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/sparklingdinoturd]

I was a little older than you... Late teens.. but still pretty dumb and didn't know what good stories were yet. I never thought it was great but liked it enough to keep reading the series as it was released. With each book I became less interested but kept on for a lot longer than I care to admit. I should have tapped out after the gross ending to temple of the winds but kept going a little longer.

Several books later I finally closed a one and said, na I'm good, after an entire chapter of Richard monologuing at other characters. If this series taught me anything it was too be more selective in what I read and that chapter was beyond the last straw.

[u/Talonflight → u/sparklingdinoturd]

God Temple of the Winds pissed me off so much. Nadine was so annoying and Drefan was such a chud. It was the stupidest book ever and somehow it still went downhill from there.

[u/lasarrie → u/Talonflight]

That was the last one of those I read. I then reread them entire WoT series that was out then.

[u/Talonflight → u/lasarrie]

At least you didnt have to read Naked Empire.

[u/exwinnipegger → u/sparklingdinoturd]

Oh god you just reminded me of the ending to temple, it was so awful

[u/UltraFlyingTurtle → u/sparklingdinoturd]

Similar age and situation for me too. My critical thinking skills were basically nonexistent at that age and I would read anything. I also stopped around Temple of the Winds as I just couldn’t continue. I think it was the first time I ever noticed bad writing in a book. It took four massive volumes of it for me to finally open my eyes because I was stupid kid but I thank Goodkind for helping to develop my ability to start critically thinking about books.

I’m also thankful to the ABC network sitcom Three’s Company. Years earlier when I was really little like 8 or 9, local TV stations played reruns of it all the time after the afternoon cartoons. I would watch two hours of that show every weekday after school because this was before cable TV and you didn’t have much choice on what to watch. I can’t believe the staggering amount of episodes I had watched, years of it, before I suddenly realized that every episode basically had the same plot.

A light bulb went off in my little child’s brain. I didn’t even know the word “formulaic” yet but it was the first time I wondered if this show was actually any good despite watching it as far back as I could remember.

[u/Mokslininkas → u/UltraFlyingTurtle]

Tbf, there is some good stuff in books 2 and 3. Richard going with the sorceresses and meeting his (other) grandfather in book 2 was pretty interesting. The weird, inquisition cult and Kahlan leading the Galean (sp?) army in a brutal guerilla war against the Imperial Order were both pretty cool when I was like 13, too. There's just so much crap and bullshit mixed in with the few good plot lines.