This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Nornagest: I can't help but think that this is doing Ayn Rand a disservice. She has serious problems as a writer and even more serious ones as a philosopher, but Goodkind's later work doesn't suck just because he's ripping her off — it sucks because he's preferentially ripping off the elements of her work that come across as Wall Bangers even to people that broadly agree with her. And because he's just a terrible writer.
Charred Knight: Your right, Sword Of Truth isn't as bad as it is because Terry Goodkind ripped off Ayn Rand, its because Terry Goodkind is fucked up in the head. Him ripping off a decent writer just hid that fact.
Mr Death: I'd argue that Goodkind is a good writer. The first few books are generally agreed to be entertaining, and ranting aside, the later books (except Naked Empire) are a good read too. And it's probably not just that he became enamored with Ayn Rand that did it, but that he became obsessed with it, letting it take over his story.
I argue that he's a good writer because, if nothing else, I couldn't put down the books once I started reading them. Hell, the big Wall Banger in Naked Empire didn't even hit me until after, because his writing style is good, and I was engrossed in the book.
But maybe that's just me. And not to go into full Goodkind-Defense-Mode, but I think even he had to realize what was happening, given how the Chainfire Trilogy steps back from the philosophy a bit, and has more in common thematically and structurally with the first book than with any of the later ones.
Ramenth: In my mind it's more a case of early onset Ending Fatigue than anything else. Most of the philosophy, in my opinion, started as a "Look how different they are," thing in Faith of the Fallen, and then became a "Well, If I dont give background this book will be nothing but fight scenes." You can see a lot of that in Faith of the Fallen when every chapter that isn't about philosophy is... almost non-stop battle. It was, at least originally, a failed attempt at breaking up action sequences.
And, once he'd gotten into the pattern, it took him a while to break out.
Of course, that's not saying anything about the massive Ending Fatigue of the last arc.
Karalora: The second page quote is boggling my mind even as I type this. "...armed only with their hatred for moral clarity..."...?!?! WTF?! Does anyone actually think this way about people who disagree with their political views? Does Goodkind even realize that he is portraying himself as a Strawman Political by writing this schlock?
Grimace: As other tropers have mentioned on this wiki, what's sad is that the books initially made a point of stating how easy it was to become a Knight Templar, and how all life is to be protected, a notion Goodkind discarded pretty quickly once he took up the Objectivist reins. Objectivism itself isn't as bad as its been made it out to be (bit flawed in places, very flawed in others, but ok if you pick and choose which parts to take onboard), but Goodkind just takes it and runs with it, right over the edge.
Kerrah: I am able to read these books without banging my head to a wall by ignoring Goodkind's own words about what they are and simply reading them as fantasy books about magic and heroes. I've read eight and a half books now and I've found 80% of what I've read enjoyable, including the filibusterrific ending of Faith of the Fallen.
Mr Death: I'm with Kerrah. Also, deleted this bit from the first quote, because whoever wrote it missed the point:
"This is supposed to be intimidating, when a smart person would simply step to the side and let him splatter."
I'm not going to go into whether it really is intimidating, but the idea the narration is trying to get across is that he'd jump after who he was chasing after they had already gone down the cliff.
Also, been awhile since I read the first book, but I don't remember any mention of the pedophile ever being gay, unless you want to say he and the Big Bad were "more than friends" (Unlikely, since said Big Bad had tortured one of the Mord-Sith for being a lesbian). Considering that, should the Depraved Homosexual entry be in there?
Kerrah: Well, the only objects he ever showed sexual interest in were little boys. However, that is the number one pedophile stereotype in the western world. I can't say if that kind of people are counted as homosexuals or not.
Also, Raina and Berdine's love subplot is portrayed positively and the Mord'Sith are shown to be good people who have been victims to horrible things, so the "Hot Lesbian Dominatrixes" -comment is a bit uncalled for.
Mr Death: Though I feel compelled to point out that "Hot Lesbian Dominatrixes" is a fairly accurate description, of Raina and Berdine at least.
Kerrah: Still makes it seem as if their characters only served Fanservice purposes, which is untrue.
theorc: I basically agree. Eight is horrific and seven is not that bad (its big issue is that the main characters get about twenty pages of time) but with the others there was usually something entertaining. My only question is the entry about the Haken. Has he really explicitly said that is what it represents? (I'm so dumb I didn't even think about those politicians being like the Clintons.) It seemed to me a really extreme version of conquerors convincing people it was for the good of them.
Rebochan: This troper was severely scarred by the first two books in this franchise and quails at the thought of something worse than that.
{{Bobfrank}: Oh yes, it gets much, much worse...
Kerrah: Now that we're sharing our opinions on the books, I found the first two books awesome. Third and fourth were good. Fifth was awesome again. Sixth was almost sublime. Seventh and eight were pretty bad. The last three were okay, but full of plot holes and just plain bad storytelling.
I finished the last book two days ago. I'll write a review on the entire series soon and link it here.
Mr Death: I loved the first book, liked the second and third, the fourth I liked more than the second and third, but less than the first. The fifth book was just too damn depressing; I found the whole idea of the Hakens stupid, and felt like Richard was carrying the Idiot Ball the whole time for his apparent refusal to answer any of the things being said about them. Though I wish I could, I can't put it under Discontinuity because it sets up the sixth book, which I loved. I kinda liked the seventh book; it gave an interesting perspective, particularly on how Richard is perceived by his enemies, and how people can be taken in by the Order; that said, I couldn't stand Oba. I think we can all agree that Naked Empire is best forgotten.
As for the Chainfire trilogy, I liked how the whole thing, especially Confessor, called back to Wizard's First Rule, by putting the characters in similar positions, and showing how they deal with it now that they've grown (with regard to Rachel in particular). Of the three, I prefer Confessor, because Goodkind scaled back the Author Filibustering (one Wall Banger of an example notwithstanding), and wrapped things up well enough. I don't particularly like the Retcon (that the Book of Counted Shadows in Wizard's First Rule was a fake, somewhat cheapening Richard's victory there), but I didn't see any glaring plot holes.
Personally, a friend of mine and I, at the time Phantom was still being written, came to the conclusion that Goodkind's publisher, after the declining quality of the 7th and 8th books, told him to just wrap things up.
Kerrah: Some weekend when I have time I'll go through this article and fix it. The bashing is unbearable.
Charred Knight: really? I find it hilarious, especially, the part about Rand, the chicken who was evil incarnate and the evil pacifist running gag.
Mr Death: Yes, but some of us actually like the books (most of them, anyway). As for the chicken, I actually did think that part was effective when I read it. Everyone who mentions it on this wiki seems to be missing the point. The way I figure it, it was as if that chicken was in its own chickeny Uncanny Valley: It was recognizable as a chicken, but something about it was just profoundly wrong. Like something trying its best to imitate a chicken, and getting pretty close, but still somehow wrong.
Charred Knight: It's a chicken
Shay Guy: It's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken!'
Kerrah: I rewrote the bashing parts of the main text and gave a disclaimer the whiners like you. Trope examples are next.
I won't remove the running jokes or other obvious stuff, I just want the series to stand by its own merits, instead of being whined about from every angle. You're free to point out the insanity of Goodkind's believes, but when you add the series to some trope page and offhandedly mention the series is a pile of wrong morals, that's just the wiki version of trolling.
Mr Death: Nice rewrite, Kerrah. It's about time we got something a bit more evenhanded.
Mr Death: Now that the series has started airing, should we start listing tropes for it here, or give it its own page?
Ronfar: If it's different enough, we might as well give it its own page. For now, let's just see how things develop.
Kerrah: From what I heard, it's a whole different plot. Kahlan is a ninja or something.
Mr Death: I wouldn't say she's a ninja. Just she's a hell of a knife fighter. From what I've seen so far, it's true to the spirit of the book, while changing the actual plot progression. And they nailed Zedd dead on, if nothing else.
Mr Death: I've started putting in more tropes from the TV version, if anyone else would like to help, great. All the episodes are up on the website if you're looking for a quote or to get the example right.
Tricksterson: Since it's been renewed for at least a second season I would say deserves at least a separate section on this page, if not a separate page on it's own.
Ronfar: Yes, at this point I think they're different enough that we might as well split the book series from the TV series. I haven't watched the TV series, though, so I can't write the page for it.
Mr Death: Okay, the second season starts in about a month, anyone want to start up a page for the TV show? I'll help where I can, and I can probably get a description for it written up later in the week.
Later Edit: Okay, the page is up.
Ronfar: I'm responsible for some, but not all, of the snark on the main page. Anyway, I'd like to describe my own feelings toward the individual books in the series, as they were when I read them.
- Wizard's First Rule, Stone of Tears: I absolutely adored these two books. I loved them to death, and made a point of telling people how amazing they were. I recommend them somewhat less highly today (mostly because the rest of the series is much worse), but I still think they're good books. 9/10.
- Blood of the Fold was a major disappointment after the first two books. I was expecting something as absorbing and clever as the first two books. Instead, I found a book that was decent but far from great. Richard is far more interesting as a woods guide than as the Lord Rahl, sadly. 5/10.
- Temple of the Winds continued in the vein of Blood of the Fold: readable, but nothing special. At this point, I had resigned myself to the Seasonal Rot. 5/10.
- Soul of the Fire was slightly better, but still no better than Airport Fantasy. For the record, I didn't notice that the villains were the Clintons until it was pointed out to me (I didn't think of looking for things like that in my fantasy novels), and I wasn't in the proper frame of mind to consider the "evil chicken" scene to be Narm. 6/10.
- Faith of the Fallen was a big departure from what came before it. Having read Anthem by Ayn Rand in English class in high school, I recognized it as an Objectivist Author Tract rather quickly and chose to enjoy it on that level. The dystopia in Anthem felt ridiculous to me, but Faith of the Fallen seemed like a more plausible and better-written version of the same basic story. For what it is, it's really good and I enjoyed it very much, but it's clearly not for everyone. Again, Goodkind is much more entertaining when he's not writing Richard the Good Overlord. 8/10.
- The Pillars of Creation is another departure from the series, as it relegates Richard and company to the background and focuses on a set of characters that were introduced in this book. Many fans of the series were annoyed at this, but I thought it came much closer to recapturing the magic of the first two books than the third, fourth, and fifth did, as it avoided the less-than-thrilling "adventures" of Richard the Philosopher-King ruling an empire. 7/10.
- Naked Empire, on the other hand, pissed me off to no end. I hated this book. It felt like a complete betrayal of every ideal the series had stood for up until this point. Don't be a Knight Templar? All Life Is Precious? You Are Fallible? The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions? All thrown out the window. You know that Wall of Text on the main Sword of Truth page, under Broken Aesop? I wrote that. What also bothered me was the belief system of the culture that produced the "evil pacifists". The beliefs of The Imperial Order, have a certain appeal to them, even if, when put into practice, they end up cause misery and suffering rather than reduce it. On the other hand, the belief system of the "evil pacifists" was utterly ridiculous! Any idiot can see that "our senses are imperfect" does not possibly imply "our senses are completely useless, and therefore we should act like the world does not exist!" Only a Too Dumb to Live Strawman Political could possibly believe something like that. It gets a 1/10 and a firm placement in the So Bad Its Horrible category, alongside "The Eye of Argon".
- Chainfire was a relief, marking a return to the adventure story style of the better books. Richard is still a Knight Templar, but it's not the focus of the story. 6/10.
- I have not yet read Phantom or Confessor.
Charred Knight: You can get rid of some of the snark but I really want to keep the evil pacifist part just because of how vagrantly awful it was.
Grimace: Someone took it out from the beginning, as part of a mass edit to make the page a bit more neutral (fair play to them, naturally). I left the rest of the page (to do otherwise would be...dickish), but put the quote back in. It's got Joker Immunity by now.
Muninn: Sorry, that was probably me. I'll leave it in from now on.
Grimace: No probs. The rest of the page was in dire need of some neutralisation (and I say that as a Goodkind loather), but considering just how much that scene is seared into the brains of so many, the page felt empty without it >;-).
Muninn: More or less, yeah. I actually don't have a problem with the quote itself, it's more the fact that people tend to give it captions along the lines of "To Goodkind, this is the pinnacle of moral achievement." and things like that.
Nornagest: Cut
- ** On the other hand, the Order isn't drawing from just one country, but effectively the whole world south of the New World. And it's made quite clear that the Order's army has huge amounts of supplies coming up, and they tend to destroy what they go through from the sheer volume of their men.
This is a Justifying Edit. It may or may not be accurate; I have no idea which, since I dropped this series halfway through the third book. But if there are factual errors in the parent example, fix the parent example.
Ronfar: Just chalk the whole thing up to Bellisario's Maxim and leave it be.
Grimace: I feel I should give props to whoever updated the introduction text to put it in a more neutral light. Now, for the record, I think the books are incredibly average (at best), think Terry Goodkind is a colossal asshat who really needs a good does of humility or just perhaps a slap to the face, and I pretty much come to this page for the Snark. But, as the internet tends to be a pretty negative place, I felt I should give props for sticking up for what you enjoy.
I still think you're mental for enjoying it, but hey, who cares what I think? >;~D
Kerrah: Aww. Thanks a lot, you made my day a bit brighter. As I've said, I don't agree with nearly any of Goodkind's "morals" and find his logic a bit senseless, but I think he does write good action, drama and plot. The objectivism is just an added plus because I get a bit of humour in with the package.
Peteman: Wait, was Richard called out for the pacifist massacre and the civilian targeting? I thought that so many people considered it a Wallbanger because he was called heroic for it. Otherwise, it's not What the Hell, Hero?, but Moral Dissonance.
Mr Death: No, he wasn't. And while the pacifist massacre was pretty stupid, the whole "civilian targeting" is exaggerated every time someone mentions it. Any time you see it on here, it's written as if he ordered his army to slaughter everyone they came across. In the actual book, he makes it very clear to his men that they should avoid civilian casualties wherever possible, and only kill civilians if they're being attacked and have no other choice. Otherwise, attacking supplies is an entirely valid tactic, and really the only chance the D'Haran army has to survive.
Cope: Yeah. Basically, they only kill the civilians who dare to defend themselves against the destruction of their homes and livelihoods.
Mr Death: It's war, dude. If a "nicer" way of doing things existed in the SOT world, they'd have ended the war much earlier.
Cope: Haha, so much for moral clarity. XD
Mr Death: What's moral clarity?
Grimace: ...touche Mr Death.
- This troper tried filling out The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test
with Richard's characteristics. Even completely discounting any subjective questions—the ones about the author's feelings or intentions—Richard scores a whopping 116. (The highest Sue rank is "50+".)
- This troper tried filling out The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test
Conversation In The Main Page and not really relevant anyway; lots of fictional characters score highly on these.
Ronfar: What's the TV Tropes Wiki consensus on the TV series? I glanced at some plot summaries, and it does seem to have taken the route of being a kind of AU fanfic rather than a direct adaptation, pulling things from the all over the book series without regard to the order in which they took place. Have they managed to avoid the ridiculous Moral Dissonance, and is it any good as a TV show?
Mr Death: If you ask me, yes, and yes. They've changed a lot as far as the actual story progression goes (among other things, the Sisters of the Light were completely changed, and Jensen showed up a couple episodes ago), but it gets the characters mostly right, and the overall plot (stop Rahl from getting the Boxes of Orden) is the same. The only question I have is, since they're taking things from all over the place and doing things (like changing the Sisters of the Light) which preclude events in the other books from happening, what's the second season going to be?
Speaking specifically of the Moral Dissonance, I recall one episode in particular where Richard said, when asked why he should help someone, that the fact she needs help is all the reason he needs. It was hilarious watching some of the Goodkind message boards get pissed off at this for being a gross violation of the books.
Anyway, pretty much all the negative reaction I've seen (well, except for saying Raimi abuses Bullet Time like you wouldn't believe) is that it's not like the books, which it really shouldn't be anyway (seriously, I've seen "THIS IS HORRIBLE!" posts consisting entirely of lists of things that are different, down to Darken Rahl's hair color.)
Grimace: Again I find myself defending this novel ;P. But that's pretty much part of the parcel for any adaptation. I'm eagerly awaiting the A Song Of Ice And Fire series to make its way to our screens, but just knows various internet forums will explode in un-righteous anger when it does. I do like the idea that the series is promoting good old-fashioned "noble heroic altruism" though, considering how much Goodkind seems to hate that concept, but I'm petty I'll admit >;~D
Tricksterson: Always accepting that Alignment is a very subjective thing I see Richard in the books go from Lawful Good to Lawful Neutral (with mild LE tendencies) while so far in the series he's Neutral Good. Kahlen and Zeddicus so far are much closer to their book personalities. Rahl on the other hand is much more Lawful Evil, a Knight Templar type who seems to actually believe his way is the best while the book version is a Chaotic Evil Complete Monster. YMMV. Actually in the first three or four books Goodkind seems much milder on the subject of altruism, it's not until "Faith of the Fallen" that the Objectivist philosophy (and I drank the Objectivist Kool Aid for quite some time so I should know) comes down like a hammer.
Ronfar: I don't think Strawman Has a Point really applies here. Indeed, Richard's professed moral beliefs in the later books have big, big problems, but the specific strawmen he gets contrasted with are much, much stupider. The Bandakarians - the "evil pacifists" - are idiots and their belief system is just plain moronic. "Our senses are imperfect" in no way implies "our senses are useless". The Imperial Order is Obviously Evil; it fails Econ 101 and combines all the worst traits of Communism and fringe Christianity. There are good arguments to make against Richard's opinions - I certainly don't want to live in an Objectivist country - but nobody in the books actually makes them.
Peteman: Yeah, this is something I hear too. The Strawmen are sufficiently stuffed with straw that they really don't have a good argument.
Bobfrank: Gotta disagree here, especially about the Bandakarans. Yes, the "our senses are useless" argument is moronic, but the first time I read that it struck me as an extra-heavy dose of straw, added for the specific purpose of mocking the (completely valid) point that "our senses are imperfect and can deceive us." And once I noticed that, I started seeing it just about everywhere, except for Jagang & Co. of course. Take the backstory about Nicci's mom, tone down the willful blindness a bit (arming street thugs in the misguided belief that that would make their lives better? Nobody's that dumb!) and what's left is a pretty decent plan to help improve society. Plenty of other examples...
Mr Death: Giving people jobs when they're completely unqualified, leading to the owner going out of business, is a "pretty decent plan to help improve society"? Nicci's mother was entirely about handouts given at the expense of people who earned their positions; she browbeats Nicci's father into driving himself out of business to "help" people because she has absolutely no understanding of how a business works. In short, she was all about giving people fish, not teaching them how to fish.
As for the Bandakarans, that's a minuscule "point" that the Strawman is making. It's like...reverse hyperbole. The tiniest speck of their philosophy is true, so the rest of the argument sounds good too? It's like saying someone's got a good point when they say, "Criminals commit crimes, so we should kill all shoplifters on sight." Yes, it is true that criminals, by definition, commit crimes, but that doesn't make the rest of the sentence any less of a monumentally bad idea.
Besides, Strawman Has a Point is when the whole of the argument accidentally looks better than the author's position, not "The tiny bit of truth at the bottom of the otherwise completely stupid philosophy happens to be true."
Mr Death: Added a couple tropes for The Law Of Nines. The spoiler tags, I should note, are not spoilers for The Law Of Nines, but for Confessor.
Kerrah: Has anyone else here been to Goodkind's official forum ever? I think it's one of the creepiest places in the internet; I once saw someone there post the sentiment that "anyone whose life has been touched by the Sword of Truth novels is forever changed for the better by this contact". And this was followed my multiple agreeing posts.
I wonder how they think my life's been changed. I'm still the socialist I was before I started reading.
Mr Death: The only time I've ventured onto those forums was right after the first season of Legend Of The Seeker started up. All I could find was the near-rabid They Changed It, Now It Sucks! postings, pretty much just bullet points of things the producers "got wrong" in the first episode, including things like the fact Rahl isn't a blond, and that Zedd apparently wasn't Richard's grandfather, even though a later episode establishes that he is.
And then there was the episode "Bounty," when Richard says that the only reason he needs to help the girl is that she needs help. They went ballistic at that, saying it goes against everything in the books, that Raimi is clearly trying to undermine everything Goodkind ever wrote, yadda yadda yadda.
So, yeah, bunch of loonies over there.
Kerrah: Oh, and don't forget the countless people who have just read a book and come to declare that the villain-of-the-book was the coolest character ever and they wish he or she had lived.
To be honest, I almost kinda had that reaction about the magnificent bastard chancellor in Soul of the Fire, the only sympathetic antagonist in the series.
