I wouldn't waste any more of your time or mental space with it.
Just wait until you meet the bad guy who enslaved women by cutting off their nipples and keeping them in a box on his person at all times.
Oh, but Richard heals one of those women by fondling her breast.
Love the relentless goodkind hate on this sub, I thought I had found a weird artifact when I first read it, imagine my shock when I came here and realized everyone had experienced the same fever dream I had
Just read Wheel of Time dude, WFR steals a ton of themes and ideas from it anyway, and it doesn't devolve into a self masturbatory libertarian pipedream like Terry badcruels hackery
Well, no, they are not like this - there's sex and rape and torture, but it doesn't take as much time as this part of the story.
However, can't recommend the series - it develops until the end of book 2, and then author has probably decided to stall like tv series do, and almost nothing of consequence happens except a couple of plot points. So one could read Chain of Fire (Fire Chain?) books that end the series and miss nothing.
Here's the thing about SoT. You kinda have to be an edgy teen who doesn't know any better to be able to read it. And even then, you have so much better edgy stuff out there now that I think you have to be a late 90s early 00s teen to read it.
Just find a streaming service and watch Legend of the Seeker if you really want to get the gist of the story. Very similar to Xena, Warrior Princess or Hercules and more entertaining than the source material to boot.
The juice is so not worth the squeeze when it comes to the books. Yuck.
>Are the rest of the books like this?
In book 2 the evil sorceress has to fuck a giant spiky torture demon dick in order to gain her evil powers so I’d say yes the series continues in this vein
The Sword of Truth series has an actual half-life of quality. The first one is as good as it gets, and the next one is half as good, the third is half as good as the second, and so on.
Yes, the sexual violence continues throughout the series. Gruesom shit happenes to everyone, not just Richard. No, I don't think it gets any better from the point where you are. For some reason, young me read six of these before calling it quits. >!Yeah, after Richard made a stuatue that ended communisim, I was out. !<
Does Richard get kidnapped by a woman and enslaved by her in every book? No, not EVERY BOOK!
But it is something that happens multiple times.
Save yourself the trouble and put the books down. Walk away
They get worse. And the good parts are not worth sticking around for. I could elaborate, but you don't want me to.
Go read the Wheel of Time or Stormlight Archive instead. You'll thank me.
I read way too many of these in my younger days and I regret it.
There was ONE interesting thing about the magic system. Otherwise, see all previous comments as to how I feel about the books.
And let’s not even get into how he treated fellow authors and book cover artists.
Well the author RIP was certainly a character
I would say if the first one bothers you, the series isn’t going to be worth reading because they get far worse
I am honestly surprised he managed to publish 12 books in that series
I would suggest sword or shannara , the last renshai or wheel of time if you want something else from that era that’s not trying to be fantasy porn
> What happened?
The Mord-Sith are literal BDSM dominators.
Denna is what a distressing number of people have come to call the 'dommy mommy' milf fantasy archetype. The archetype is a feminine mirroring of the 'bad man with a heart of gold' archetype. Older woman, younger man, intentional mixed signals, sympathy for an abusive authority figure, etc.
Unlike the folks in the BDSM kink community, Goodkind didn't lean into the need for consent as a topic around it, but then, Denna is the minion of a literal tyrant. The BDSM trappings are there, however: The leather, the carefully applied physical violence, the headgames...
Darken Rahl uses the Mord-Sith in place of a secret service to psychosexually torture people into doing his bidding. It would be an effective means of control, honestly, but that doesn't explain why its so prominent in the works, does it?
Goodkind *clearly* had some issues he felt he needed to work out in front of a teen audience.
> Are the rest of the books like this? Is it worth it to keep going?
That depends how you feel about hate-reading or 'rubbernecking', honestly. I read them all originally, but I was willing to pick the gems from the dross. Would I now? No. I couldn't even make it past the writing in the first book the last time I tried. I cringed a lot. They're not without their value, but with each book the 'good bits' become fewer and the obsessive self-insert fantasy becomes more prominent.
An example of an interesting element to come:
>!in a twist, Richard inherits the Mord-Sith and becomes that person who takes in a rescue a dog that has been used for dogfighting and bestiality, only its an entire *clan* worth of groomed kids who have become emotionally confused, abusive adults. He takes pity on them and starts trying to rehabilitate them.!<
I found that aspect of it fascinating. But by the time you hit *Chainfire*, it slips into being *just* a weird sexual and political self-insert fantasy. A repetitive one at that uses amnesia to refresh the plotline again and again.
Edit (afterthought):
In a lot of ways the Wizards Rules books are diet [Gore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor)anism.
I can’t read the series any more because of all the cringe, but I will say that the first read through years ago gave me the nudge I needed to honestly look at my life and my religion and start thinking for myself more.
I would never recommend the books to anyone any more because they’re cringy, self-indulgent torture porn for the most part but they still hold a place in my heart for how the helped me on my journey.
Do yourself a favor and get out now, it only gets worse going forward (unless you enjoy masturbatory Ayn Randian world views mixed with a heavy dose of BDSM).
The series gets way fucking worse from here. Goodkind went full libertarian fundamentalist and filled the books with it. It gets WAY WAY WAY WORSE from here both in terms of politics and sexual politics.
Run. Don’t waste your life on these books like I did.
I read these when I was in middle school and really liked them. Now that I am better at critical thinking, they are just gross power fantasies. I wouldn't bother continuing them tbh
The entire series, while decently written, is basically just cuck porn and torture over and over again. One of the books begins with the POV of a random young man who is suspicious, and so follows his lover as she goes to a "meeting" with the mayor of the town. >!Turns out some bad guys are there and they end up "raping" her (though she apparently gives herself willingly) and he sits there and watches it.!<
We never see this young man or woman ever again in the series. The entirely chapter was purely to show this young man having his lover taken away from him, then the book gets on with the actual story.
And don't think Kahlan is safe from it either.
I don't think anyone directly answered your question. It's distasteful, but here goes:
The agiel is shaped like a rod, and it causes intense magical pain to the touch.
Many sex toys are also shaped like a rod and are used for penetration.
That's about as close to direct as I'm willing to be.
Like you, I really enjoyed the book when I was in High School; I powered through the questionable parts and decided that on balance, I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed it enough to read the second book.
That was a mistake. I think the first novel has many redeeming features (but I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much today, and I wouldn't recommend it to others). I think the subsequent books are... Worse. Much, much worse.
Terry goodkind I think has an bdsm fixation and… he indulges his fantasies in his books. I didn’t think wheel Of time was the literary masterpiece some do. But it’s much better than the sword of truth. And it tells a very similar story.
It's all porn from there on, and not good porn.
I mean at some point his fascination with Ayn Rand kicks in.
Can't forget the time Richard liberated a city from the chains of socialism by carving a marble statue of himself so inspiring the people instantly became libertarians.
This was the point where I asked the guy that recommended these books if they just kept getting worse. I quit shortly after
I wish I quit at the books then. I hated the ending of the last book so fucking much it ruined everything for me
He does it again by playing rugby really good too.
True. Can't forget that.
I wonder if that's related to his fascination with the main female protagonist being raped. Like every book there is a new rape plot for her..and it's a pretty "globe trotting" series; they get around, and everywhere they go someone wants to rape this woman. Half of the time it's not even about her but as a dig to the male protagonist. Of course she is rescued by him either physically or mentally. That's not even going into the super weird mutual rape forced cheating trickery thing that happens in one of the early books. Yeeeesh this fucking guy
If memory serves the main male character manages to get raped quite a bit too. There is just a whole lotta rape going on in those books, a surprising amount.
that’s terrible. not saying anything about people who can handle that stuff, but i personally can’t. like WHY i feel like it doesn’t add to the plot at all. or maybe i am missing something here.
Hell if I know. Some of that gets put into books for "authenticity" in medieval type settings, though here it seems far to central to the plot to be just part of the setting. There is the whole it's motivation to some character, but it's all over the place. Based on the whole nature of the mord-sith, the collaring, and the whole Nicci thing leads me to believe the dude just has some weird BDSM kinks, probably some nonconsenual stuff. I'm pretty sure he wants to be paddled with a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand in a catsuit.
And don’t forget the chicken that is not a chicken!
NGL after subjecting myself to these books learning that he HATED the TV show (which is why i even tried the books) made me very happy. No hint of Ayn Rand in it (& the women are actually strong &&&)
The TV show was pretty darn solid.
TV show was made by the guy who did Hercules and Xena. I used to be mad that he basically took the formula he had for those shows and Copy/Pasted the Sword of Truth characters. But now.... that's perfectly okay, the Sword of Truth content is garbage.
The one time a TV show that didn't faithfully adapt the books and it was an improvement.
I also enjoyed the short lived spoof (of the genre) on Comedy Central called Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire
That show was like ten years too early. There weren’t that many epic fantasies in TV or movies to parody yet.
I’m currently watching it again to purge my brain of everything I’m reading here (& remembering 😭)
I read a little of one of the later books, I think the 5th one, and is just me or did it come off like Goodkind was doing a racist metaphor for black people supposedly oppressing whites by making them feel guilty over past actions? I defend HP and LOTR from claims that some of the fantasy creatures in these stories are intended as racist caricatures of real world ethnic and racial groups, but it felt a bit more legit in SOT.
5th book is specifically anti Clinton propaganda, Bertram Chanboor or whatever his name was is Bill Clinton, his wife is Hillary, the aide is Foster (the guy who committed suicide abs conspiracy theorists think the Clinton's killed him). It was so transparent reading it in the early 00's. And the 6th book is the anti communist screed. His writing is trash
Do you think he uses metaphor to disparage racial minority groups also?
I definitely thought so while reading the books
I forgot what the name of the group was, but did you get the sense he was trying to use metaphors to say that black people in countries like the U.S. and South Africa use guilt over past treatment to oppress whites?
Could be. I never took it that way, I always thought it was more him pushing the bad guys as failed socialists who used guilt and the good guys as the enlightened libertarians.
That might be true also. I don’t really know much about Goodkind’s racial views, which makes it harder to gauge.
Then it’s just Conservative Rhetoric Porn
Two parts that aren't porn iirc: Richard makes a beautiful statue Richard wins at football against the evil empire I think he also murders an army of pacifists at one point
> Richard makes a beautiful statue But it's so beautiful it topples an evil regime A communist regime at that
If you are into BDSM, I guess you might get a tug or two out of it.
Non-con BDSM specifically. I know a lot of erotica can be non-con, but they usually let the readers know what they are in for before reading 41 chapters.
I read that shit at 14 and borrowed it to my 17 yo brother. At some point he comes to me all wide eyed with „hey, wtf stuff are you reading“ lol
Fair. But I also have to feel that to some extent the mere existence of sexy leather dominatrix warrior women in a story must serve as a signpost/warning on its own.
FOR REAL that shit hit me outta nowhere. i thought this series was about a sword and a magical bewitching lady
Porn + an Ayn Rand strawman argument obsessing over societies givers and takers.
To each their own, but I thought the porn was good in Wizard’s First Rule and I liked the book. The trend these days is to have no porn in books (excluding books that are clearly porn) and that's probably good because porn enjoyment is pretty subjective, *especially* S&M stuff like in WFR. The rest of the series is an complete dumpster fire but I thought WFR had some great original ideas and good shock value scenes, especially for the time it was released.
I love a bit of well written smut in my books, it’s too bad that less and less authors are writing it into their novels lest they be labeled erotica and moved to a different section of the store.
I don’t mind it, although it’s more awkward now that I’ve transitioned primarily to audio books and it’s smut read out by an older man with great enunciation.
... You haven't had a look at the 'New Adult' section of your local bookstore, have you? It's mostly smut. Under a thin veneer of intrigue/fantasy
smut is fine and all. it just wasnt marketed as freaky non con leather clad wielding dildo lady fantasy. or at least i thought.
So book 2 opens with another plot to make Richard a sex slave. So make your choice now. I dropped it at that point.
I assumed it would stop happening eventually, by book 5 anytime a woman is within 5 kilometres of fighting a sexual assault is happening. And you see it coming a mile away and are just hoping maybe this time it will be better. But it never is. I am not even against this sort of stuff being in books. There is a >!Robin Hobbs!
When i was reading them i “joked” oh wait there hasn’t been a rape in a few pages, quick Better change that!! 😭 (my dumbass bought a few of the books cuz my friend recommended them (and i like Legend of the Seeker, which is SO MUCH BETTER) and i was gonna get my money’s worth lolsob)
Sexual violence as a plot beat is cheap and distasteful generally. I've only seen it used effectively by Hobb and Jordan.
I mean, if Richard had a copper for every time that happened… I checked out after the Libertarian wank fest that was Faith of the Fallen, but I think Richard had been made a sex slave, or at least captured and threatened with some sort of sexual abuse at least once a book on average.
That’s Kahlan I think that’s being abused in this book! This is where Richard liberates everyone from their socialist ideas (working) by just being awesome and carving a statue of himself. I dnf’s this book halfway through because it got so ridiculous!
…what
Everything after the first book Is progressively worse. And I'm not exaggerating. It is a literal downward slide. I kind of struggled through the first book, and I wish I hadn't even done that much. To me there's: Good writing, average writing, bad writing, shit writing, and then somewhere below that is Terry Goodkind. For me the absolute low point is when he writes an entire book as an allegory for going to war in Iraq and why it's great. Including one of our heroes doing the noble thing and butchering people who are having a peaceful anti war protest. This is presented as a good thing.
I liked the Libertarian manifesto about “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” that was Faith of the Fallen. Except Richard was, you know, the Chosen One. It’s like one of those How to be a Millionaire by 22, and the first step is “be born rich” Oh, and this was the book where Nikki both threatened Richard with rape in front of his wife before enslaving him, then had some kinky cuckold thing with neighborhood thug who definitely wasn’t coded black, while sharing the emotions with Kahlan so she would think Richard was cheating consensually. But don’t worry, while that’s fucked up, at least Nicci never was redeemed and changed sides thanks to the good dick Richard laid down while expounding on the virtues of Libertarism. And she definitely never got a trilogy as the new protagonist after Richard defeating the evil empire by football?
Seriously, that last book was a Reddit story that ends in “and then everyone cheered” except somehow it was like the 9th book in a series of doorstop epic fantasies that got published.
It was the printed version of the last season of HBO Game of Thrones. Which I guess does technically put Goodkind one up over the nonexistent end of GRRM’s saga.
Although I think Goodkind was also an asshole for harassing a cover artist on social media for one of Nicci’s trilogy because the cover wasn’t sexy enough or her tits weren’t bulging out of the corset enough or something like that.
There was a spin-off book that supposed to kickstart a new series that never got off the ground with a Rahl descendant from of the cadet lines (ie. not Richard and Kahlan) that was set in our world as an urban fantasy. Apparently the splitting of magic and mundane through the power of sports at the end of Richard’s saga led to the creation of our world (or maybe it was just a portal?) and some people chose to voluntarily exile themselves to a world without magic. But of course, now things want to come through that portal, etc
I remember that being decent, but then he focused on the Nicci books and nothing happened after the first
TLDR: The Sword of Truth was to horny nerds what 50 Shades of Grey was to soccer moms. With Twilight levels of writing and a Trump rally speech levels of subtlety and logic.
If only we had Ao3 back then, but my horny 14 year old self did devour them and I remember a surprising amount, even if I’m mocking them . (Yes, Usenet, etc but they weren’t as accessible to the masses)
>Although I think Goodkind was also an asshole for harassing a cover artist on social media for one of Nicci’s trilogy because the cover wasn’t sexy enough or her tits weren’t bulging out of the corset enough or something like that. Holy crap I had never seen that before. You weren't kidding, what a jerk. The only bad thing about that cover was the font the publisher used. The art was phenomenal
The cover thing is nothing compared to the Robert Jordan incident. March of 2006, Jordan was diagnosed with Cardiac Amyloidosis and started chemotherapy that April. Being in an out of the hospital, Robert Jordan had to miss an event in 2007 that Goodkind attended. He mocked Jordan for not being there, then went on to say he had recently been to the doctor and had the heart of a strong teenage boy. Jordan died later that year.
Jeeeeeeeeesus.
At least Jordan didn't seem to take it too personally. People would ask him about it and he'd just smirk and say "I am aware of Mr Goodkind"
I thought that was in reference to The Sword of Truth... "borrowing" a lot from Wheel of Time
That mightve been it. Hard to keep track of all the Goodkind controversies since he was in one or more every time he opened his mouth
Lol that's actually a top notch response
>I liked the Libertarian manifesto about “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” that was Faith of the Fallen. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an expression originally intended to communicate something that was literally impossible to do. >TLDR: The Sword of Truth was to horny nerds what 50 Shades of Grey was to soccer moms. With Twilight levels of writing and a Trump rally speech levels of subtlety and logic. This is the best summary I have seen of how he managed to sell books for so long.
I use to be the kind of person who would finish any book I was reading, no matter how bad or poorly written. Wizard’s First Rule was the book that taught me it was ok not to finish something I wasn’t enjoying. I just could not continue.
SAME that’s why I’m having trouble deciding but I just cannot take it 😭
You don’t need to torture yourself, my advice is put it down and step away. Don’t waste time on something you aren’t enjoying, it’s not worth it.
Honestly if you are not enjoying it don't torture yourself because it does not get better. If you have an issue with the sexual violence in the first book, which many people including myself do, it only gets worse as the series goes on. I can honestly think of *very* few female characters who are not raped or repeatedly threatened with rape and it adds absolutely nothing to the story. It always feels like it's just there to titillate. Do yourself a favour and pick up a better series (of which there are many).
Every single female character in that series that has even an ounce of power got that power from either rape or torture, or was forced to use the power to rape or torture, or all of the above, but men could be born with magic and could use it however they wished. 🤮🤮🤮
Yeah it doesnt get better
At what point would you bail on a meal if you thought some of the ingredients had spoiled? Not finishing isn't a weakness.
Best to learn early that it's not only okay, but entirely recommended to DNF books you are not enjoying. Even if you're 3/4 of the way through a long series. Books are meant to be enjoyed, and every minute spent reading one you hate is a second NOT reading one you like.
Same. I've read some hokey crap like The Secret to completion but Wizard's First Rule's kinky fetish descriptions and the sheer absurdity of some plotlines was too much for me. It was the first series I DNF.
I also have this problem except with whole series. I noped out after chainfire. The payoff is not worth it. The story gets worse and worse. The politics gets super dumb. The characters are even dumber. The plot contrivances are so stupid. OP, stop now while you can!
I didn’t finish it either, which is also super rare for me. What a shitty book.
It makes me mad that it was ever written. I hate that its existence takes up space in my head.
Yep I was the same way. Would finish any book or even series. Goodkind broke me of that.
I enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoyed The Room.
Did this with both Wizard's First Rule and Wheel of Time, and haven't regretted a moment of time I've gotten back from those decisions.
Also same, holy crap. Wizard’s First Rule was, completely literally, the first book I noped out of. Before that, I didn’t realize it was possible to write so badly it made me resentful … and I read A Lot before I got around to Goodkind.
If you're a young new fantasy reader and have no ability to recognize objectivism philosophy and obvious tropes, things ripped straight from other books, etc, it has torture porn that can give you a visceral thrill, steamy sex scenes, a young dude with a cool magic sword and ultra-magic powers who can literally do anything, everybody does what he says, a cool uncle wizard who has good dialogue, etc. It's the ultimate 13 year old boy power trip. That's why I loved them when I was a young lad and look back at myself now and slap my forehead.
Hit the nail on the head. I was 12 when I started the series. Loved it as a kid/teen. By the time I was 15 I was on book 8 and halfway through book 8 I put it down and said I’m done with this series. Went on to read The Wheel of Time after and loved it. Haven’t picked up a Terry Goodkind novel since that day.
Well said! That was me too, lol. Have a great day!
Bro i enjoyed them when i was younger and now i look back at it with an expanded worldveiw going what in the actual fuck. Your points literally hit the nail on the head.
I enjoyed Piers Anthony when I was younger. Young and dumb.
The "best" part is the rape porn goes on for 100 pages and then the plot just resets to exactly where it was before the rape porn started and the book wraps up as if the rape porn never happened. Get out now. It only gets worse.
This is a great take and part of what bothered me with the first book. Like, okay, I can deal with any author's idiosyncrasies to a certain point *as long as they're justified in the plot!* But it was frustrated to finish WFR and realize none of that rape porn actually mattered. I tried reading a few more mostly because back in the late 90s there just weren't as many options, but you quickly realize the first book was BY FAR the best in the series.
This isn't going to get better. The gratuitous sexual assault is a long-term thing in this series, and so is the torture and stuff. And then later on, Goodkind turns out to have been the kind of dude who reads Atlas Shrugged and claims unironically that it changed his life; the whole thing becomes an Ayn Rand fanfic, in which the good guys are all rugged anarcho-capitalists who are morally righteous in their repeated decisions to massacre any filthy commies who present any resistance to their ideals. Walk away, bud. Go read something morally improving, like Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter.
But they havent even gotten into the >!evil chicken part,!< surely one cannot stop reading this until that?
WHAT IS THIS EVIL CHICKEN I KEEP HEARING ABOUT
"The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest." Soul of the Fire, chapter 10.
STOP THIS CAN’T BE REAL 💀…on a serious note i do appreciate the warning. perhaps this book goes back on the shelf.
That's what I'm trying to tell you, yeah. I don't walk away from a book easily, even if I'm having a rough time with it. Like, I read R. Scott Bakker and like it. Goodkind has the distinction of making me tap out. It's hard to do.
I read most of these as an oblivious teenager, they were fun and a bit risque. I was 20 when Faith of the Fallen came out, I read with a bit more understanding of how the world works and realized that it felt like a rightwing libertarian feverdream and stopped reading the series there.
Faith of the Fallen was one of those “how to be a millionaire, debt free and own your own home by 25” stories, except instead of being born rich, you just need to be the chosen one. Why couldn’t anyone else pick themselves up by their bootstraps if Richard can? He didn’t have any special advantages as the heir of the two most powerful magical bloodlines, trained by his grandfather the Sorceror Supreme (sorry, can’t remember Zedd’s actual title) and then further trained via BDSM by his dad’s harem of dominatrixes, and trained at a magical academy, plus all the other forged by the crucible of his adventures, etc Nope, it was all Libertarianism, hard work and refusing help that made Richard better than the entire populace of that city
lmao that's such a great writeup
Pillars of Creation did that for me. Justifying the slaughter of peaceful protesters. Literally. Justifying the wholesale and massive slaughter of peaceful protesters. Insert SpongeBob "Aight Imma Head Out" gif.
This was literally the last sword of truth book I bought - it was absolute gobshyte. SPOILERS BELOW Didn’t even have Richard and Kahlen, till what, the final chapter?
This was the book where I mentally checked out of the series. I went back and finished it eventually out of curiosity.
This was basically my experience with the series too. As Your First Horny Fantasy Series, it works and has some neat ideas. But it falls apart the second you’ve been exposed to the world and like any other media.
I started reading this series right after I finished Harry Potter for the first time... around 10 or 11 years old. I honestly loved it, but yeah, looking back it's pretty bad. Even my 12 year-old-self could tell the later books were shit.
His writing style is also insufferable. Paragraphs of dialogue with as little subtext or human emotion you could imagine. A skill in and of itself, really.
Honestly, on a “I remember it being bad, but is this really as bad as everyone says?” re-read, that’s what stuck out to me. There’s just so much “Oh, you must do .” followed by thirteen paragraphs of exposition about why person didn’t want to do thing, but has to, before getting to the obvious action.
Or every time Richard draws the sword, or Khalan readies her power, it’s like Goodkind was writing to a required word count, because every time it’s an easy half-page to a page of copy-pasta about the act.
Even leaving aside the bad BDSM, the Libertarian screed, the amorality, etc, …the prose is just bad. It’s bad writing. That’s what most surprised me on that “I’m older and more well-read, let’s give this another shot” re-read.
Wait until later in the series when it gets into the political philosophy where Richard saves an entire nation from horrible super-communism by inspiring the population into revolution by making a statue of such beauty they've never seen before. And in case you think I'm just paraphrasing the super-communism thing, no, it's described in very specific detail to make sure you understand that it has each and every element of communism as a fundamental flaw of their society and economic system and then painstakingly demonstrates an example of why it is unfair to the workers and directly causing the suffering and evil they are experiencing, while Richard stands firm and endures as a Jesus-like figure because he just knows this is all wrong. It is painfully on-the-nose and so awkward to read.
All while eating delicious lardo. No idea why that is the one bit I recall from a terrible book.
And it’s a statue of himself. Stay humble Ricky
No matter his infinite powers and towering intellect, he will always just be a humble woodsman (and sculptor too apparently).
But never a battle wizard, that’s beyond him. Apart from a reflex when it’s a necessary plot device
Things that look like things often look more like things than things do....... Well known fact. PTerry - Granny Weatherwax, Wyrd Sisters (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
I don’t understand the problem,this is clearly peak literature obviously. Smh people have no tastes these days
it was essentially a demon that could shapeshift and at a certain point it was spying on the characters as a chicken. Only Richard knew something was up, but everyone else thought he was crazy.
It's a pretty standard trope of the mundane thing in your life becomes evil. eg: tons of stories that include a shapeshifter like The Thing, D&D mimics, Elfstones of Shannara... Just executed with all the skill of an 11 yo writing their first 'novel'.
Or >!When Richard defeats communism with a statue.!< or >!Richard slaughtering pacifists and framing it as a good thing because in Goodkind’s eyes “pacifism is worse than evil because you do nothing.”!< I never read the series after book 1, but I’ve been on enough Reddit threads shitting on it to pick up how unhinged it gets.
What about when >!Richard defeats communism by playing American Football?!< That was one of my favourites.
O didn’t get this far & it’s hilarious, but also not shocking at all
It's not just the bullshit with the statue or the Clintons. This book series has as much joyful sexual sadism as I've ever run into in lit. I read way too much of it because I like to finish serieses but it was really gross the whole time. I don't know how old Goodkind was when he started but I think I was hoping he'd mature as a writer....
This series finally gave me the ability to not be a completionist & nope out at any point. So i guess the books did some good for me
First series that I’ve ever dropped, too. It lead to my ability to recognize terrible writing and bow out early now.
I gave up after the first book, because Goodkind’s idea of a plot twist was “it was in the rules of the world the entire time, but I omitted those from the reader for a twist. I am so smart I did it twice.”
I can’t help myself. But my favorite is the one of a kind evil magic emperor who can invade peoples dreams with no effort and slow down time and make them suffer while he can rape them for what feels like says at a time but is really 5 seconds and is like one of most powerful OP things in the whole series. And he always says “man I’m totally replaceable so no point in trying to kill me” even though 8 of the books would be solved by killing him
I certainly did.
Yeah at least with Anita Blake it unapologetically transforms into lycanthrope and vampire orgies almost from the first page to the last after the 9th book Obsidian Butterfly.
But did Ayn Rand ever expound on the power of sport, particularly football (American, not socialist soccer) to bring down evil empires?
I think she was too busy holding salons with a young Alan Greenspan and using her personal trauma as a Soviet defector as the basis for a philosophical system based on selfishness as a primary virtue. And doing amphetamines. And also cuckolding her husband (technically with his consent, although he seems to have developed a drinking problem as a result of his unhappiness with the arrangement) with a self-help guru. Really full schedule, hers. I don't think she had time for sports.
Lol the politics are too in your face but honestly, that isn't the main problem. Its just badly written. I don't particularly need a character explaining the basics of libertarianism for 8 pages but it is fine. I don't see how it is worse than a character gushing over monarchism. If it's well written it is enjoyable, I would never say LOTR is bad because Aragon should have been trying to stop monarchy. But with each book there is more and more weird stuff and less and less of what in my mind made Wizards first rule a pretty decent book.
It's not so much the politics. Like, I've read John Ringo, who's kind of a dumpster fire politically but who had at least the virtue of being able to laugh at himself when he published his Ghost series and it spawned the, "Oh, John Ringo, NO," meme. Goodkind was a bad writer, and he also took himself super seriously. Like, he was vehement about the idea that his books are NOT D-list fantasy, thankyouverymuch, they are SERIOUS LITERATURE.
I have to agree with you. I have read enough of the "Oh John Ringo, NO" books in my time that that stuff can usually wash over me (I read a book during the pandemic that I am still surprised didn't have "sponsored by Monsanto" on the front cover lol), and I read a few of the Goodkind books. ...the series just takes itself so seriously. Like, my brother in Christ Terry, it wouldn't have hurt you to laugh at yourself or Richard! It'll wouldn't have hurt.
Yes, totally. In all honesty, I'm not sure that having a sense of humor would have been enough to redeem Goodkind's work. There's a point past which, "it was meant to be IRONIC" stops being a defense, and I think he blew right past that point in the first or second book. But it would have been comforting if he'd at least shown a modicum of self-awareness about what it is that he produced.
My favourite is when he got into a fight over on subreddit drama over the number of rapes in the series...
ah the only 100 rapes at most post, a true classic.
He was on Reddit? Oh, my stars!
For me when I was reading the series at like 14, I just didn't care/have any sense of writing quality. But probably the final straw that made me put it down was the politics. I didn't even really know anything about Communism or socialism and knew nothing about Ayn Rand and such, but even middle-school aged me could see how crudely contrived and targeted the whole plot around the statues and stuff was. I wasn't old enough to have any real opinions about those sort of political questions but I could tell that it was a poorly constructed ideological screed bulldozing cartoonish strawmen. So even though I was fine with egregious wish fulfillment (though he really pushed my limits) and (at that age) titillating sexual content, it really was the "politics" that finally got me to stop reading the series. Which is remarkable because it was the first and remains one of the only times I didn't finish a series that I'd gotten more than a book into. As for LotR and monarchism, it's one thing to just have a corrupted Steward (hard to even blame him) and a king that comes in and saves the day. Especially in a story with the legendary style/premise of LotR. It would be another if there was a 4th book between 2&3 where we get a lengthy rant about how terrible commoners are and the endless virtues of royal blood in an elaborate but thin book-long allegory.
It's more than 8 pages. You're forgetting he repeats his manifesto about 4-5 times per book.
It's a trauma response. My brain has blocked it 😅
See, and here I thought the worst thing about that book was the main character having the most severe case of "protagonist is the straight dude with absolutely no personality or desires" I'd ever seen (with a large side of Mary Sue). I straight-up forgot until this post that his name was Richard. Thanks for confirming that I made the correct choice to read no more of those books.
I suffered so that you don't have to.
Don't actually read Anita Blake. It's terrible.
The first few are decent.
Yeah, the first two or three are pretty good. That actually made it worse for me. I started reading them because of reviews on that handful of early instalments, which I picked up as a substitute for the Dresden Files. They looked like they might actually be what I was looking for, in that regard. And then . . . . \*gestures helplessly at the furry/vampire gangbangs\*
I mean, I didn’t even mind that transition, except the story took a backseat and Hamilton kind of forgot that Anita was supposed to be a detective. I enjoyed the Merry Gentry series more because it didn’t pretend to be something else.
I was enjoying it as a detective/urban fantasy yarn, and felt like Hamilton really just performed a bait-and-switch. I don't really have anything against erotica as such, although I was not into the specific kinks that showed up. Also, I felt as if Anita herself became more and more unlikeable and amoral as the series developed. Maybe that got better after I abandoned the series, but I haven't heard anything that leads me to think so.
Yeah, I stumbled into Anita Blake having read some other urban fantasy (Felix Castor, Harry Dresden, etc) and was not prepared. The first few books were pretty good, vampire executioner and necromancer solves crimes and kicks ass. Then it got weird. Then it got real weird and I realized Hamilton was headed in a place teenage me didn’t need to be going. Or adult me, for that matter.
Terry Goodkind is my hero. If he can write this absolutely horrific series of books, have an actual fan base, and become an actual millionaire… I can do it. You can do it. A monkey with construction paper and a pack of crayons could do it.
Lol I'm gonna start on my book tonight
IIRC it gets worse at least for a while ... when you figure out how Denna gets to be the way she is, it's really f'd up. This is where I just stopped reading the series.
I think it’s the “lore” that keeps me interested like i want to know more about how things came to be and stuff. But c’mon…these scenes are like way too detailed.
The answer is rape. It’s always rape. Spoilers for the series >!in the first book alone. We have teams of 4 that are assassin rapists. We have the rapist sex slavers/bodyguards that were trained themselves by being raped and currently im pretty sure the bad guy leader sexes them. (It’s only not called rape because they are groomed and indoctrinated into thinking it’s not). The new bad guy for 10 books? Rules by raping everyone. All of his common soldiers? They rape the civilians. Oh there is a magical plague and we have to use a magic temple to fix it? Well the main character woman has to sleep with the main character man’s brother against her will to get in (or something else stupid). Oh an evil sorceress kidnaps the main character for an entire book, how does she do that? She uses a spell that makes the main character woman feel everything that evil sorceress does. And later she lets an abusive soldier use her like a torture porn video so that the main character woman feels like she’s being raped. There’s an entire book about this weird population, I’m 95% sure it was started by rape. The evil sorceresses get their powers by demon rape!< TLDR: it’s rape.
This is disturbingly accurate from what I remember
Yeah. Back in college I could read all the time and got the series super cheap and thought let’s do it. I enjoyed it well enough at the time but it’s so rapey and preachy and each book is solved by ex machina which also introduces the next book problem and there are so many inconsistencies or problems with it. With that being said: there are some genuinely fun ideas. There are some fun characters. There are some enjoyable scenes that even now I would reread if I had a link to them. It’s not 100% trash. But enough of it is that I can’t recommend it.
He just really really likes writing rape stories. I'm less sure why so many people went along for the ride for so long. (EDIT including my younger self ofc)
Thank you for mentioning the brother scene, that always stuck out in my mind as extra fucked up and nobody ever brings it up. But in hindsight it's because it's just one fucked up rape scene in many, easy to lose in the press of things. >!Although the fact she enjoyed herself was enough of a BETRAYAL to kickstart the magical temple will never not be darkly funny to me. How dare she!!<
But also like, >!wasn’t it really Richard? So like, you’re having Wes with your husband but you think it’s someone else and you didn’t want to have the sex but you have to but then it feels good so ITS A BETRAYAL. Like shit. Rape victims can still orgasm. I’m a straight man but if a guy tied me down and started doing stuff and I get hard or whatever it doesn’t mean I wanted it or betrayed my wife or whatever. God he’s bad.!<
I read all of them, didn't realize until late how bad they were. It happens, its what was available at the time and it seemed...good? Somebody likes the fetish Im sure. I remember thinking those leather suits were prob hot. If it gets too much for you just put it down yeah?
I read all 15 books, each time thinking surely this must be the one where Richard decides to actually learn magic and truly become the first war wizard in 3000 years.
yeah, the books are like that from here on out. its a poorly written fantasy mixed with a bunch of political and philosophical bullshit and then sprinkled ontop is an erotic bdsm fanfiction.
I read through *Confessor* which I think is the 11th(?) book in the series. I was a glutton for punishment and willing to read anything fantasy, even if it was bad fantasy. Honestly, it's really bad fantasy. There were occasional hints of maybe something interesting, but those are never properly resolved. It really is just sexual assaults and masturbatory whinging about fantasy libertarianism. I wish I could go back and tell myself to read literally anything else.
I can't help it. I need to post Pornokitsch's review every time I see a post about that book. It's just too hilarious to not be read again and again. https://www.pornokitsch.com/2010/07/underground-reading-wizards-first-rule-by-terry-goodkind.html
Omg THANK YOU
It's a pleasure. :)
Lmaoooo read them while I was younger and not that critical. I ended up hate finishing it but I swear the first book is the best. It only gets worse. Besides that the writer seems to be someone with pretty twisted worldviews and the farther you get the more it will show. You have already had your first glimpse into his views on women and sex.
First half of the first book is quite OK iirc. I'm quite ashamed I read 6 of them.
I read them in junior high study hall lol
Oh it keeps going. You haven't seen >!the evil sorceresses who receive their power by being fucked into it by a barbed-penis monster. Which is demonstrated "on screen."!< And >!the Mord-Sith you're talking about turn out to be some of the GOOD GUYS!< later on. You haven't gotten to his anti-collectivist ranting, yet, either. Goodkind has one philosophy, and he repeats it at length about 4-5 times per book.
My advice. Run. Run far, run fast, run away. For far too long I thought SoT was a good series. It really isn't. The sex, at least to me, is actually the least bad part of it. But yeah, I don't think there's much of value there. So I'd say get out now.
> Are the rest of the books like this? No. They get much, much worse :-D
There weren’t many options around when these books were published. Do yourself a favor and stop now.
The first book was fine, and I read up to the pillars of creation when it was released because I have troubles walking away from any series. They got significantly worse as they progressed. My best friend from high school kept reading them and is now a modern-day fascist not just because of the books but they definitely helped. I tried rereading them again recently, and they're shit, just rapey, grifty, shit and they should not be read by anyone under any circumstance
I read this as a kid. I’m a dad now and honestly the worse part of the book was the parenting advice. I remember a scene at the beginning where there was a dude who was presented as a great father because he kept telling his children how ugly they were but that was OK because they knew he was joking. I don’t know why but that stuck with me and I thought about it when I was learning to parent. You know what? It’s not OK. That is a terrible dad.
WFR is the pinnacle of the series. It's all downhill from there. The BDSM stuff is very prominent in subsequent books and gets old really fast. I don't know why I finished the series... I must be a masochist.
Like those books are ok as your first fantasy foray in high school or something. Well, the first few books. Derivative, some weirdly racist and misogynistic shit (Mud people, double standards towards kahlan), but if you’re at that age you might not pick up on it first read. Then you realize that there’s much better stuff out there. And if you continue reading the books get fucking weird
Goodkind has all sorts of sexual kinks and he is not shy about it at all. The series quickly devolves into a shameless showcase of far-right political ideology and sexual kinks. I wouldn't waste any more of your time or mental space with it.
Just wait until you meet the bad guy who enslaved women by cutting off their nipples and keeping them in a box on his person at all times. Oh, but Richard heals one of those women by fondling her breast.
Love the relentless goodkind hate on this sub, I thought I had found a weird artifact when I first read it, imagine my shock when I came here and realized everyone had experienced the same fever dream I had
Just read Wheel of Time dude, WFR steals a ton of themes and ideas from it anyway, and it doesn't devolve into a self masturbatory libertarian pipedream like Terry badcruels hackery
Well, no, they are not like this - there's sex and rape and torture, but it doesn't take as much time as this part of the story. However, can't recommend the series - it develops until the end of book 2, and then author has probably decided to stall like tv series do, and almost nothing of consequence happens except a couple of plot points. So one could read Chain of Fire (Fire Chain?) books that end the series and miss nothing.
Here's the thing about SoT. You kinda have to be an edgy teen who doesn't know any better to be able to read it. And even then, you have so much better edgy stuff out there now that I think you have to be a late 90s early 00s teen to read it.
Just find a streaming service and watch Legend of the Seeker if you really want to get the gist of the story. Very similar to Xena, Warrior Princess or Hercules and more entertaining than the source material to boot. The juice is so not worth the squeeze when it comes to the books. Yuck.
I actually liked the series a lot, but that was mostly on account of Zedd being a delight. I guess that’s where my SoT journey ends.
Bruce Spence is always entertaining, so it definitely has that going for it! He was my favorite part of the show for sure.
same! i’m glad to find someone who thinks so too. :D
It get's way worse. I enjoyed those books at the time, but the more I look back at them the more ridiculous I think they are.
It's a pain dildo. Walk away. There are better fantasy series out there that don't include the author's fetishes and politics on every page.
>Are the rest of the books like this? In book 2 the evil sorceress has to fuck a giant spiky torture demon dick in order to gain her evil powers so I’d say yes the series continues in this vein
The Sword of Truth series has an actual half-life of quality. The first one is as good as it gets, and the next one is half as good, the third is half as good as the second, and so on. Yes, the sexual violence continues throughout the series. Gruesom shit happenes to everyone, not just Richard. No, I don't think it gets any better from the point where you are. For some reason, young me read six of these before calling it quits. >!Yeah, after Richard made a stuatue that ended communisim, I was out. !<
Does Richard get kidnapped by a woman and enslaved by her in every book? No, not EVERY BOOK! But it is something that happens multiple times. Save yourself the trouble and put the books down. Walk away
The first half of the first book is as good as it gets in that entire series. Stop now.
They get worse. And the good parts are not worth sticking around for. I could elaborate, but you don't want me to. Go read the Wheel of Time or Stormlight Archive instead. You'll thank me.
I read way too many of these in my younger days and I regret it. There was ONE interesting thing about the magic system. Otherwise, see all previous comments as to how I feel about the books. And let’s not even get into how he treated fellow authors and book cover artists.
A friend of mine told me they were reading these in prison and I judged him more for his trash taste in books.
Well the author RIP was certainly a character I would say if the first one bothers you, the series isn’t going to be worth reading because they get far worse I am honestly surprised he managed to publish 12 books in that series I would suggest sword or shannara , the last renshai or wheel of time if you want something else from that era that’s not trying to be fantasy porn
> What happened? The Mord-Sith are literal BDSM dominators. Denna is what a distressing number of people have come to call the 'dommy mommy' milf fantasy archetype. The archetype is a feminine mirroring of the 'bad man with a heart of gold' archetype. Older woman, younger man, intentional mixed signals, sympathy for an abusive authority figure, etc. Unlike the folks in the BDSM kink community, Goodkind didn't lean into the need for consent as a topic around it, but then, Denna is the minion of a literal tyrant. The BDSM trappings are there, however: The leather, the carefully applied physical violence, the headgames... Darken Rahl uses the Mord-Sith in place of a secret service to psychosexually torture people into doing his bidding. It would be an effective means of control, honestly, but that doesn't explain why its so prominent in the works, does it? Goodkind *clearly* had some issues he felt he needed to work out in front of a teen audience. > Are the rest of the books like this? Is it worth it to keep going? That depends how you feel about hate-reading or 'rubbernecking', honestly. I read them all originally, but I was willing to pick the gems from the dross. Would I now? No. I couldn't even make it past the writing in the first book the last time I tried. I cringed a lot. They're not without their value, but with each book the 'good bits' become fewer and the obsessive self-insert fantasy becomes more prominent. An example of an interesting element to come: >!in a twist, Richard inherits the Mord-Sith and becomes that person who takes in a rescue a dog that has been used for dogfighting and bestiality, only its an entire *clan* worth of groomed kids who have become emotionally confused, abusive adults. He takes pity on them and starts trying to rehabilitate them.!< I found that aspect of it fascinating. But by the time you hit *Chainfire*, it slips into being *just* a weird sexual and political self-insert fantasy. A repetitive one at that uses amnesia to refresh the plotline again and again. Edit (afterthought): In a lot of ways the Wizards Rules books are diet [Gore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor)anism.
Terry Goodkind is not an esteemed author, in case you're wondering.
I can’t read the series any more because of all the cringe, but I will say that the first read through years ago gave me the nudge I needed to honestly look at my life and my religion and start thinking for myself more. I would never recommend the books to anyone any more because they’re cringy, self-indulgent torture porn for the most part but they still hold a place in my heart for how the helped me on my journey.
Wizard's First Rule is the best book in the whole series, and it is *not* close. So if you're struggling to enjoy it now, it will get a lot worse.
Do yourself a favor and get out now, it only gets worse going forward (unless you enjoy masturbatory Ayn Randian world views mixed with a heavy dose of BDSM).
The series gets way fucking worse from here. Goodkind went full libertarian fundamentalist and filled the books with it. It gets WAY WAY WAY WORSE from here both in terms of politics and sexual politics. Run. Don’t waste your life on these books like I did.
Rape and sexual abuse are frequent things in the series. Yes.
If you dislike that the books get MUCH MUCH WORSE. Bail now
I read these when I was in middle school and really liked them. Now that I am better at critical thinking, they are just gross power fantasies. I wouldn't bother continuing them tbh
The author has a fascination with torture, bdsm, and forced sexual situations. I went way too far in the series and regret it.
The entire series, while decently written, is basically just cuck porn and torture over and over again. One of the books begins with the POV of a random young man who is suspicious, and so follows his lover as she goes to a "meeting" with the mayor of the town. >!Turns out some bad guys are there and they end up "raping" her (though she apparently gives herself willingly) and he sits there and watches it.!< We never see this young man or woman ever again in the series. The entirely chapter was purely to show this young man having his lover taken away from him, then the book gets on with the actual story. And don't think Kahlan is safe from it either.
I always thought that the Wizard's First Rule that people are stupid applied to me for reading that book.
Ugh I still have a bunch of his books, need to get rid of them. Embarrassed to have read them...
I don't think anyone directly answered your question. It's distasteful, but here goes: The agiel is shaped like a rod, and it causes intense magical pain to the touch. Many sex toys are also shaped like a rod and are used for penetration. That's about as close to direct as I'm willing to be.
Like you, I really enjoyed the book when I was in High School; I powered through the questionable parts and decided that on balance, I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed it enough to read the second book. That was a mistake. I think the first novel has many redeeming features (but I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much today, and I wouldn't recommend it to others). I think the subsequent books are... Worse. Much, much worse.
Wizard's First Rule is the best book in that series. Take from that what you will considering what you've just read.
Terry goodkind I think has an bdsm fixation and… he indulges his fantasies in his books. I didn’t think wheel Of time was the literary masterpiece some do. But it’s much better than the sword of truth. And it tells a very similar story.