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Starts off good, goes downhill
First Installment Wins, and how.





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Good story, bad themes
I read and enjoyed this series up through the end, but this is not good literature by any means. The story itself is decent and many of the characters are interesting, particularly Nicci, but serious problems lie in the genre and ideas behind the story, the abstract elements, if you will. Goodkind can come up with some pretty good fantasy world and character ideas when he has to construct a plot, but this man should never allowed to stick one iota of his idiotic philosophy into any piece of writing that would be seen by the eyes of another human being. Anything he actually has to say about life is absolutely vile.

Among fans of the series, the sixth book tends to be the favorite, as that is where the philosophy really takes over. Among those who don't buy into the philosphy, the first book seems to be the favorite, and I have to agree with the latter analyzation. Goodkind was at his best when he wrote fun, archetypical fantasy stories, and Wizard's First Rule is the most strongly pure fantasy. It isn't original, but not a bad story, either.

There are good points to these stories and they can be enjoyable if the reader opts to simply ignore the dumbass philosophy and concentrate on the story itself, but there are still some serious problems even then, and I can definitely sympathize with those who put the series down unfinished. As you go farther into the series, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the philsophy, as Goodkind's focus on it is not only jarring, but he begins to sacrifice essential parts of characterization and storytelling for the sake of getting his message across, resulting in Moral Dissonance, Author Filibuster, and Deus Ex Machina galore, and all through endlessly recycled premises.

If he had kept his ideas out of his stories and spent the wasted time fleshing out the world and creating new and interesting plots, the whole series would probably be regarded as well as Wizard's First Rule: A series of fun, enjoyable but rather formulaic fantasy novels. I advise to only read this series if you're prepared to ignore a lot of preaching, or else just read the first one and don't advance beyond there. Trust me, the rest of the series is a disappointment.
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You will give it away just to keep from burning it.
The first book? Pretty cool. It's interesting, it holds your attention without a massive overtone of Aynal Randian suck. Then it quickly becomes not only a repetitive onslaught of the same tired uberman coming to save the day all the while spouting a message that makes absolutely no sense in context or out of context, further coupled with a world that could only be imagined by a man who has never touched social science and you have a steaming pile. One might say I am too harsh but you need only read the books. They captivate for a moment until you think back and say "Wait, not only is he repeating the same thing over and over again(gee capitalism gets you laid, communism is somehow massively ineffective yet can still rape and pillage an entire continent with ease)and effectively repeating the same plot elements and trying to say SOMETHING about prophecy but considering the context of his tales you never quite know what, you will regret paying for these books. I am no literary mastermind by any means but I have never felt so used for buying books in my life, would that I believed in burning books but there would be no benefit from the censorship. If you read them take note of how not to do things.

Laconic: An author goes on the longest multibook author tract this side of Left Behind
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