Terry Goodkind Wizard Rules

please don't compare goodkind to gemmel :( even if they may have a few similiar themes, they're miles apart in talent.

i read goodkind. four books at least, so i think i can comment on that at least. i couldn't have read the rest. i just couldn't have stomached any more rape. *shrug* and the chicken scene, well it scared my friend ken, but it just made me cry with laughter. im sorry. there's just nothing scarey abotu a chicken, even a demented one. seeing it out of context does, perhaps, take away some of the tension and atmosphere that would be there if we read the whole thing and knew the setting and so on. but it still wouldn't change the fact that it's a chicken. *shrug*

but don't put yourself down! just because you're young, doesn't mean you're not smart or you are misguided or that your views don't matter. because they do :) you may love the series when you're far older and wiser too (my friend ken loves them and he's 27 and graduated cambridge. age and intellegence has no bearings on what you like or what you thik :)) it's just that i don't like them myself. don't let what we say ruin it for you or make you doubt your own opinions. you thik what you want :)

hi 'the faery queen' do you live in Swansea Australia N.S.W cause i'm in Newcastle.

My personal opinion about Gemmel Vs Goodkind is that Gemmel is a pretty simple writer compared to Goodkind. Gemmel has the same themes through most of his books (except lion of macedon/dark prince, rigante series and his single books) with small numbers of people triumphing over greater odds etc etc. Whereas from my point of view Goodkind has amazing ideas and the way he drops little tibits of information to get you thinking and then ties them all in is simply brillant and found myself becoming a seeker of truth.

And yes i agree the rape and violence is a bit much personally i got a bit freaked out reading the part when Richard was captured by the mord sith. But don't get me wrong i like Gemmel so much i bought his complete workings read his books two and three times and can't wait for the final book in his Troy Trilogy.

A few people i talked get dishearted around Goodkinds third and fourth book and yes it is a little dry but once i start something i have to finish it, but you missed out on some brillant books in his 'faith of the fallen' (6), 'chainfire' (9), and 'phantom' (10). When i first read Phantom i could not put it down, i read it in about 3 days, this one is amazing and sets it up for a great finsh that i can't wait for.

Your right it is people's personal opinion, most writers i read i really like and am not really a very criticising person and nothing anyone says will change my opinion of what i like and dislike.

Each year i get older i look back on things i've said and done and say 'what was i thinking' and hope as i get older and wiser that i will continue liking the writers i have already read. It's a damm shame we have lost a writer as good as David Gemmel:(
 
Well, according to that hack Goodkind, he doesn't write fantasy novels. His are much more serious than that. He's just an arrogant SOB. Although I discovered that his books are good for lighting campfires.
 
They are also good for making a few extra dollars on Ebay. Although saying that, I saw badunkind's latest paperback in the $4.99 bin at the bookstore a couple of days ago, so maybe they wouldn't really fetch all that much anymore...
 
no, swansea uk. :) the original :p

and yues, i agree, gemmel does repeat things. many of his characters are pretty much the same, the sexy archer woman, the messed up warrior man. BUT for me, i love them. they're all well done so that even if they are pretty much the same basic type, they're interesting to read. i never had that for goodkind. i couldn't STAND kahlan or richard. and zedd or whatever his name was was just belgarath in my mind. and for me, as a character writer/reader, if the characters don't work, im not going to care about the plot. not that i personally found the plots that interesting, more tacked on. like, bla bla, oh a temple has appeared. next book, lets explore. bla bla, something else happens, and the book after is all about that something else. *shrug*

richard's rape with mord sith? to be honest, i never noticed it. i really didn't. for me the rape that i remember and that utterly put me off was the one at the school. it was totally unneccessary, and in my mind it summed up the writer's attitude to rape, that bad girls suffer with rape and painful sex, and the good girls don't (for the most part) and it was just so graphic, so pointless. that was the end for me. having stomached all the other littl ebits of violence to women, that was the end.

i don't really think goodkind is particularly complicated. as i said, i felt more than he tacked things on. martin on the other hand, that's complicated :)
 
Essential tools for any Goodkind discussion:

1: The Goodkind Crib Sheet.

for the uninitiated, here is a brief Goodkind crib sheet:

* Richard Rahl is the hero. He wields the Sword of Truth, which has the word "Truth" embossed on the handle. He is also a War Wizard, which is basically a type of rare wizard that can do all sorts of special magic. He is used as the paragon of morals and virtue, and of Objectivist doctrine. He wears what is described as a "war wizard outfit."

* While being tortured by the enemy, Richard used his magic power to kick an (evil) 8-year-old girl in the jaw in a convoluted escape plot; the phrase used by Goodkind to describe this power is "Richard's thing rose up in him".

* In one book, Goodkind creates a nation of pacifists as a strawman argument to display why Pacifism is Wrong. The pacifists stage a peaceful demostration to stop Richard from going to war; Richard slaughters the protestors, who are "armed only with their hatred for moral clarity."

* Richard learns super fighting skills just by holding his sword; he also learns things like how to grab arrows out of the air and advanced algebra. Later, he can learn this from any sword, not just a magic one.

* Richard, while captured by the enemy, manages to steal a sword by pretending to stretch, then kills several dozen soldiers before being captured again. The captain of the guard is so impressed that he asks Richard to be on his sports team. (Yes, this really happens!)

* Richard makes very long speeches. Very, very long speeches.

* Richard's latest battle tactics are simple - his army of D'Harans is too small to take on the huge enemy army, so instead he orders them to go to the enemy homeland and slaughter all the civilians, removing the ears of anyone who preaches the enemy faith. Because this is the only moral thing to do.

* Kahlan is Richard's wife, and a Confessor, which gives her the power to magically bind men to her will as permanent slaves. She is almost raped at least 9 times throughout the series, but always manages to escape/be rescued in the nick of time. On one occasion, she is attacked by a chicken "...but it was not a chicken. It was evil incarnate." It has an evil cackle.

* At one stage, Kahlan has to lead an small army in a fight against a large one, in winter. Her cunning plan is to have all the soldiers strip naked and paint themselves white, so the enemy will think they are ghosts. Surprisingly, this works.

* One of the enemy soldiers breaks into Kahlan's camp and kills a wizard. Kahlan orders that he be tortured to death slowly over several hours.

* Betty is a goat, who is noble (I'm not sure why). Betty is possessed by an evil spirit, but rescued by Richard.

* Zeddicus Zul Zoroander is a wizard, and also Richard's grandfather and mentor. He says "Bags!" a lot; this is possibly intended to be a swearword.

* Gratch is a gar, a type of furry dinosaur. Richard befriends the orphaned Gratch, but later has to drive him away to save his life. Gratch later returns with an army of gars to save Richard in the middle of a battle. Gratch says "Gratch luuuug Raaach Arrrrg" a lot; apparently this means "Gratch loves Richard."

* Nicci is an evil sorceress who likes to torture people. She is converted into a good guy when Richard carves a statue of Life (a man and a woman looking happy and alive, or something) and she falls to her knees and weeps with joy. She avoids recognition by taking her top off; the men are so distracted by her boobs that then never look at her face.

* Nicci tries to seduce Richard; her plan is to have sex with his brother in front of him and invite him to join in. She is surprised when this doesn't work.

* Nicci still tortures people in the service of the good guys, but now it's OK because she's doing it for the right reasons.

* Drefan is Richard's brother, or maybe he isn't really (not sure about this). He starts off pretending to be a good guy, and then tries to outlaw fire with a moving speech about a housefire that reduces the crowd to tears. He then turns out to be bad, but Richard kills him by ripping his spine out through his stomach. Despite this, he is still able to have one last go with a sword before expiring.

* Darken Rahl is the first bad guy, who turns out to be Richard's father, is killed by Richard at the end of the first book, but still manages to come back in several sequels. He had a cult of "Lord Rahl worshippers" - these worshippers now worship Richard. His female leather-clad torturers, the Mord Sith, now also serve Richard.

* Jagang is the leader of the Imperial Order, who are the main bad guys. Their philosophy is a ******* mix of communism and Islam, where everyone has to serve the collective and will go to heaven if they die in battle (or somesuch). Goodkind spends several pages at a time detailing the atrocities committed by the IO, in case we were in any doubt about whether they were the bad guys. They also make captured enemies eat their own testicles.

* A Yeard is a word born of a typo, which now means the type of beard/ponytail combination sported by Goodkind himself.

* Goodkind has some trouble with irregular past participles; he also overuses the words "thing" and "instantly," and parts of anatomy behave in peculiar ways (especially eyes). Many points are stated and re-stated to the point of utter redundancy.

* Ayn Rand is Goodkind's hero. People who Goodkind disapproves of are treated in other ways, such as the evil emperor Bertrand Chambor and his evil wife Hildemara, apparently based on the Clintons...

and naturally:

2. WLU's Post from Westeros which sums up the anti-GK position.

Goodkind's appeal is like McDonald's appeal. It's quick and easy to eat (read), it tastes good (it is satisfying on a basic level), it's easy to digest but wreaks havoc on your body (it takes very little reflection to swallow and destroys your ability to critically analyze), and if you really thought about what goes into it, you wouldn't eat there (actual reflection reveals the intensely harmful, shallow and desensitizing nature of the writing and world).

Goodkind's writing taps into basic human instincts, and I mean like, caveman basic. It's the same instincts that make you slow down for a car accident, turn and look when you think you see a naked person, and cheer on [national event] Day. It's the novel equivalent of a slasher flick - a bit of violence, a bit of tits, and in the end the good guy wins. It's not news, its olds. It's Cops, Montel, Sally Jesse, TLC presents the World's Fattest Man. It's news about the guy who kept a girl locked in his basement for 5 years then killed himself on a set of railroad tracks. Worse, it's a fly-on-the-wall view of what happened in the basement, then the train running over his head. It's every movie where the good guy gets beat to a pulp, but somehow manages to get up and win. It's the War on Drugs propoganda without the CIA forcing people to chose between growing the only viable crop in their dry, nutrient depleted soil while there's a gun pointed to their head or starving.

People want to see gross things, horrible things, but they also want in the end to see the bad guys punished and the good guys to win. Everyone is safe, even if they have to go through something harrowing in the end, the main people are safe. Richard will get tortured again and again, Klan will get almost raped, but you know they will never die, or actually be raped. Richard and Klan can get away with whatever they want because they are right, the people are right, not their actions. It reduces the world to simple things, we never have to wonder who is right, who we should cheer for, because no matter what, it is always Richard. The complicated world is distilled down to a simple fact of 'believe in this person, and you are correct'. It's the same simple view of the world that gets America criticized in foreign policy, so there's already a built-in audience for it. 300 million bored people with tremendous disposable income and a pre-existing penchant for unquestioning acceptance of 'the good guys' (Fox 'News' and CNN), who are already fed a steady diet of violence, sex, black-and-white good and evil on the evening news, freaks and titilation, the moral restraints of the Bible along with constant access to everything the Bible is against, all wrapped up in the idea that an action can be good or bad because of who does it, rather than what is done or why. On top of that, it's got a 'you can do anything if you try it, because you are soooo smart' invincible superman who is good at everything (when really he's not smart, he's magically enhanced) that we all wanted to be when we were kids that we can live out our fantasies in. Plus, he's got a hot girlfriend who's demure and pure when in public but has a turboslut switch he can flip on whenever he wants. And she's not quite as smart as he is, she always listens, and when she does disagree, she's always wrong.

In short, Goodkind provides a series of voyeuristic narratives which maintain a gruesome level of contrived tension, in easy language, with a protagonist we always wanted to be, lots of naughty bits, all wrapped in a ridiculously uncomplicated worldview that simplifies problems down to cushy decisions that generally can be solved with some speech showing how smart you are (against a straw opponent) or a sword. The villain always wears a black hat and the hero always gets the girl (who is a cheerleader in public and a harlot in the bedroom). All decisions are easy and all problems are resolved in 700 pages or less.

Or to be really short, it supports the idea of an world free from doubt.

But that's just what I think.

Side note - if I have to read one more time about how the Mud People 'jabber' I'm gonna ******* lose it. The few other people who speak a different language don't 'jabber', they talk. His contempt for any non-European descent people makes my knuckles itch. And Richard's 'no, you'll do it my way because I said so and I'm important' utter disregard for their traditions also pisses me off. Traditions in societies exist for a reason, to keep the society functioning within the culture and environment in which evolved for hundreds to thousands of years. The contempt for primitive people because they are not casting off their historic cultures and embracing the 'modern' lifestyle with all of its attendant fragementation, alienation, isolation and general interpersonal shittiness really aggravates me. We may have more stuff than a tribal herdsman, but he has a family that is much closer and loving, and if a nuclear war broke out, he's far less likely to resort to cannibalism than I am because he can actually take care of himself. To show contempt for them because they don't 'choose' our life (and that's the implied criticism in all the 'jabbering') is ignorant and short-sited.

And how does a single village of people survive? Who are they related to? A single village, assuming perhaps a couple hundred people would inbreed themselves out of existence within six generations. His 'I do important human themes, not worldbuilding' is such a cop-out for crappy writing and continuity.
 
But that chicken bit, wow, that's pure comedy gold. Are we sure he's not writing a devilishly subtle parody? ;)

Wouldn't that be a shocker. Goodkind finishes his series and then tells the world that he always thought of fantasy as trash and he wrote a trash series and made millions. He's laughed all the way to the bank eleven times and even made his point during the first novel, "people are stupid."

I'd have to tip my hat there. I really would.
 
to Wertland and others
where ever you got the crib sheet from they must read with there eye's closed there are so many things wrong with that i don't know where to start, firstly richards brother's name is michael and is a cypher, drefan is his half brother and is a rahl (and he comes into the series in the book temple of the winds), the goat betty is possessed by a wizard named nicholas the slide, i don't know where they got the info about nicci wanting to seduce richard and sleep with his brother but that's completly wrong, when the D'Harans attack the enemys homeland not all the people ears are cut off, it's a special corp of D'Harans who are killing the enemys cult leaders, i could go on forever fixing up the mistakes, most of the info in the crib is completely wrong or taken completly the wrong way. the quote at the end is so boring (yawn) i almost fell asleep.

but the main thing is that it's people's personal opinion of what they like and there perception of that.
Most of you guys really dislike or HATE goodkinds work and nothing will change that fact:mad:.
 
i could go on forever fixing up the mistakes, most of the info in the crib is completely wrong or taken completly the wrong way. .

Lol that was kind of the point, it was meant to be funny. Lighten up dude!
 
I think the basic position is this: Richard Rahl and Kahlan are fascists who commit evil acts, including mass slaughter and genocide to further their own agenda which we are basically just told is good and justified but are never shown as such. There is no other way to describe them or their actions. The books are deeply stupid, utterly soulless, morally reprehensible and intellectually repugnant.

The crib sheet is a bit lacking detail. They forgot the bit where Richard's soldiers destroy several cities, burn all the surrounding croplands and salt the earth, and then tell the surviving unarmed men, women and children to fend for themselves. Because this is apparently how you should treat the imprisoned civilian population of a totalitarian, repressive government :rolleyes:

These books are truly a crime against the reader's intelligence.
 
It is laughable that people on this forum would defend Goodkind and anything he would of written (or I wasted my time reading), especially here on the Chronicles. There is a good reason he does not have his own forum.

If ever there was an excuse for the bookburners to burn something, the trash that is Goodkind's books is it.

Besides, according to him it's not "fantasy" remember.
 
It is laughable that people on this forum would defend Goodkind and anything he would of written (or I wasted my time reading), especially here on the Chronicles. There is a good reason he does not have his own forum.

If ever there was an excuse for the bookburners to burn something, the trash that is Goodkind's books is it.

Besides, according to him it's not "fantasy" remember.

It's not fantasy in one interview, but later he says he breathed new life into the genre and transcended fantasy.

He's a tool.
 
I think the basic position is this: Richard Rahl and Kahlan are fascists who commit evil acts, including mass slaughter and genocide to further their own agenda which we are basically just told is good and justified but are never shown as such. There is no other way to describe them or their actions. The books are deeply stupid, utterly soulless, morally reprehensible and intellectually repugnant.

QFT.

It also doesn't help matters that Tairy utterly demands that his books be considered as high philosophy and art. When he doesn't get the accolades he demands, he resorts to insults and name calling. I've never seen one instance where this ridiculous excuse for an author has ever defended his work in an open, honest, and intelligent debate. I'd really like to see him do this someday, but I doubt the man has the fortitude, intelligence, or willingness to do so.
 
I actually made it past WFR. Most bad books I stop, but for some reasons I had to finish it to see how bad it got. His writing is like roadkill: it's a gross accident, but for some reason you can't help but look on in horrified fascination. That and I was stuck with it on a plane. Of all the writers I dislike, he is the worst. How in goodness's name did he get published? It reads like some unholy, Frankenstein-meshed Jordan-Tolkein-Star Wars fan fiction gone wrong. I've seen the guy talk on youtube, going on as if his work was deep and meaningful when he obviously has no clue what's he talking about.

I'm more willing to accept that he's a comic genius and it's all a joke that he and his editors/agents and in on, than he actually takes his crap seriously and there are professionals in the literary business that let this books by.
 
well im glad someone let his books get out there. it gives us all hope that we can be big famous rich writers too. cos i think if he can do it ANYONE can.
 
well im glad someone let his books get out there. it gives us all hope that we can be big famous rich writers too. cos i think if he can do it ANYONE can.

My reaction is the opposite. I am upset that someone like him got a chance and is taking up space when there are much better writers out there struggling to get published.
 
i feel the same as well, i hate that he got in print, along with the eragon kid, because i think neither deserve it
but i do think that if they can do it, and have fans, then surely (in my idealistic world) the rest of us, with even a tiny bit of talent, can too.
i know the world doesn't work like that. but i still like to hope!
 

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