Confessor (Sword of Truth)

Terry neatly wraps this book up, and from the beginning you can see this is the end, as all the knots are tied into nice packages. Overall, I give this a 4 of 5 stars because it wasn't up to par of almost all the previous books. It wasn't a book I couldn't put down till it was finished, but overall it's a clean ending.

If you are going to copy another authors' work at least try to improve on it. This terrible ripoff of the Wheel of Time actually makes that stretched an redundant series look like a great literary work. Just garbage, do not bother.

Like most of the reviewers here I started with the "Wizard's First Rule" when it first came out, and fell in love with it. In all honesty you could probably read just that one and let it go with that. Maybe "Stone of Tears" as well but anything beyond that your going to have to be prepared for the good, the bad, and the really repetitive.

Because the truth of the mater, at least for me, is that, as tired as I got with hearing the same themes repeated, as much as I found myself mumbling, "I get it already," there is still something undeniably compelling about the story itself.

I just finished reading "Confessor"and as much as I hate reading page after page of the same drivel the characters have been spouting for the last 4 or 5 books, I actually found myself enjoying the book non-the-less. So much so I almost reached over for my well worn copy of the "Wizard's First Rule" Stopping just short of actually opening it up to read. It's like there is a chalk drawing of me in a cave somewhere reading these damn books!

Honestly I kind of zoned out on the parts that were less than interesting but there was enough there to keep me going. Even if some of it did feel forced. The time and care that was put into the rhetoric could have been put into connecting some of the scenes a little more coherently.

I think that it is fairly obvious that the author's passions for his subject matter overrode his storytelling. So mush so I am wondering if he didn't fire an editor as I kept stumbling over typos.

You've kind of got to hand it to him though, he accomplish quiet the story epic... now do I really want to wade through all that crap again for the gems that come fewer and far between as the story draws out...

Maybe I can just stop after "Pillar's of Creation"... who am I kidding.

What started out as one of the more entertaining series in the fantasy genre, has degenerated into one of the most formulaic, repetitive and useless waste of print around.

The author's main focus for the last 4 or 5 books of the series has not been entertainment or to even tell a good story. Rather the focus is to promote Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. This is a philosophy that worships reason over faith and views the idea of a heaven or afterlife as abhorrent. The philosophy also stresses the individual, and personal achievement, which has it's merits, but it views the idea of self sacrifice, the cornerstone of christian thinking, as evil.

The evil empire in this book, the Order, is a twisted mix of christianity, sprinkled with perhaps some muslim philosophies as well. The author devotes page after page to nothing but preaching his atheistic screed and attacking 'faith'. In fact all of the 'good guys' in the book repeat the same arguments over and over again, so that there does not appear to be any significant character development. They all take the voice of the author.

The author also waste some pages developing his 'perfect man' Richard Rahl into his dream god of Objectivism, armed however with various wizard powers. No doubt his own personal wish list is at work here, since the hero wins the love of two beautiful women, his wife Kahlan and his 'friend' Nicci. Since Nicci is the loser in the love triangle, she's permitted to be repeatedly raped and tortured for the sake of the Objectivist god Richard.

Meanwhile the plot tension that 'builds' is the same formula used in the past. Our hero(s) get captured by the bad guys. Hero escapes, bad guys all die thanks to the last second intervention of some obvious allies. Yawn.

Since this book is really a philosophical tirade, it should be criticized for it's flaws on this basis as well. Last time I checked atheism, in a couple of centuries has slaughtered more innocents then all the other religions put together. Just look at the atheist heros, Stalin, Mao, Robespierre, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, etc. Maybe the author feels these dictators did the right thing since so many of their victims were christians.

This man is truly a terrible, terrible writer. Trite and simplistic. I found that reading this book, one only has to read one page in every eight to get the gist. The other seven pages are him repeating the same thing over and over and over and over... The first two in the series roped me in, then everything went downhill at an exponential rate. The monologues are insufferable. Guess who doesn't need the books moral theory repeated every other page? Anyone that can read! You insult your readers Terry Goodkind. I promise that we can remember what was said on page 238 by the time we reach page 241.