Terry Goodkind

[Brian G Turner]

Heather, I've removed your first comment as inappropriate - this is a family friendly website, so if you can't censor your own language, I'll have to do that for you.

Also, not sure what your complaint it - Terry Goodkind has always been very vocal about his books, and has certainly disclaimed them as fantasy for the public record.

 

[Clansman]

Terry Goodkind does not make me uncomfortable. Only a good writer could make me uncomfortable. I just got mad at myself for wasting my time on bad books (I can't believe I made it to Naked Empire hoping the series would get better). He is just a bloody poor writer, despite his commercial success (proof that with the right marketing, the book written by the monkeys on typewriters could be a bestseller).

The books are repetitive, his characters are wooden, the good guy is "perfect", and the bad guys are so bad as to be parodies. I mean, surely the villain twirling his moustache is a little passe. The plots are very weak, and much of The Sword of Truth is a rip-off (quite a bad one, at that) of The Wheel of Time, itself a series with some major flaws, but of much higher quality than the hopelessly trite junk that Goodkind writes.

Literature is something that survives the test of time. Fifty years from now, TG will be out of print, and archived away in databases here and there, but of no importance to the Library of English Literature generally.

 

[Boneman]

Literature is something that survives the test of time. Fifty years from now, TG will be out of print, and archived away in databases here and there, but of no importance to the Library of English Literature generally.

I was kinda hoping five years would do it... And I read the whole lot! Kept thinking 'it can't get worse', but it did!

 

[J-WO]

Of course, it could go the opposite way. Goodkind is just bats**t enough to have sealed his entire work in a nuclear bunker and it'll be the only piece of literature perpetuity will have to judge us by.

Don't have nightmares.

 

[Moggle]

Terry Goodkind does not make me uncomfortable. Only a good writer could make me uncomfortable. I just got mad at myself for wasting my time on bad books (I can't believe I made it to Naked Empire hoping the series would get better). He is just a bloody poor writer, despite his commercial success (proof that with the right marketing, the book written by the monkeys on typewriters could be a bestseller).

The books are repetitive, his characters are wooden, the good guy is "perfect", and the bad guys are so bad as to be parodies. I mean, surely the villain twirling his moustache is a little passe. The plots are very weak, and much of The Sword of Truth is a rip-off (quite a bad one, at that) of The Wheel of Time, itself a series with some major flaws, but of much higher quality than the hopelessly trite junk that Goodkind writes.

Literature is something that survives the test of time. Fifty years from now, TG will be out of print, and archived away in databases here and there, but of no importance to the Library of English Literature generally.

Who exactly are you responding to?

I always get a good chuckle out of all the people who complain over and over how awful the SOT books are, and what a terrible writer Goodkind is and how they can't stand the author and his stories, and then you find out they've read most if not all 11 books, lol. Way to reinforce your arguments!

 

[Clansman]

Who exactly are you responding to?

I always get a good chuckle out of all the people who complain over and over how awful the SOT books are, and what a terrible writer Goodkind is and how they can't stand the author and his stories, and then you find out they've read most if not all 11 books, lol. Way to reinforce your arguments!

My post was a general response, not specific.

My arguments are as strong as they can be for having read TG's tripe as far as I did. How could I reinforce my opinions of a book if I hadn't read it? I am a reviewer with Fantasy Literature's Fantasy Book and Audiobook Reviews, and often have had to read books that I did not like, or utterly loathed. The SOT series started off fairly well, a not-bad first novel, and I kept reading, getting more disappointed with each novel. The ridiculous story kept spinning on, without any hint of a resolution in sight. I read the books because despite their poor quality, they have been marketed very heavily, and as a result have achieved significant sales, therefore achieving a level of importance that required a review (otherwise the site would be irrelevant).

Would that publishers pushed some quality writers (Paul Kearney comes immediately to mind) who struggle due to a lack of sufficient advertising and marketing support from their publishers.

The books got steadily worse, and very repetitive, and I realized that I couldn't stand reading and hoping the story would get better. TG's story is so obvious, it is like he is running for office on the motherhood platform, and then there is the increasing preachiness of Faith of the Fallen and Naked Empire (where I gave up). TG set up the bad guys to look like the loyal servants of pure evil (i.e. socialism of any kind, but socialism equals communist totalitarianism in TG's mind), instead of presenting them as understandable human beings who loved their kids and spouses and put their pants on one leg at a time. TG's bad guys were straw men of utter vileness, often comic parodies of characters, set up for the ever-so-perfect Richard Rahl to knock down without a lot of difficulty. Very unrealistic and childish. Trite, as I said in my first post. Richard Rahl good. Opposers to his will bad. TG loyal fans good. TG critics (i.e. "haters") bad.

I used to read even very bad books to the bitter end, because I felt I had to (having purchased the book). TG's Sword of Truth cured me of that horrible affliction. I have no trouble setting aside toilet twaddle quality books anymore, because life is simply too short to read bad books.

Sword of Truth sucks rotten eggs, as a whole, up to Naked Empire. Why do I say that? Because I actually read that far, so I am entitled to the opinion. The first book was 3 stars at best, and then they steadily declined in quality from there with each successive volume. How you expect anyone with a negative view to have not read the books to have a valid opinion defies logic. I will say that the series may have gotten better after Naked Empire (not bloody likely), but I will never know, because TG ran out of chances with me.