Welcome to the next installment of WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ. Pull up a chair, and have a seat.So before we get to the explication of weirdness, a couple of things of note that might lend context to this review:1. With the exception of 2013, I’ve read one of these books a year. I can’t handle more than one in a 365 day period. I think I skipped last year because I ran out of time and also I didn’t care.2. I spent all of last weekend finally watching season one of Legend of the Seeker, the TV show made by Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi (Xena: Warrior Princess), which is based very loosely on the Sword of Truth book series. The show is actually much better than the book. I did miss a couple of details here and there, but they cast the show very well, and they toned the weird waaaaay the hell down. They also made the characters talk like people instead of puppets with Goodkind’s hand up their asses. The biggest advantage of the show versus the book though is that you don’t have to suffer through Goodkind’s simple and repetitive style. Anyway, I’d had the DVDs of the series for years now after I bought them from a bargain bin at Barnes & Noble, but I’d held off watching until I’d reached book three because I didn’t want to spoil myself. I knew the show only lasted through two seasons, and that most of the stuff it would spoil the books for me would be in those two books. I shouldn’t have waited. The show is better. Anything I get spoiled for by watching season two is not a loss.3. I also watched the special features and there was this cheesy talk with Terry Goodkind on it, where he gives a tour of his home, his office, and his nature paths that he walks every day for inspiration. I had opinions about the guy before (mostly that he was sincere and kind of deluded about the view of his own work and writing), but reading such bad writing for hundreds of pages tends to give one a negative opinion of an author. But after watching that interview . . . I just can’t bring myself to feel negatively about the guy. He’s just so EARNEST in his weirdness and wrongness and unknowing perversity. And he’s got all these paintings, and his head is SO BALD. (At one point he literally states that Richard and Kahlan, his main characters, are two of his best friends. And he was dead serious.)Speaking of perversity, TO THE REVIEW!Blood of the Fold is the third installment in the Sword of Truth series, which so far has followed Richard Rahl, the Seeker of Truth, as he overcomes evil and is subjected to all manner of torture and sexual deviance in his quest to defeat first Darken Rahl (his father, natch) and then basically prevent the Devil from coming to the living world and killing everybody. Also, he falls in lurrrrve. Blood of the Fold is actually the shortest book in the series so far by quite a large margin (hundreds of pages), and thank God for that. I don’t know what the heck could have happened if it was Stone of Tears length (1000+), but it wouldn’t have been good.The main plot here is twofold: First, Richard fights to rally his father’s army behind him and take control of the Midlands in order to unify the area in preparation for a fight that doesn’t actually happen in this book, with an evil emperor who walks in people’s dreams, and who used to live behind a magical border, but WHOOPS Richard brought that border down last book, and evil emperor is out for conquering. And also there’s this army of idiots called the Blood of the Fold who are determined to kill everyone with magical ability, and the evil emperor is manipulating their leader by sending him visions where he pretends to be God. It’s fucked up. And second, there’s a plot down south with the magical nuns from the last book. The main magical nun has to ferret out the evil magical nuns from the good ones before the evil emperor can get to the magical nun palace, which is a place where you age verrrrrry slowly, so it is a perfect place for an evil emperor’s base of operations. HE CAN RULE FOR CENTURIES!!!!!!If you like fantasy like I do, some of that might sound appealing, but DON’T BE FOOLED. Any promise in the story is lost or ruined by its execution. As stated previously, the characters don’t talk like people, and Goodkind tends to repeat himself endlessly, as if he doesn’t trust his audience to remember things that he wrote only a sentence earlier. Relationships between characters are also very simplistic and repetitive. Goodkind obviously thinks Richard’s friend Gratch, a dragon thing he raised from a baby, is the most adorable character ever, because he keeps having him show up and hug Richard and then say ‘Ggggrraatch lug Raaacharrg’ over and over again. I will admit it was fairly cute the first time because I do enjoy when animals in memes or babies have bad grammar, but it happened EVERY TIME.Goodkind’s idea of adding conflict to his story is to bring it in from the outside, which is why Richard and Kahlan’s love story is an an endless parade of plots to keep them tragically separated. It doesn’t help that Goodkind writes Richard like he’s the most perfect human who ever lived. The only way to get drama out of a story like that is to continually subject your hero to lots of dramatic horrible things, and then have them find hitherto unknown magical abilities in order to get out of those scrapes. In this book alone, Richard: almost turns into a monster while at the same time being the only one who is able to detect the type of monster he’s turning into, which leads to lots of battles where he fights until he’s ragged because NO ONE ELSE CAN; spends half the book under what is basically a magical rape spell, but oh-so-heroically resisting the advances that no one ever in the history of ever has ever been able to resist before EVER; is the only one to be able to get into a very dangerous magical building because he ‘followed his instincts;’ is the first in 3,000 years to awaken a magical transport system; due to his magical genetics, he’s basically got a population of people devoted to him without choice; and it just so happens that the ONLY way to be safe from the evil emperor is to be truly loyal to Richard, and then voila! magical protection.In terms of structure . . . this book is a mess. It’s called Blood of the Fold, but those guys are barely in it. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to identify a main antagonist from Richard’s half of the book. The magical nun half was much more engaging, probably because it did have identifiable antagonists and story arcs.And then there’s the name thing. Here’s one of my status updates as an illustration:“Mr. Goodkind . . . Terry, can I call you Terry? I’m doing it anyway. I just feel like I need to tell you, Terry, people in real life and in good fiction do not use each other’s names every other sentence when in conversation. We just don’t, Terry. Okay, Terry? So please, Terry, stop doing it. Terry. I beg you, Terry. I can’t take it anymore.”And that’s just the lazy story stuff. Haven’t even gotten to the weird yet. I should have kept notes on it, honestly. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember it all. Here are some highlights: •The evil Blood of the Fold captain keeps his magical sister captive, which is bad enough, but while he’s busy shaming her and telling her she’s evil just for being magical, he also makes her use those powers to control people. He does this by having her cut off their nipples and then keeps them dried out in a special bag. Let me repeat that, HE CARRIES AROUND A BAG OF PEOPLE’S NIPPLES. •Goodkind takes great care to describe a scene where this happens, including details about how the sister had to cup the poor woman’s breast whose nipple she’d just cut off in order to heal it, and how this guard dude watching got totally turned on watching it. But we’re not done! The Blood of the Fold captain notices, and rewards the dude by letting him rape the nippleless victim! •Also, later he has his sister bewitch the victim into the rape spell thing I mentioned earlier with Richard. So the nippleless victim spends the last weeks of her life being raped, and being forced to try to rape someone else, and then she dies. •Also also did I mention about how the Blood of the Fold guy sometimes has his sister put a glamour on herself and then he has sex with her? GAG. •You know people are evil because of SEX YOU GUYS. •Every time someone is tied up in this book, they are also NAKED. Why, Terry? Why do you write this? Can’t you for once have a character tied up with their clothes still on? •The evil magical nuns from the last book get captured by the evil emperor, who gives them over to some sailors for rapey fun, and then he keeps them all as his naked sex prisoners. •Oh, and Richard patronizingly tells his lesbian S&M bodyguards, after they have just confessed their relationship to him, that he may not agree with them but is their friend so he will support them anyway. This, after he forced them to let him touch their breasts to check if they were nipple zombies. (Like, okay, Terry. Is it sexy for you that he had to do that?) •Also of note: one of the lesbian bodyguards constantly flirts with him and lets him put his hand on her boob as a ‘distraction’ from him finding out she’s gay . . . wha? How is that a thing that happens?I could probably go on, but this review is already 1800 words long and I’m hungry. And let’s be honest: I would much rather eat a bean and cheese burrito than continue to talk about this book series. I will, however, be reading the rest of the series because I am dumb, and also an idiot. And some part of me likes it even though it’s horrible, and I can’t explain it leave me alone.
Ok-you got me. I said Terry Goodkind is a pervert and I would not read any more of his books. Something compelled me, tugged in the back of my mind for months, to read one more book and am so GLAD that I did! First of all, Terry is still a pervert. He is obsessed with extreme violence against women, taking pleasure in torture, and horrific rape. I suppose if he wants to unveil how ugly people can be, and is trying for shock and awe-he is a master. Though he didn't magically drop those themes, I can't recall anything in this book that topped the first two. I was expecting it and was totally braced so that I wouldn't be so shocked, but by comparison, this one is within the fiction world parameters I can live with. If I ever meet this man, I will have mace, but I will also have to thank him for taming this one down. Then get away, fast. Dimming down that aspect of his writing let me finally recognize and appreciate the creative, thrilling and precise writing. I don't like to read a lot of fiction Aside from wasting time I could be learning something useful, I find grammatical errors and plot details that don't line up over the life of the series take me right out of the story and become my most prominent recollection. Terry has no such problems. Everything we know about this world and characters builds on itself like a perfect puzzle. A place for every piece. That is very satisfying! I also feel like I have learned from these series. I feel smarter. That is what I look for in writing! The writing itself demonstrates much talent in the way he follows different characters, good, bad, seemingly minor, doesn't matter and totally sucks you into every scene even if you hate everyone present. Even though these books are long, I can't imagine cutting it down. You learn something critical to the overall plot or something that will be important later in every section. Yes I will talk about the content, I can't believe you are still reading this far into my review! We have new threats to the entire world. The largest story arc is that the non-magic inhabitants of the world are fearful of magic and want it gone from the world. The dream walker emerges as the force behind the Imperial Order, he is very scary and impressive. He has taken over the world by both magical means and by fighting for the growing cause to eliminate magic from the world. His means and motives are worth fighting against, but he has a good line that made me question my allegiance to Richard for a moment. He said, loosely, that he knows the dreams of man, and how impressive they will be when they rise to run the world in the absence of magic. Alas, I must agree with Richard and Kahlan that magic is a tool and in itself is not good or bad. My favorite moment, possibly from all three books so far, is when the sisters of the dark meet him personally. Yes, we still have sisters of the dark. The Palace of the Prophets continues to play a large role in events. We also get a strong but confused leader to the Blood of the Fold, Tobias. He is bent on finding the Mother Confessor, as she is a bangling. He hates magic, yet uses it to destroy those who do the work of the keeper. To me, in our world, a religious fanatic who believes the creator communicates to him to eradicate others is the most terrifying place humans go. Tobias, and that bad dude from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, have this particular twisted, unstoppable and crazed dedication quality. Both characters give me chills and reaffirms for me that religion is dangerous. The mriswith are certainly involved but it isn't clear at first how. They appear in Aydindril and we learn a lot more about them. I was following the plot with great interest. The inventive magic and building drama kept me reading everyday and I would decline offers for rides so that I could read more on the bus. The plot was unresolved and digging our heroes deeper and deeper into seemingly impossible odds even very close to the end. I was so worried that it would end abruptly to force you to read the next book, but I was pleasantly surprised. Still, I instantly launched into the next book in the series.
What do You think about Blood Of The Fold (1997)?
I read the first book because I enjoyed Legend of the Seeker and was sad to see it off-air just when I was discovering it. I had hoped that by reading the books I could keep Richard and Kahlan's adventure alive. I noticed the many, many differences right away, and tried to ignore all the violence. I almost gave up when DRl was preparing to go to Underworld because what good person would think of such a method to get anywhere? I shudder. But I chose to ignore it and finished the book.The second book went by the same way. So. Much. Violence. Again, I chose to ignore the unpleasantness.I got half-way thru with Blood of the Fold, and this time I couldn't ignore the violence. It was horrible. It is horrible. It's disgusting and vile and it makes me wonder about the author. Last name, "Goodkind"? Maybe he gave it to himself to help alleviate the utter darkness of his soul.Seriously, these books are sick with violence and blood and all manner of lewd, crude, and gross behavior. I think the only reason I made it through the first two was because of where my head was at emotionally. I was in the process of not thinking so I was able to compartmentalize very well. Being clear-headed once again, and doing well I might add, I could not ignore what's there.So, in short, if you love blood, violence, rape, torture, and stress beyond belief then read this series as you will not be disappointed.I think I need to read a happy now... Where is Winnie the Pooh and and Hundred Acre Wood?
—Katie
The third volume in the, from what I understand, now completed saga of the Sword of Truth. Another good offering from Mr. Goodkind. I find it interesting how confused Richard seems to be much of the time. He makes decisions based on information and reason and passion, but spends much of his time regretting the decisions he has made, only to finally accept that, yes, he did do the right thing. I was elated at the end of the book when Gratch showed back up. I thought surely he had not died in the
—Jeff
And again I say:I liked the idea of the story. The idea behind the plot is good, but it is lost in the telling and it just dragged on and on and on and on and on and on... you get the picture. After five chapters of this I finally gave up and found the novel in MP3 so I could listen to it and just get it over with. I listened to the book while at work, and while listening to it I only had to devote half a brain to it. I got the important parts and anything I didn't find important I could just zone out for a while and it made no difference to the story. And there was so much raping and murdering of men, women and children. I did not approve of this. I understand that the author was using this to show the evil of the villains, but there is a line that must be drawn on how much a person has to read. It makes me think that the author himself is some kind of masochist who enjoys hurting others in his little S&M Dungeon. Yikes! I mean really… a man who looks like him in his photo is a little creepy.I want to read good literature. I want to learn something and be uplifted. I want to feel for the characters in the books. This book left me wanting for all of these things, the only thing I got out of it was disgust.I don't know that I ever would have finished this if I had had to READ the whole thing. Listening to it really is the only way I was able to finish it. I will never recommend this book to another human being. I cannot support the author or his books. I will not be reading/listening to any more of these. Ever.
—liz
