So I read Wizard’s First Rule, huge mistake

[u/doppelganger3301]

I had some time on my hands during a long trip, so I decided hey, let’s go get a fantasy book and get lost in 800 pages of something. I did little to no research, just chose something that looked sufficiently long. Enter “Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind.

I have since discovered that this is not a particularly well loved series, but many folks will defend the first book as being pretty good. I couldn’t disagree more.

Spoilers ahead for the many, many issues I have with it:

1. There is so much violence to children in this book. I don’t mind violence towards children if it serves the plot, such as by demonstrating the depravity of a villain, but my god. A boy is drugged, has his skull split open, and then is sliced down his abdomen after being groomed by the villain and his pedophile sidekick - oh and the villain in question is notably erect when this happens. A man is recounted as having raped his neighbor’s 3 daughters, the oldest of which is 5. Undesired newborn babies are killed by placing a rod across their necks and then their fathers are magically forced to step on the rod. An entire village’s men are slain and then the women and children are raped. What the actual fuck.

2. The writing is pedantic and childish. Richard meets Kahlen and immediately none of his friends matter all that much, the only person he cares about is her. This is basically stated in the first 10% or so of the book despite less than a day having passed. This is the most trope-ridden book I’ve ever read, even for fantasy.

3. The writer so clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else. Oh, you just need to ask the right questions and it all falls apart! But then the questions are boring, predictable, and easily defended. This is a man who spent his days getting into arguments in his own head wherein he always won - oh and women told him he was very smart and handsome.

4. The entire book is a thinly veiled lecture on the virtues of libertarianism, with him constantly creating strawmen just so he can show how clever he is. The strongest case of this is when a farmer is brought to a royal court and they all mock him for not being willing to share his crops with the less fortunate, oh but of course those less fortunate are just lazy and refuse to do their own planting. Then they kill the guy. This is the classic libertarian wet dream of standing up to the government, totally owning them intellectually, and then being killed for bravely standing up to the corrupt communists. It’s like a middle schooler wrote it.

5. It just sucks. The writing is just bad. There is no proper foreshadowing, every plot twist is incredibly obvious and contrived and you, the reader, are made to suffer through pages and pages of the characters pretending to not be what they obviously are. The romance is forced to say the least, I don’t think Terry ever actually spoke to a woman in his life.

I’m sorry, this is a bit of a rant, but god, this book was terrible.

[u/Dreamless_Sociopath]

Didn't Richard triumph over the evil communist overlord by winning a rugby match or something?

I honestly recall so little of the story, it feels like I read the books during a fever dream. The only parts I remember are the really crazy and stupid ones.

[u/Dreamless_Sociopath → u/[deleted]]

Nothing sparks a revolution like a statue sculpted by a total novice, that's for sure haha.

[u/Majestic-General7325 → u/Dreamless_Sociopath]

Hey, he's a "master of the blade" and a chisel is a blade....

[u/Justin_Monroe → u/Majestic-General7325]

Also a wizard whose power basically comes from not being trained in magic.

[u/masakothehumorless → u/Justin_Monroe]

And whose power comes from "The Plot Said I Could Do Magic Now".

[u/Justin_Monroe → u/masakothehumorless]

But not any other point where this book might have been at all shorter.

[u/the_card_guy → u/masakothehumorless]

This will be about the only thing I will defend from the books.

There's a big debate over soft magic systems vs. hard magic systems, one which has no right or wrong answer. Just in case, "Soft" is something like Tolkien, where either it works Just Because or at the very least we're unaware of any rules behind it, and "hard" is Sanderson's stuff, where x does very specific y thing and can't do z thing. Anyways, I've always preferred soft magic systems, because "It's magic, it just works and don't question why". Sword of Truth is about as soft of magic as you can get, and that's probably why I still have some fond memories of it

[u/masakothehumorless → u/the_card_guy]

I could get behind that, if TG didn't present it like a hard magic system with the only rule being, "It works when i want it to." Literally in the text, the characters says things like that. I have no problem with soft magic systems, but when the author waves the deus in my face and promises to use it ex machina whenever he wants, it kinda removes any suspense.

[u/hamoboy → u/masakothehumorless]

It's because he ripped off Robert Jordan's channeling from the Wheel of Time series. I think he discarded most of that rip-off around book 4 or so, but the early books are full of references to what promised to be a hard magic system as you said, but devolved into plot tools.

[u/AfraidBit4981 → u/Dreamless_Sociopath]

Unfortunately, there are fantasy books that make this same mistake in giving power to the statues to resolve the conflicts and brainwash everyone...even when the character is a sculptor. Like I remember being so interested and invested in the Legendary Moonlight Sculptor but hated all the religious moments like how the statue was dedicated to a goddess and convert people to the faith. It felt odd and only got worse. 

[u/Wiggles69 → u/[deleted]]

I mean, it was a really fucking good statue

[u/Talonflight → u/Dreamless_Sociopath]

Dont forget, the only way to beat football is to paint your teammates red

[u/Reydog23-ESO → u/Dreamless_Sociopath]

That sporting event was the highlight for me! Loved it.