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...

Best (Worst?) of 2013: Five Disappointing Releases

In writing a series of posts regarding the "best" of this passing year in a variety of categories, I debated for some days whether or not to write a post dedicated to those new releases that I read which were either execrable reads or were so flawed in some form or fashion that they did not live up to my modest expectation of entertaining me.  Some of these works others will find to be good or even excellent reads.  Others likely will gender a response of "why the hell did you read that dreck in the first place?"  But a "failure rate" of roughly 5% (5 out of slightly over 100 2013 US releases read, with another 25-50 being a mass of decent to solidly good tales that left only fleeting impressions and nothing truly indelible on my memory) is not too bad, I suppose.  Anyway, here are the five whose stories not only failed to capture my attention, but which left me feeling at least wistful about the time lost to reading/reflecting upon them:

5.  Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies:  German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields 

See the link above for the original review, but this excerpt summarizes many of my disappointments with the study:

The sources included in the endnotes is impressive.  Although I haven't kept up with the literature since late 1997, there are a wealth of studies on the issues of women in the Third Reich and roles of women in the Holocaust that appear to be promising reads.  Yet within the body of her study, Lower rarely mentions any of these other historians and their contributions to the field.  Perhaps this is due to Hitler's Furies being marketed more to a general audience than toward an academic one, but ultimately this leads to the sense that Lower's narrative is detached too much from the debates that historians have had on this subject over the past six decades.  While it may be understandable that Lower wants to avoid the old Intentionalist/Functionalist debate regarding the level of intent that the decision-makers had in beginning the Final Solution, the book suffers because there is insufficient grounding of her arguments within the context of larger discussions of the Holocaust's beginning, mechanics, and how its perpetrators justified their actions.  Even the women involved seem at times acting within a narrative vacuum; there is not enough explanation to cover their myriad actions.
Yet despite these serious issues that I have with Hitler's Furies, it is a book that at the very least presents vividly-described actresses and whose discussions at least point the way to possible future paths of exploration within the field.  It is a flawed work, but for non-historian readers curious about the time period, it certainly is a work that will appeal to them.  For many historians of the period, however, Lower's work may be frustrating in the sense that it seems that with just more focus on placing her work within the context of current historiography, her work could have been as important as those of Ian Kershaw and Browning in discussing the mindsets of those involved in the Shoah.  The arguments on complicity and the forms in which it took here will continue to rage on.

 4.  Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds

I bought Lord's second novel on the basis of her strong debut novel, Redemption in Indigo.  Yet when I read it soon after its February 2013 release, I found myself being distracted too frequently while reading the narrative.  There just was no "spark," nothing that interested me, as the setting had too many parallels with prior SF landscapes, the characters were earnest yet lacking in vitality, and while the prose wasn't horrendous, neither did it sparkle with wit, verve, or anything that might have given me a reason to pay closer attention.  The result was a narrative that didn't appeal to me, leaving me then (and now,  months after I traded the book in at the local used bookstore for others) so disinclined to think about its themes that I chose not to write a formal review about how disappointed I was with Lord's sophomore effort.

3.  Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice 

I reviewed this earlier this month and there is little that I would add to that review other than to note that my disappointment stems from the rare case where I tried a book despite my misgivings about the book's premise due to the enthusiastic praise of others.  I suppose in her presumed desire to write a "gender-positive" account that Leckie just failed to make her debut novel a "prose-positive" or "dynamic character-positive" one as well, as the blandness of virtually everything but her underdeveloped theme of the artificiality of gender divisions just left me cold to the pedestrian narrative.

2.  Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, A Memory of Light 

I wrote a detailed review as to why this bloated concluding volume was a major disappointment to me, considering that at one point (well, back in the late 1990s) I enjoyed reading the WoT novels, that any more commentary would just rehash what was stated earlier.  Although I will admit that livetweeting this book back in January (using the hashtag "#WoTTF") did give birth to one of my better literary putdowns:  "non-erotic pornography."

1.  Terry Goodkind, The Third Kingdom 

This is the most disappointing 2013 release read, not because I had any hopes that it would be good, but because I lost a trusted Serbian reading squirrel due to this crap.  Damn good one, Stefan was.  He still is missed, as I have yet to attempt reading another epic fantasy until I can find a suitable replacement.

So there we have it, five disappointing releases, each for different reasons (5:  professional wish for more analysis of sources; 4:  weaker sophomore effort; 3:  too high of expectations based on others' proclamations; 2:  disappointed nostalgia of a former perhaps-fan; 1:  the toil caused by reading the book).  Any thoughts on these five books or any disappointing 2013 releases that you have read this year?

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...

So I was challenged recently to read "a more recent SF/F book"

Last week I posted an interview I conducted with Mihir Wanchoo of Fantasy Book Critic.  In it, he (very politely) challenged me to read/review "a more recent SFF book," a challenge I agreed to undertake.  I decided that I would read and then review the next fantasy book sent my way, no matter who it was or what volume in a series it might be.

Well, I received such a book yesterday in the mail.

It was the latest Terry Goodkind book, The Third Kingdom.

I guess, despite my antipathy for his socio-political views and having read only one book of his in the past decade, I will drain this cup set before me to its bitterest dregs.  May the squirrels have mercy on me, because I think I'm going to have one of them not only read this book but also review it.  Hopefully, I will not be punished too severely for this.  Wish me (and the unlucky squirrel) luck.

Terry Goodkind, The Law of Nines

It was the pirate flag flying atop the plumbing truck that first caught his attention.  The white skull and crossbones seemed to be straining to keep from being blown off the flapping black flag as the flatbed truck, apparently trying to beat the light, cannonballed through the intersection.  The truck heeled over as it cut an arc around the corner.  White PVC pipe rolled across the diamond plate of the truck bed, sounding like the sharp rattle of bones.  At the speed it was traveling, the truck looked to be in danger of capsizing. (p. 1)

The Law of Nines, American writer Terry Goodkind's twelfth book and the first of three purportedly "thriller" books to be published by Putnam/Penguin, opens with a curious scene.  Regardless of what one might think of the author and his previous books, that first paragraph is certainly attention-grabbing.  One might be pardoned for a moment if she imagines The Law of Nines to be a story about a band of rogue pirate plumbers cruising the highways and by-ways of America, looking for septic booty to plunder.  Such a story might make for a wild adventure that would also contain the possibility of possessing deeper, more meaningful passages than is the norm for the thriller subgenre.  Alas, The Law of Nines is not the pirate plumber escapade that we might have wanted.

Instead, we get a story that tries, and often fails, to conform to general expectations of what would constitute a good, action thriller.  Although I am not particularly well-versed in thriller lit, the few good ones tend to establish their premises, no matter how stretched and unbelievable they might be if considered for more than five seconds, early on in the story.  If the late Don LaFontaine couldn't do his "In a world where..." description in less than thirty seconds if he were asked to do a "trailer" for a book such as The Law of Nines, then it would be probably be a sucky thriller, since the motivations would be too murky.  Here in this novel, Goodkind dilly-dallies around setting up the conflicts.  Although he eventually gets the motivations for the good/bad sides into a relatively easy to follow form later in the novel, the beginning of this book is rather disjointed.  Where are those awesome plumbing pirates?  What about that mysterious girl that the main lead, Alexander Rahl (for those who have read Goodkind's near-interminable The Sword of Truth series, yes, it's that Rahl feeling that you're experiencing now) rescues from the Jolly Roger plumbers?  No, instead we get a scene between Alex and his grandfather Ben (one has to wonder at the pattern in Goodkind's novels of having fathers die grisly deaths off-screen before the story begins) that is a bit...well....

"I think the mirrors are watching me," Alex said as he stared off into distant thoughts.

Ben shot him a look back over his shoulder.  "Mirrors tend to do that."

"No, I mean it, Ben.  Lately it feels like they're watching me."

"You mean you see yourself watching you."

"No."  He finally focused his gaze on his grandfather.  "I mean it feels like someone else is watching me through mirrors."

Ben gave him a look.  "Someone else." (p. 23)

In reading it, I was wondering if Goodkind might have decided to create an homage to Jorge Luis Borges' "Fauna of Mirrors," which contains this passage:

In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other.  They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colors nor shapes were the same.  Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors.  One night the mirror people invaded the earth.  Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed.  (The Book of Imaginary Beings, p. 105)

However awesome it might have been to have seen Goodkind "lift" story motifs from Borges rather than from Robert Jordan and Robert Ludlum, Goodkind's "mirror people" are more akin to government agencies peeking on you while you're taking a shit sort of baddies.  Although I have not read the final four volumes of Goodkind's SoT series, apparently there was a closing scene where a Lord Rahl opens up/creates a new, unmagical world for those who've opposed him who want to move away from anything to do with magic.  The baddies (and belatedly, the noble, life-loving good people) have discovered how to peek in on the world of Orden, Nebraska (itself a reference to a SoT object, as Goodkind seems determined to dip often into the well of his fantasy series rather than even attempting to create a thriller that resembles anything even remotely plausible) and they are after something that Alex will inherit on his 27th birthday, some that has to do with a confluence of 3's and 9's that constitute what I found to be a ridiculously-explained "Law of Nines."

It must be said in Goodkind's favor that there are several exciting scenes, such as Alex and the now-named Jax Amnell (yes, she's named after the children's game of Jacks, but with a cool spelling that makes me think of Mortal Kombat, and a surname that is yet another SoTomical reference) discovering that all sorts of bad people can pop out of the air after using mirrors as a sort of GPS, vicious attacks that lead to near-death and (a Goodkind staple, it seems) near-rape, a wild escape, and lots of ammo being fired.  Described like that, there might be just enough action elements to satisfy the most vapid desires of those who just want action and nothing of a reflective, deeper level.  Unfortunately for them (and for most readers), Goodkind tries to go "deeper."

Although thrillers, like most any story, need breaks from a staccato pace to make the action seem better in contrast, Goodkind clogs this story with numerous references to things back in the "mirror" land (or SoTdom) that for those who've read nothing or little of his previous fantasy stories, may be just a bit too unbelievable.  Learning that the main baddie, Radell Cain (such a subtle name), has a) tried to create a "new reality" in painting (I suppose I should note here that Alex is a painter who doesn't make much money because he paints things of "beauty," as if that were an "objective" quality *cough*), b) in SoTdom he wants to eliminate magical use somehow, c) he wants to reactivate the gateway between the two worlds so cell phones, radios, and military weapons can be transported across dimensional borders, and d)is a mega-terrorist makes for a whole bunch of "Huh?" and "Buh?" after reading it.  It is one thing to create a reductionist EVEEL character in order to simplify the story, but a totally different story to create one whose interests and motivations appear to be in deep conflict.  Does this guy want to control one world, or two?  If he wants a magic-free setting where he can rule, why not just take over the non-magical one?  What the fuck does painting have to do with this?  The mind, it is boggled.

Then there are the scenes that are a bit more graphic than the norm for thrillers.  Alex's mom, Helen, has been confined to a mental hospital, Mother of Roses (with such a name, one might wonder if this is yet another dig at Goodkind's antagonistic relationship with the Catholic Church), ever since she turned 27 (dum, dum, dum!).  Of course, she's not insane, but instead is injected with all sorts of psychotropic meds and a gratuitous amount of torture from the orderlies and nurses, who naturally are all Cain's henchmen and who are interested in some sort of secret that the last Rahls in both worlds possess.  At this point, the mind may begin to glaze over, especially when Alex and Jax are drugged and captured while visiting Alex's mom and chapters worth of maniacal villainous gloating and beatings take place.  If you've read even a one prior Goodkind novel, you will immediately recognize the form and substance of these beatings, minus the electric butt-plug of doom that was employed in the first SoT book.

This goes on for several chapters in the middle of the book and by this point, the story had broken down into a bunch of bad guys are after Alex and Jax.  Although I suppose I should add that Alex, in addition to being a supposedly talented painter, is a marksman with a Glock and that he develops somehow the ability to slash a bunch of tendons and ligaments (yes, tendons and ligaments are slashed at a shockingly-high frequency in this novel, along with spines being severed or otherwise destroyed).  My mind is still reeling from this horrible, horrible character development.  Finally, after a bunch of slaying (maybe Alex and Jax could be thought of as being a more ridiculous and blood-drenched version of Vampire Slayers?), the two escape the mental hospital (naturally, mom is now dead) and Alex gets in contact with the lawyers about some land he has just inherited in BFE, Maine.  Turns out that (of course!) that these lawyers are part of a secret, Rahlian society devoted to protecting the gateway that they sought for hundreds of years before discovering it in the 1600s.  Nothing says sensible thriller like having a weird secret society whose main goal is to possess land until the Law of Nines is fulfilled.  As might be expected in what has now become a farce of a thriller, there is a Cain sympathizer in their midst; he tries to stab Alex and just gets slashed to death in return.

And so it goes until the end, where Alex and Jax get to witness a mega-terrorist attack wave that really serves no end except to show that Cain is EVEEL!  This is followed by some of the dumbest get the henchmen separated contrivances that I've ever read and a very silly knife/gun fight that ends with the knife wielder winning and order being restored.  It is not a very thrilling conclusion and while the bad men are all wasted, apparently there will be more madcap adventures of Alex and Jax in the future.

Normally, I would spend some time here discussing Goodkind's prose.  The problem is, there are so many misplaced metaphors and egregious errors in description (calm fury, anyone?) that dozens of pages could be devoted to the shittiness of the prose, which is two or three steps below even the norm for thrillers.  Goodkind certainly does not write complex, flowing sentences.  Nor does he know how to weave descriptions together to make a coherent image of a scene or of a character.  If anything, he comes closest to Jim Theis' Eye of Argon in his maladroit use of simile, such as this little gem:

"There were a few people, driven by insanity, who, like salmon trying to swim upstream, were trying to push their way up the stairs against the flow of people coming down." (p. 375)

Reading that for the first time made me wonder if they were going to spawn before they died.  Not elegant at all, nor does it fit well with the scene, as a simpler "they went against the flow of people coming down" would have made much more sense and not left the reader wondering at what sort of imagery Goodkind wanted to create there.  There are other quotes, but I'll let this one serve as a representative sample of Goodkind's inability to use metaphors and similes well.

Do I really need a full closing paragraph to denote just how poor of a novel The Law of Nines is?  It is a barely readable, poorly-rendered take on a thriller whose take on mirror worlds makes John Twelve Hawks' stories read like Shakespeare for characterizations and Flaubert for mastery of prose.  It fails in the creation of a plausible story, its characterizations are so shallow and stretched as to make a Mills & Boon character seem complex by comparison.  It is perhaps the worst novel that I have read in years, with the possible exception of Eye of Argon and at least that novel had some (unintentional) entertaining elements to it.  Needless to say, avoid at all costs, unless you just want to read it for masochistic reasons.

Suck it, losers!

Yes, I can feel the moral clarity sweeping over me now...


And here's an excerpt from the press letter:

Terry Goodkind, the #1 New York Times bestselling and globally recognized novelist, opens an exciting new chapter of his career with the publication of THE LAW OF NINES (Jove Mass Market Paperback; August 31, 2010; $9.99).  The eleven novels in Goodkind's grand Sword of Truth series have sold 25 million copies worldwide, and are the basis for the popular Legend of the Seeker television series, syndicated by Disney-ABC Domestic Television...

Hrmmm... should I read this now or wait until I have read and reviewed a few Robert Stanek novels first?  Feel free to weigh in as often and as anonymously as you would like (or just create a few sock puppets in Stanek's case, I suppose)!

Tor announces new three book deal with Terry Goodkind

Tor Press Release:

New York Times bestselling author returns with a new Richard & Kahlan novel

New York, NY – Monday, April 19, 2010 – Tor Books is proud to announce the return of New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind to their list. The first book in the 3-book deal will be a new Richard and Kahlan novel, due in early 2011. Richard and Kahlan are the principle characters from his previous New York Times bestselling books.

“We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again,” says Tom Doherty, President and Publisher of Tor Books. “Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story.”
Twenty five million copies of Goodkind’s 12-book series have been sold worldwide and have been translated into more than 20 languages. A television series adaptation of the novels, titled Legend of the Seeker, produced by ABC Studios and broadcast via syndication, first aired on November 1, 2008 and is now in its second season. The Sword of Truth is one of the most successful series ever published in the fantasy field.

Said Goodkind, “I’m thrilled to be back with Tor to tell more stories of Richard and Kahlan.

Interesting, considering the book deal Goodkind had signed a couple of years ago with Putnam.  I wonder if this means there'll be alternating books to fulfill both contracts, or if Goodkind has been released from his Putnam deal.  Not that I'm a fan of Goodkind's writing/personal philosophy (quite the opposite), but it is an interesting mistake (or pun) to see reference to "Richard and Kahlan are the principle characters."

Let the speculations and trashing commence!  Release the krak...err, Namble!