The Sword of Truth - Terry Goodkind, pt. 2

    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 ancient magic, a plague was released in Aydindril and Richard had to enter the mysterious Temple of the Winds to reverse its effects. With that crisis averted, he and Kahlan made their way back to the village of the mud people to be married.

So that brings us to the fifth book in the series, Soul of the Fire. It begins at Richard and Kahlan’s wedding celebration where the head of the mud people, The Bird Man, informs the pair that a chicken running around is not, in fact, a chicken. There are several mysterious deaths shown across the Midlands, and the theory is that the power of magic has begun to fade in the Midlands. Zedd tells them that some random bottle of stuff needs to be broken in order to reverse the effects.

He’s not successful, and Richard and Kahlan head to a place called Anderith to sort things out. While there, a bunch of SUPER boring political maneuvering happens. I don’t usually mind that sort of thing, if it’s done well. George R.R. Martin is a master at it. Terry Goodkind…is not. In the end, Richard uses magic that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the magical crisis is averted. Kahlan, however, is gravely injured. The fifth wizard’s rule is “Mind what people do, not what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.” True. And surprisingly relevant. However, this story could have been told in about ⅓ the time.

We pick up the next book, Faith of the Fallen, with Richard caring for Kahlan during her very, very long convalescence. She gets better, but eventually a sister of the dark called Nicci tracks them down and captures Richard by way of a strange spell she casts on Kahlan. She takes him to the old world city of Altur’Rang where Jagang is building his palace. She intends to show him the Glory of the Order and eventually kill him. 

Kahlan and Cara link up with Zedd and Verna, and a series of young wizards and sisters, and they take command of the armies of D’Hara and the Midlands to take on the army of the Imperial Order in the new world. It does not go well.

The 6th Wizard’s Rule is “You can only be ruled by reason.” Ok. I’ll buy that. Not sure how much it relates to the book, but whatever. 

Now we come to Pillars of Creation. This is an interesting novel in the series because it is not from the point of view of ANY of our main characters. In fact, none of them even show up until the last 10 pages or so. Instead, it’s from the POV of a young girl named Jensen Rahl. She’s Richard’s half sister, apparently, and has spent her life hiding from her father, who’s name I can’t stand saying, so I’ll just say the PREVIOUS Lord Rahl. 

The device here is that the Lord Rahl only ever has one gifted child. The others are born “pristinely ungifted” which means they have no spark of magic, and it will not work on them. The OG Lord Rahl spread his seed indiscriminately, trying to get this gifted child. But he wants to end all the ungifted ones. 

Then we switch to the POV of Oba, another of Richard’s ungifted half siblings. He’s a sadistic kind of fellow who kills a local sorceress and his own mother so that he can go see the world. Makes sense, right?

Back to Jennsen. She travels to the People’s Palace in the Old World with Sebastian and learns of a witch woman who can tell her how to escape the Lord Rahl. Y’know…the dead one. How has she not heard of this? Well she goes to the swamp this witch supposedly inhabits only to find out that there’s nothing she can do. Oba visits the same woman and gets the same news. She kills herself before he can do it.

Jennsen and Sebastian travel BACK to the new world where they meet up with Jagang in Aydindril, where he’s about to assault the confessor’s palace. Jennsen makes a pact with the Keeper to kill Richard. 

Unbeknownst to her, Oba captures Kahlan and takes her to a desert in the old world called the Pillars of Creation. He’s also commanded by the Keeper to kill Richard. Big Rick follows them there. So Jennsen, Oba, Richard and Kahlan are all at the same place. The plan is foiled. The 7th Wizard’s Rule is “Life is the future, not the past.” It’s a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t really serve the story all that much. Maybe a little.

Naked Empire is next, and it’s not nearly as saucy as it sounds. It begins with Richard and company traveling back to the new world from the pillars of creation. They travel a very long time. We’re introduced to a character called Nicholas the Slide. A slide is sort of like a dreamwalker, but for animals. So he can inhabit the mind of animals. 

Not much happens in this book. The gist is that Richard discovers a group of people called The Bandakar who are all the ungifted descendents of previous Lords Rahl. They were banished to the old world eons ago because they are extreme pacifists. 

Richard convinces them to, y’know, not do that, and together they destroy an imperial order encampment.

Concurrently, Zedd and Adie are captured at the Wizard’s Keep and forced to identify a series of magical objects, or else be forced to witness the torture of women and children. In the process, Zedd activates a spell that destroys the magical items and most of his captors. That’s really it. The 8th Wizard’s Rule is “Deserve Victory.” I don’t know what that means. 

Ok, so I’ve been a bit glib about these four books, and I’ve glossed over quite a bit of material. That’s because there’s really not a whole lot that happens in these books. My first read through, I enjoyed them, probably because they just continued the narrative and I wanted to see how things ended. Now that I KNOW how things end, I tend to skip most of these. 

Even on the first read through, Soul of the Fire was nearly impossible. It’s so….boring. It’s political intrigue, which can be great when done effectively, as I said, but this is not that. It’s a bunch of meandering nonsense with a poorly conceived ending. The pacing grinds to a screeching halt, and turning the page becomes a chore. 

Faith of the Fallen I actually like. It has STRIKING similarities to The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, who is Goodkind’s favorite author. That said, it moves at a decent clip, and the war scenes with Kahlan and company are pretty good. 

Pillars of Creation and Naked Empire are both just a hot mess. The change of POV in Pillars of Creation is a nice change, but the characters are not all that interesting. At least, not the main characters. A few of the side characters are fun, I guess. The plot is sort of a hackneyed mess and doesn’t really affect anything in the larger narrative. It just serves to bring in a few new people, and there’s already a big cast across 8 books, so it’s unnecessary. 

Naked empire…man, I was so disappointed in this one. The ONLY redeeming qualities this book has are that 1.) it’s comparatively short, and 2.) Nick the Slide is a great villain. He was underutilized; the Darth Maul of this series.

I’m going to bring this back together in a few minutes, so stick with me. Among Wheel of Time fans, there are a few books in the middle of the series that are sort of affectionately known as “The Slog.” I think it’s #s 7-10. There’s 13 books in that series, so I can't quite remember off the top of my head. Either way, it’s the low point of the series. They’re still good books, they just don’t move at the same clip as the previous ones, and the tone shifts a bit. 

If Sword of Truth has a Slog, it’s these 4 books. The difference though, is that these are not good books. They’re just something you have to get through to reach the conclusion of the series. 

The pacing of all four of these books is uneven to say the very least. At certain points, it could be described as inert. There are a few interesting world building things that help to set up the conclusion, but in general there’s very little to grab hold of. And what IS there is poorly executed.

The character work in these books is, to be charitable, not good. No one really changes or grows in any way. Oh, sure, Richard learns a little about his power, but that’s not really character. That’s skill. Completely different. The problem is that Goodkind conceived these characters to be heroic archetypes. I mean, maybe he didn’t CONCEIVE them that way, but that’s the way he wrote them. When you have no flaws, you have no room to grow. And when most of the characters DO change, it happens on a dime, with no preamble whatsoever.

The only two characters in the series that I think grow or change in a meaningful way are Cara and Nicci. Still, though their arcs are fun to read and intriguing in their way, there’s not much work put into it. They just sort of….change. You don’t even notice it. Inherently, that’s not such a bad thing, but in this instance, I felt like I had missed something and had to go back and re-read some passages, only to discover that I hadn’t missed anything. It just wasn’t well done.

So next time, we’ll tackle the final trilogy, Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor, and rate the whole darn thing. Thanks so much for stopping by, and until next time, keep reading.