Confessor (Sword of Truth)

Fantastic series of books. Could not wait to pick up the next one. I was happy to get answers to long open questions, but happy to see there could be more books. Can't wait for the SciFi Channel series to start.

I really like these charecters and have endured the final books in the series to see what happens to them but really, someone buy this man a thesaurus, "I understand" "raptor gaze" and other repetative phrases not to mention the prolonged sermons, diatribes against the "order" and all too frequent recaps made reading this a frankly painful experience. There was very little charecter development other than Nikki whose charecter felt somehow unfulfilled at the end. Save your time and money.

There is nothing more than can be said about the novel itself. Instead, I will chip in my two cents: I hated Confessor. I read Confessor just so I could say I've read the entire series. I am not a better person for having read Confessor. In fact, I hate myself a little more for reading Confessor.

IF I ever read Terry Goodkind again, it will be only to re-visit "Wizard's First Rule" and fantasize about what could have been.

I did like the first books of this series, but the later books became progressively more boring due to dialog repetitiveness. I had hoped since this was the last book of the series that Mr. Goodkind would go back to his earlier style, where characters actually had more than one dimension and spoke like human beings, unfortunately this book was probably the worst of the entire series.

Characters, especially Richard. go on and on, saying the same thing over and over again. I found myself skipping over these long monologues that went on for pages. The characters were pretty much cardboard cutouts. The dialog was really stilted and character interactions just seemed so unreal. This book was long on speeches, short on character development.

I'm glad the series is over, as the creativity that it started with is long gone. I won't be buying anymore of Mr. Goodkind's books, just too lame... I'll wait for George RR Martin's next book - There's a guy who knows how to develop good characters, even though I find it sad that he has no problem killing them off!

FINALLY! An end to this lengthy series...

When I first began this series, I couldn't put it down. The first four books were inventive, well-written, and very interesting. Then, the seventh book -- the Pillars of Creation -- appeared as if to have been thrown together just weeks from a deadline. It was so bad, in fact, it didn't even seem to be by the same author. Okay, everyone can have a bad book amidst a series. But what happened after that, I ask rhetorically? After that, the series became steadily worse. First, Goodkind -- or I should say, the Character Richard -- got a pro-war stump, pounding the message home at every opportunity. The magical plots were still as interesting ever, though, so I endured that for a few more books, in spite of how tired I grew of the incessant dialogues. It got even worse, however, with the the Chainfire series. In this trilogy-within-a-series, not only the dialogues, but the scenes and narration itself became so redundant with abhorrent violence, as well as the continuous monotony of the book and characters explaining over and over AND OVER adfinitum the right of individuals to create their own lives and accomplish their own goals that it just became absolutely boring. Okay, that's the negative part. You'll notice that I did, however, give this book four stars. The reason?

For one thing, I thought the book did a good job of tying together in the end all the various elements that had made up the life and times and of the characters and nations throughout the series. Secondly, the breadth of the historical scope of the series was exceedingly broad and consistent. Goodkind gets high marks for the complexity of both his individual plot lines and the connection of them throughout the series, and this book was no exception.

What I really liked about this book was how clever the character, Richard, continued to be. The scenes involving the JaLa game, and the manner in which Richard was able to manipulate the entire crowd was simply brilliant. I also like the ending but I won't spoil it here. Suffice it to say that I thought this was a fitting ending for the series, one in which Goodkind redeemed himself for all he has put his faithful readers, including me, through these last few years.

If you've come this far, I would recommend finishing the series. This book is better than Phantom and I think is worth the trouble. If you haven't read the series yet, do! It's really great! But I'd stop after book six and move onto something else, like JRR Martin's Fire and Ice series, which is really great too.

The Gate of Galithonel: Queen of Peace, Part 1