The (Rabid) Squirrel of Truth: Terry Goodkind, Severed Souls

Nearly a year ago, Larry lost one of his most valuable and trusted Serbian reading squirrels, Stefan Veverica, to pulp-induced rabies after Stefan attempted to read and review Terry Goodkind's The Third Kingdom.  It was a terrible blow, as Stefan was now no mere squirrel, but rabidness manifest.  Much of the past year has been spent seeking a cure for Stefan's rabid state, until Larry made the controversial decision of applying lexico-shock to Stefan, exposing him rapid-fire to all sorts of literary styles and media, including Beat poetry and anagram construction, in order to help stabilize Stefan's mind...and to stop him from trying to attack Larry every time the words "good" and "kind" were ever used in a sentence.  After months of arduous reading rehab, it is now time for Stefan to face the ghosts of his past, to see if he can purge that spark of Death in his soul.  In other words, it is time to review Goodkind's latest novel, Severed Souls.

"Bring us our dead."

At the same time as he heard the voice, Richard felt the touch of an icy hand on the back of his shoulder.

He drew his sword as he spun.

As it cleared its scabbard, the blade sent its distinctive ring of steel through the hushed, predawn air.  The power contained within the weapon answered the call, inundating him with rage in preparation for a fight. (p. 7)

Monty Python?  *chitterchitter* Sranje!  Rage, though, yes, ohsosweet rage! Does anything ever change, my dear Marija, anything at all with G---d?   He repeats himself, repeats the same setup from the previous novel, spends over half of this wretched novel having Dick and Jan...err, Kahlan being sick from this death-poison, as if death could be a poison and not a sweet release from the pains and travails of life, oh my squirrely gods of Shatner and Bonaduce why oh why does he continue to describe using the same words the biting hunger of "half people" while more and more magic is aimed at them, making a charnelhouse of these pre-cannon fodder non-souled bodies while the bad men cackle and twirl their mustaches and talk yet once again about prophecy oh so sweet prophecy that makes absolutely no sense at all!  I feel a oneness with these "half people," wanting to eat bodies in order to get at souls, oh those delectable souls like those of Dick and crew.  The succulent flesh of these Objectivist stand-ins, their illogical logic deserving to be drowned in a Bearnaise sauce.  So sumptuous the feast will be once they have died through their own stupidity at last and then the squirrels can emerge from their trees and take over this world.  Yes!

With a sigh, Larry gently snatches Severed Souls from Stefan and gives him Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake to read instead.  Stefan's tics settle down into gentle chittering barks as he becomes engrossed in this tale of post-Hastings England written in an alternate English.  And now that the Squirrel from Scene 24 has been rescued from imminent rabies relapse, onto the rest of the review:

Severed Souls, hard as it may be to believe, may be Goodkind's worst novel.  Yes, it is very difficult to top the dreck found in the previous volume, The Third Kingdom, or images such as the iconic chicken that isn't a chicken but evil manifest, but somehow Goodkind manages to overcome these difficulties to write something that, if self-published, even Hugh Howey couldn't defend as part of a digital reading/writing revolution.  There really is no plot progression here.  If anything, the first half of Severed Souls could be viewed as a recapitulation of the final scenes of The Third Kingdom, with Richard and Kahlan still fleeing from the "half people" eager to devour their flesh, still infected with the ridiculous "death in life" illness that naturally deprives them of their magical powers (except when it doesn't, mostly when it comes to Richard's use of his Sword of Truth), still dealing with villains who seek to torture people to the brink of death to bring forth "prophecies" as though they were industrial items to be produced in a factory.  On the face of it, the entire premise is so ridiculous that it is hard to understand why anyone would want to contemplate just what is being splattered on these pages, unless perhaps they get some sort of masochistic thrill out of having their souls tortured with this claptrap. 

But that is just on the surface.  When one studies Goodkind's writings at a deeper level, like the "occult" powers he keeps referencing without ever really taking the time to examine just what this might mean beyond the Tiki god episode of The Brady Bunch, one comes to a different conclusion.  If advanced numerology, crossed with records of squirrel dropping patterns and the number of One Direction fans complaining that The Who ripped them off, is applied, then passages such as the following reveal an awesome truth about sorcery and objective truthiness:

At the cluttered desk, he went to the ancient-looking scroll that had caught his attention.  Unrolling it partway on the desk, he saw a complex tapestry of lines connecting constellations of elements that constituted the language of Creation.  Ludwig frowned as he leaned in, studying the writing on the scroll.

"This is a Cerulean scroll," he whispered in astonishment as he straightened.  He looked over at the old man watching him.  "This is a Cerulean scroll," he said again, louder. (pp. 249-250)

This is a key detail, as this is no mere chartreuse scroll, but an evidently dangerous cerulean version.  It is so fell and occult that only the color of its pages needs to be mentioned for a sense of awe to overcome one of the villains.  It is moments like this that Goodkind readers long for, for that misplaced sense of import that leads to powerful lines such as this one:

Not prophecy, as in revealing prophecy, but about prophecy itself almost as if it were a living thing.

The scroll spoke of a time when prophecy itself might be ended. (p. 251)

 The implications are just too terrible to consider.  Same holds true for the improbable distances covered in the few days of Severed Souls.  All those battles, punctuated with one of the more awkward major character assassination scenes that I have ever read.  While this scene is explained toward the end, it is so contrived and forced that it just falls flat.  And this is the toasted toad's truth...whatever the hell that might mean.  The only saving grace about this particular character death is that it seems sane when compared to the second major character death.  In a series filled with illogical plot twists, execrable character development, and horrid thematic expositions, this second death is so lame and is obviously so constructed as to allow for a greater commentary on the presumed value of living life (and also to allow the character most known for this to come back to life as a Jesus chock full of truthiness). 

This, of course, is just a long, snark-filled (and with way too many citations to support these sarcastic comments) way of saying that if it weren't for the fact that millions of people have bought this merde over the past twenty years, there is no justification for this poor excuse for an epic fantasy to have ever been published.  Yet somehow, Goodkind has managed to lower expectations even more for his next novel.  As people chant during a game of limbo, "how low can he go?"

And now pardon me while I continue to help Stefan rehabilitate from his traumatic Goodkind reading experience...

A rabid squirrel reviews Terry Goodkind's The Third Kingdom

After learning that he had been assigned the arduous task of reading Terry Goodkind's recently-released The Third Kingdom, the leader of the highly-trained and vicious Serbian reading squirrels, Stefan Veverica, sighed.  Ever since the calamitous attempt by his lost love, Marija, to read Robert Stanek's Keeper Martin's Tale for Larry had resulted in her full-on descent into rabidness, there had been limits placed on what the reading squirrels would have to endure.  Larry himself had to agree to read Dahlia Lu's The Dark God's Bride alone, as the squirrels were too busy licking their metaphorical and all-too-physical wounds to spare time for reading such dreck.

But Goodkind?  Really?  Why, oh rabid squirrel gods, why must this bitter cup be passed to me, Stefan thought.  If I make it out alive, some one is going to be eviscerated for this outrage.  Well, perhaps it won't be so bad if it's read really fast...

And so hundreds of pages were read in a near blur.  Not because much of anything was happening, the squirrel mused, but rather because everything was explained in such a redundant fashion that he, despite having not read any Goodkind in years, could fill in all of the backstory.  Richard was being Richard, spending dozens of chapters chit-chatting with a talented yet naive young sorceress about things which he could learn in a minute.  Such as how to read this oh-so-mystical thing called "the language of Creation," which due to this super-duper, hidden away for over a dozen books until the previous book, the eponymous "omen machine" could do this neat trick of "issuing prophecy by using focused beams of light to burn the symbols composing the language of Creation onto metal strips." (p. 159)  It was like the 1980s had reached Dick and K'lan Land and CDs of Hal Lindsey prophecies were now being mass-produced!

As the squirrel read on, it began to twitch.  Gah!  Why is Kahlan yet again separated from her dear beloved Dick and why oh why is she without powers and at the mercy of henchmen who probably failed the admission exam for Villain U and instead had to settle for an Associate's Degree in Criminalology?  Why does Dick ejaculate for page after page about the discoveries he makes from reading a language that he only discovered a few weeks ago?  Does he have some sort of special Rosetta Stone that teaches him these things or is he a mannikin from which plot information is yanked out of his ass like you might yank a series of knotted handkerchiefs from a magician's hat?  And for the love of juicy, succulent human flesh are there zombies in this book that have less mental capability than a spastic night crawler who had ingested 'shrooms?

Grr!  Gah!  Killkillkillkillkillbitedestroyevisceratemaimshatnerbonaduceattackchitterchitterchitter!

And with that, Stefan Veverica began running wildly around his tree, barking madly and baring his fangs at any who approached.  Looks like this review will have to be finished by Larry after all.  Damn, Stefan was such a good, devoted, discerning reading squirrel...

As you might already guess from reading the paragraphs above, The Third Kingdom is a very poorly-written novel by an author renowned for his clunky prose, paper-thin characterizations, and odious political philosophy.  It is a novel that tries to create suspense from yet another separation of the two main protagonists, Richard Rahl and his wife Kahlan, yet such suspense fails because the author has utilized this tired, exhausted plot device so frequently that one might be pardoned if he took the wrong inspiration from watching the movie Groundhog Day.  But, as I can hear Goodkind's most rabid fans cry, it is different this time because the two have been infected with death and their precarious balance between the unnatural combination of life-and-death in a body has to be redressed quickly, lest they die!  To which I merely note that the laborious effort Goodkind makes into trying to make a state of being, death, into a concrete, reified entity ultimately serves to make the entire concept rather ridiculous even for a literary subgenre, secondary world fantasy, that contains a plethora of asinine plot devices.  It's one thing to just say "hey, they're like uh...*in a Butt-head-like voice* huh-huh-huh poisoned."  At least then the urgency can be sensed and (mostly) accepted.  But the notion that a state of being, death, is a poisonous entity that affects Dick's powers is risible.  Trying to even explain this shoddy attempt at creating an obstacle for our heroes makes me feel as though I were trying to explain the concept of water to fish.

It doesn't get much better when the enemies are concerned.  Apparently the old, old, old bad guys from centuries before created soulless people, now gifted with the inventive name of "half people."  Yes, these soul-bereft people want a soul to replace their stolen ones, so they think, hey, I bet cannibalism is the answer, as life is in the blood!  Or is it the heart?  Maybe it's in the anus?  Who cares, let's munch!  And so most of these baddies devolve into mindless flesh eaters that barely display even a modicum of humanity.  This is not as much an oversight on Goodkind's part as it is an intentional feature. 

Goodkind has long been criticized for the flimsiness of his themes.  Yet here the hollowness of his argument that "reason must rule" is displayed.  The cannibals have to be reduced to such an abject, passion-ruled state in order to create an easy dichotomy, but when the situation is even considered for a moment, it all collapses like a deck of cards.  How can people, even extremely long-lived yet ultimately mortal soulless cannibals, possess even the rudiments of clothing or even subsistence if their minds are focused solely on eating the flesh of the souled?  Why are there literally thousands of these witless bodies being slaughtered as the hero allows his rage to fuel his deadly magic sword?  If anything, it is the passion behind Richard's actions, not the lip-service to ideals that he voices in a redundant fashion for long stretches in the first half of the novel, that is to be the appeal of the story.  If the quasi-zombies aren't being slaughtered en masse, then the story would be reduced even further to diabolical laughter®, maniacal scheming, and mustache-twirling, followed by heroic declaration, improbably escape from predicament and rushed conclusion that leaves the villains free to plot poorly for another day. 

The Third Kingdom is like the anti-apotheosis of Goodkind's prose, characterization, and theme development.  Virtually everything he has tried (and failed) to develop in his previous novels is present here (OK, there are no barbed Namble cocks, but there are flesh eaters and nearly toothless wannabe almost-rapists!); these elements, somehow, are presented in an even worse fashion than before.  The writing is atrocious.  Goodkind's repetitive descriptions, written in short, declarative sentences that feel too simple to belong even in a children's lit book, make The Third Kingdom perhaps an even worse reading experience than Robert Stanek.  It is that poor.  There is nothing redeeming about this story, this overarching plot, these characters, themes, etc.  The book is perhaps the epitome of what the late David Foster Wallace noted in an essay, "Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama," that touches upon the issue of reviewing (poor) genre fiction:

This sort of oddity is, in fact, a frequent problem in reviewing or assessing "genre fiction," which is a type of narrative it's usually fair to call "the sort of thing someone who likes this sort of thing is apt to like."  The evaluative criteria tend to be rather special for genre fiction.  Instead of the basically aesthetic assay the reviewer gets to make of most literary fiction – "Is this piece of fiction good?" – criticism of genre fiction is ultimately more rhetorical – "To whom will this piece of fiction appeal?" (Both Flesh and Not, p. 212)

As a reviewer of literary fiction, I can easily say that The Third Kingdom is as far from good as Shatner is to being an excellent singer.  But in regards to the criteria for assaying this book as genre fiction, it is the sort that will appeal only to those who like to read poorly-written works, who found Goodkind to be empty entertainment, and to those who partake of mind-altering substances on a regular basis and who thus want pablum in order to create a shifted perspective.  For everyone else, I think it is pretty safe to say The Third Kingdom will have no appeal.

Now pardon me while I go check on Stefan...

And as the human approached, Stefan began sniffing the air.  Yes, Las Vegas shall be a nice place to visit.  Come, Marija, we have an author evisceration to do.  And then it will be onto Washington state, where we can inflict revenge for you as well, my dear....

And with a tail twitch and a few body tics, the two now-rabid squirrels venture out to gain their revenge on the authors that had made them suffer so...