Richard Cypher rescues a damsel in distress, who enlists his help in completing her quest, a quest half a dozen wizards had died to see through. It is only the beginning of the story when he helps her find the missing First Wizard and is named the Seeker of Truth. Kahlan, the stranger, tells him that The Boundary is beginning to fail, and soon his home will no longer be protected from the Midlands and their magic. Even worse, the Boundary has failed between the Midlands and the D'Hara empire and the evil overlord is planning to take over the world with a brand of magic that is granted only by the Keeper of the Underworld. The humble woods-guide, aided by two people of unknown power and the strange new power of the Sword of Truth, must now do what he can to save a world he knows nothing about.

Something to curl up with for several hours. It's not a book that is easily put down, due to the author's way of easily moving the story forward.

There were several unique types of magic. The Confessor's power to submit a will to their own. The Mord-Sith's ability to take any magic used against them and turn it on the owner. The Sword of Truth's magic being altered by the perception of its wielder.

The author tends to drag things out for no apparent reason. It's a flaw in the rest of the series as well. Conversations can take well over 50 pages. Simple tasks that are fairly irrelevant to the plot will take as many as 10 pages to describe. While not so obvious in this first book, the following books in the series tend to be several hundred pages of characters stumbling around blindly and having long conversations of little interest or relevance, then Richard solving the problems based on only one or two pages of thinking the problem out in the end.

...take a break. Still, I had the rest of the series and nothing else to do for winter break, so I continued. The first book was the best of the series. The rest of them start to follow a general formula and take awhile to do anything interesting.

Terry Goodkind is really good about presenting a problem and you kind of have to read to find out how the impossible is solved. He also creates fairly interesting secondary characters, but drops them very quickly once they've done their part.

If you're a hardcore fan of fantasy and can take excessive descriptions of irrelevant things, then you'll enjoy it. Or if you're really just looking for a semi-decent read to pass the time.

My biggest issue is still how long things take to get moving. There are times I think certain chapters and whole sections were written just because the author thought they'd be fun to write and not for any need for them in the plot.

Rated 18+ because:
-Terry Goodkind includes several descriptions of how the Sword cuts through people and the results. Not terribly gruesome, but a little more than you're run of the mill fantasy violence.
-In later books, there are some intimate scenes between Kahlan and Richard, as well as some implied scenes in the first book.
-Terry Goodkind is very fond of mentioning what happens to female captives of a conquering army. There are several descriptions of the "after math" of such encounters.

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Created Jan 11, 2008 at 3:28pm • Submit your own review...