Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

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Wizard's First Rule
by Terry Goodkind

**
This is Terry Goodkind's first novel, and it shows. While it is evident that Goodkind had a lot of passion for this work, his enthusiasm is overshadowed by an obvious lack of writing skill. Wizard's First Rule is abound with clichés and unsurprising twists and turns that could only work if you've been living in a cave all your life and have no access to modern entertainment.

But even if one does not mind treading old ground (and very often I don't mind), be aware that Wizard's First Rule has countless other flaws standing alongside occasional high points. The most obvious failure of this novel is Goodkind's complete lack of subtlety in regard to his writing style. Everything—absolutely everything—is spelled out to the reader to the point where it becomes offensive. (This is also the main reason for the novel's immense length, as opposed to Lord of the Rings, which is long because it has meaningful content.) The result is a book that feels cartoonish despite (or perhaps due to) its ‘mature' themes—which usually constitute graphic depictions of violence and sex.

The plot has been done before, just in different variations. A reluctant hero named Richard Cypher, virtuous though sometimes (ahem—sometimes) dense, is appointed the Seeker of Truth, and he must travel on a journey to battle an evil wizard known as Darken Rahl. He is accompanied by Kahlan, a mysterious woman with a shrouded past and who pledges her life to Richard because he saved hers. On the journey, they fall in love, get into fights, get separated, are reunited, etc. This is the main essence of the book—a love story, interspersed with lots of violent action.

Another thing that Goodkind strived for was an attempt at infusing his story with moral dilemmas (much like what Orson Scott Card does, but on a simpler level.) For the most part, these don't work. It is difficult to appreciate ambiguity when that ambiguity is shouted in your face at point blank range. In other words, Goodkind spoon-feeds his readers. Instead of creating morally challenging situations and allowing readers to ponder over them, he has his characters think, discuss, and debate them endlessly until you have no room to think for yourself. The same applies for the scenes of violence, which, when portrayed in loving detail, ruin all sense of dramatic impact.

Some of the characters are admittedly pretty good, but they seem doomed to participate in soapy dialogue and melodramatic conflicts. Kahlan is particularly likeable at first, before we get to know her more (I enjoyed the combination of her strength and her vulnerability.) By the end, however, she is reduced to repeating—along with others—"You are a very rare person, Richard Cypher." And then there are other characters who will just piss you off. Darken Rahl is an example of Goodkind trying to make someone SOOOOOOO evil by making him commit excessive atrocities, but ultimately he comes off as a ridiculous villain, as does his second-in-command pedophile, Demmin Nass.

Finally, I reserve absolutely no pity for the embarrassingly blatant sexual content in this novel. Although there is no real ‘sex' scene, there are plenty of references to rape, torture, and an extended eighty-page subplot dealing with sadomasochistic female domination. Such content should be approached delicately, but Goodkind's writing is so heavy-handed that we get the impression he's enjoying the torment of his own characters. There are only so many ways of describing pain, and these pain-and-sex sequences become quickly tiresome. It makes you wonder what kind of ‘fantasy' genre Goodkind thought he was writing in...

So why is the series so popular? Well, the novel is not a total failure, or else I would not have subjected myself to finishing it. In fact, though it was probably impossible to tell by this review, the first three hundred pages or so are genuinely entertaining. This is because Goodkind, if nothing else, can write suspense well—and the entire first part, up to the bone-chilling crossing of the boundary (easily the best part of the novel) is gripping. Unfortunately, the latter two thirds are painfully unimaginative and dull (yes, reading about Richard getting beaten up for eighty pages does not constitute suspenseful reading for me.) I only can hope that Goodkind will learn from his mistakes in the next books, because I'm not picking them up anytime soon.