Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Wizard's First Rule is the first of a million books in the Sword of Truth series. It follows Richard, a guy who takes lots of hikes in the woods. He meets a girl running from assassins and isn't particularly surprised because his dad was recently murdered. He befriends this girl despite her obvious emotional baggage and her GIGANTIC SECRET. The girl with the GIGANTIC SECRET tells him that an evil man named Darken Rahl wants to take over everything and kill everybody (Because he's evil, that's why.) In addition to having a confusing part of speech for a name, Darken is a horrible baddy who likes to cut people up and play in their gore. What? That's not obviously evil enough for you? His best friend is a pedophile. There you go. Simplicity. As luck would have it, Richard's good friends with a closeted wizard who the girl with the GIGANTIC SECRET was looking for. The wizard comes out of the closet and uses his power to promote Richard from hiker to The Savior Of The Whole World. Whew, now we can get started with the walking. Like many epic fantasies, this book is mostly about people taking long walks. The savior and the girl with the GIGANTIC SECRET (who are totally in love but can't do anything about it because of her GIGANTIC SECRET) walk for what feels like a million years, stopping occasionally to stab ghosts or get a fresh supply of exposition from a new race of people. They become Mud People (in the political sense that they become citizens of Mudlandia and also in that they get covered in mud) just to ask some dead Mud People for directions. The dead Mud People can't give directions because it's against the rules. Being dead apparently involves a lot of bureaucracy. Oh, but what's Darken Rahl up to this whole time? Good question. He drugs a child, convinces him that his parents don't love him, and then once the child accepts this new reality, feeds him molten lead. Which brings me to my biggest problem. In order to take over everything and kill everybody, Darken is looking for the third Box of Something Or Other. You see, he has two of the Boxes of Something Or Other but he put them in play before he got the third one which is just unheard of. He also doesn't have the instruction manual for the Boxes of Something Or Other because Richard memorized it and ate it when he was young. Yes, it's confusing. But more importantly, we're told that there are three boxes, and if you collect them all and open them in the right way, you have ultimate power over life and death. If you do it wrong, everything in the world dies instantly. WHY WOULD SOMEBODY MAKE THESE BOXES? What wizards (or box makers) thought it would be fun to create three magical jewelry boxes that might accidentally blow up the whole world? I can't stress enough how bad an idea this is. Whoever did this is the stupidest. The third box is sitting inside the walk-in closet of The Shitty Queen and her Shitty Daughter. A wizard (not the closeted one, an openly wizardy wizard) steals the box, hides it in a loaf of bread, and sends an orphan girl into the woods to protect it. As luck would have it, that girl runs into our hero when they both choose the same tree to camp in. They become friends, and she gives the box to him. This is one of many outstanding coincidences in the book. For a world governed by magic, there sure is a lot of dumb luck floating around. Guess what the GIGANTIC SECRET is. No really, guess. You'll never get it. Turns out the girl with the GIGANTIC SECRET has the power to make anybody fall in love with her so completely they would kill themselves to please her. Creepy. Lots of Wizard's First Rule feels like off-the-shelf fantasy. The former Savior Of The Whole World (who used to possess the magic sword) seems an awful lot like Gollum. He is withered, barely human, and keeps saying that the magic sword is "mine mine, gimme." The Shitty Queen is so close to the queen of hearts, I can only assume her white roses are painted red. It reads the way a rap song sounds, like a series of samples of better songs that came before. Back to the story. A cave painter put a spell on Richard that trapped him in an invisible box like really whiney mime. Richard out-cave-paints the painter and kills him, only to be captured by a wandering dominatrix-style CIA agent who tortures Richard for several weeks. It feels like it's in real time. The torture/sex/torture goes on for so long and is described with such relish, it made me physically ill. It was like watching Human Centipede if that movie lasted six hours. I want to mail Terry Goodkind a bag of my throwup. After many weeks of torture, Richard starts what I like to call "The Week Of Many Coincidences." In order to wrap up this massive meandering book, a bunch of stuff that's super convenient needs to happen. "Nobody could ever do this thing, unless you're the one who can do it!" "I just happen to have some of that healing salve in my backpack!" "In all of the woods, we happen to be in the same tree as this wandering girl." It'd be hard to believe, if I didn't want so badly for everything to be over. In the end, everything works out perfectly for all our heros, and nothing bad has come of the years of evil oppression. The only thing left is for Richard to walk home. Holy crap there's so much walking in this book.