Wizard's First Rule is the first in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. It is reputed to be one of the classic epic fantasy / coming of age series, so I figured it was worth a read. And when I say epic, I mean it. My kindle predicted 14 hours + of read time, and I'm a pretty quick reader.
For the first 10 hours or so I though it wasn't terrible, but was aimed for a specific adolescent male audience. We all know those guys who see the world in black and white in whose fantasies everything is a life or death decision, intentions must be scrutinized to the nth degree, but in the end true friendship (love) can trump any mistakes. It could be a bit painful but there were wizards and adventure and the book was at least encouraging understanding of shades of gray.
The book was originally published in 1994 and there are some parts that are blatant anticommunist reference. That could be OK, but they were also completely unnecessary. The bad wizard wants to have absolute power or destroy the word, regularly kills children to be his spirit guides in the underworld, and does a type of reading of tea leaves but instead of using tea he uses human entrails. My point is that he sucks. He really doesn't have to suck more my creating a "people's army" that takes food from the countryside to give to the wealthy in the interest of the "public good".
All that I could have dealt with and still overall given this an OK rating until the (almost) end - a torture scene. Really a torture chapter, maybe even a novella. I'm talking it took my over on hour on the train to get through it and I was skimming. Truly gratuitous and unpleasant.
Long Story Short: The wizards first rule is that people are stupid. The author actually meant manipulable, but I feel stupid for finishing this book, and he should feel stupid for not getting an editor.
For the first 10 hours or so I though it wasn't terrible, but was aimed for a specific adolescent male audience. We all know those guys who see the world in black and white in whose fantasies everything is a life or death decision, intentions must be scrutinized to the nth degree, but in the end true friendship (love) can trump any mistakes. It could be a bit painful but there were wizards and adventure and the book was at least encouraging understanding of shades of gray.
The book was originally published in 1994 and there are some parts that are blatant anticommunist reference. That could be OK, but they were also completely unnecessary. The bad wizard wants to have absolute power or destroy the word, regularly kills children to be his spirit guides in the underworld, and does a type of reading of tea leaves but instead of using tea he uses human entrails. My point is that he sucks. He really doesn't have to suck more my creating a "people's army" that takes food from the countryside to give to the wealthy in the interest of the "public good".
All that I could have dealt with and still overall given this an OK rating until the (almost) end - a torture scene. Really a torture chapter, maybe even a novella. I'm talking it took my over on hour on the train to get through it and I was skimming. Truly gratuitous and unpleasant.
Long Story Short: The wizards first rule is that people are stupid. The author actually meant manipulable, but I feel stupid for finishing this book, and he should feel stupid for not getting an editor.
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