The Empty Shelf Book Reviews

       Good day and welcome to the Empty Shelf, where we discuss and review fantasy and sci-fi novels and series. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer.  For the past two posts, we’ve been discussing Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. There have been some good moments, and some really bad ones. Today, we’ll conclude the series with the Chainfire Trilogy. It consists of Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor. They were originally written as a trilogy, due to the fact that they contain an overarching story. By the time these came out, I had caught up with the series and I had to wait a while in between the three. At the time, the suspense was pretty agonizing. The three books really do read well as a trilogy.  So we begin in Chainfire with Nicci and Cara trying to heal Richard from a grievous wound he sustained off page. Nicci uses subtractive magic to heal him, which sets off some interesting things. When he awakes, he asks for Kahlan, ...

     Hello there, and welcome to the Empty Shelf, where we discuss and review fantasy and sci-fi series and novels. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer today. As always, spoilers ahead, so tread lightly.       In the last post, we began a discussion of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series with the first four books. Today, we’ll look at the next four: Soul of the Fire, Faith of the Fallen, Pillars of Creation, and Naked Empire. To catch you up: Richard and Kahlan have defeated Darken Rahl (a name I STILL hate,) and Richard has assumed the title of Lord Rahl. He was taken to the Palace of the Prophets in the city of Tanimura in the old world, where he learned to control his gift with the sisters of the light. After a plot is revealed, concocted by the Sisters of the dark, Richard made his escape and headed back to Aydindril where he and Kahlan tried to re-form the Midlands alliance of nations. Through the use of some unknown ancie...

       Hello there, and welcome the Empty Shelf, where we discuss and review fantasy and sci-fi series and novels. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer today.  Over the next few posts, we’re going to look at the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. This is one of the more controversial series and authors that we’ll get into, and I’ll explain why in just a bit. The Sword of Truth comprises 11 novels, a prequel novella, and a prequel novel. The same characters are further explored in a few sequel series. We’re just going to focus on the original, and primary, 11 novels for this discussion.  Since there are 11 of them, and they’re not short, I’ve decided to break up the series. This episode will cover the first 4, next episode the following 4, and the final episode will cover the last three, which were conceived as a trilogy in the first place.  Now, Terry Goodkind has received a great deal of well deserved flak in recent years ...