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[zombiemutts]

Anyone read the entire Sword of Truth series?

[Zombie Zak]

Most of it ... Have and have read up to Naked Empire

[Charles Phipps]

I have.

Honestly, I'm a fan of using Stalin-era communists as bad guys. I think they make almost as good a stock villain as Nazis if you handle it right. Honor Harrington did a good job with it even if it became laughable the way that David Weber thinks socialism will DESTROY THE WORLD. So, I had a pretty high tolerance for the pseudo-USSR Empire in the later part of the series.

The first part of the series, however, was just a Layman's version of the Wheel of Time. Hell, it even had the Aes Sedai and Black Ajah.

Unfortunately, Terry Goodkind's Objectivism started coloring everything in the series and he retconned a lot of the earlier fantasy elements to fit with his idealogy. Basically, Richard Rahl became a character meant to represent Objectivist "Truth" (which is ironically appropriate to the title of the book) and thus everything he did was worthwhile. This included some pretty reprehensible stuff and I'm going to say spoiled some of my enjoyment of the series.

Still, I think Terry Goodkind is actually a decent fantasy writer. His stuff has a lot of cheesy and whimsical fun to it and the Wizard's Rules are entertaining as all get out. I can't be too hard on a series that includes the villain having cheesecake torture maidens and psychotically evil 8 year olds threatening our hero.

[zombiemutts]

Still, I think Terry Goodkind is actually a decent fantasy writer. His stuff has a lot of cheesy and whimsical fun to it and the Wizard's Rules are entertaining as all get out. I can't be too hard on a series that includes the villain having cheesecake torture maidens and psychotically evil 8 year olds threatening our hero.

 I see what you mean but I think I have to disagree with you here. Aside from that goofy wizard bit I think he is a spectacular fantasy writer. The first few Sword of Truth books were excellent. Great stories and concepts. He lost his way by stretching the story into 12 books that that were capped off by an insulting ending that robbed its readers. Not only did it rob its readers but it contradicted the preachy theme the books ended up being based on.  It was a great series when it was about Richards father. At least in my opinion.

I used to read a lot of fantasy which of course means I read a lot of series. And to this day I am not sure there is a worse ending to a series out there than what he gave us.

[Patrick DM]

I was once a huge RA and Drizzt fan, but after reading George R.R. Martin years ago, Salvatore just irritated the piss out of me.

First of, Martin completely catches you with emotion after crippling a small child from the start. His fantasy series is genius, if you can get passed the pages of food and sex that seem to bog the momentum of the story from time to time. However, he takes great strides and is willing to sacrifice--well, more or less murder--characters for the sake of the story. To me, for a while, it seemed that Salvatore loved his characters too much to let them go.

Not to mention, the books just aren't the same without Artemis Entreri.

If you haven't read George R.R. Martin, I heavily suggest you check it out. Also, I've been impressed with Brandon Sanderson's filling in for Jordan for the last three books (which were supposed to be one, but we've gotten used to that with Jordan). I've got Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy waiting on my shelf. Hopefully I'll get to that this summer.

As for Goodkind, the first book was great, but I haven't read any of it sense that time. Hearing about it is making me want to pick it up again.

[Patrick DM]

Oops...posted this in the wrong thread. I was shooting for the Drizzt thread. My bad.