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NOOK Book Review: Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind

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For those of you who read my last book review it should come as no surprise that I was totally and utterly let down by the popular-at-the-moment fantasy series – A Song of Ice and Fire (more commonly referred to by the name of the first book, A Game of Thrones). George R. R. Martin’s miserably written and poorly paced A Song of Ice and Fire series left me wanting much, much more out of everything that this genre has to offer… but I wanted absolutely nothing more from Martin. The first book and a half that I read was boring, excruciatingly drawn out, bland, and (because I inadvertently read some spoilers for future plot points in future books) ultimately totally useless to the reader or the storyline. The first book and a half in the A Song of Ice and Fire series left me annoyed, unhappy, and wanting a real fantasy and/or science fiction series to indulge in.

The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed in every way possible from basic storytelling to failure to generate a compelling plot to an inability to provide a riveting action/adventure storyline. The series failed in making characters that the reader could emotionally invest in and actually care about (which, again, doesn’t really matter since I know now that everything in the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the first few books is useless). The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed to make this avid reader want to read more from the series or this writer.

And yet, those are all of the areas where Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule excelled.

Wizard’s First Rule is the first book in Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series – and it’s awesome! I’ve always heard of Goodkind as a popular fantasy author, but I never really gave him the time of day. As a J. R. R. Tolkien fanatic, I tend to group every fantasy writer from the last fifty or sixty years into a “wannabe” group. Admittedly, that’s a bad point of view to have regarding contemporary fantasy writers, but that’s what makes me a fanatic for Tolkien. So when I first read positive reviews of Goodkind’s work a few years ago I immediately wrote him off as another Tolkien wannabe.

Now, after having read Wizard’s First Rule, I know that it was a bad decision on my part to assume that Goodkind’s work wasn’t worth the time. This book was great!

In a weird way, I’m actually glad that my disgust for Martin led me to Goodkind. Since I wanted to see what Goodkind had to offer, I decided to download Wizard’s First Rule, which happens to be the first book that he ever wrote. After some research I learned that this book is the first book in a ten book series (the aforementioned The Sword of Truth series) that follows the adventures of the main character – Richard Cypher – and his companions Kahlan Amnell and Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard fights against a powerful wizard named Darken Rahl. The story follows Richard from his beginnings as a woods guide (someone who helps you traverse a landscape by showing you how to navigate through the forest) through his progression to what is known as the “Seeker.”

As the Seeker, Richard is tasked with finding and defending the truth. It’s a task that is somewhat shared by Kahlan, who holds the position of Mother Confessor. The Mother Confessor is the most powerful of the confessors – people who can use their power (magic) to make people tell them the truth. There’s a lot more to the whole confessor thing than just that, but you can read all of the details in the book.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, but one thing that stands out to me after having finished the book a few weeks ago is that I can remember a whole heck of a lot of the story. I remember Richard and Kahlan interacting with the Mud People, I remember the stories of Chase and Adie (among other characters) and the descriptions provided for the different locations around the landscape. Goodkind’s writing does that – it grips your interest and creates a really powerful image for you to latch on to and, essentially, feel the story.

However, I do have a bit of criticism for Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. Now don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed Goodkind’s writing style. However, it appeared that some of the emotion-based writing was hyperbolic to the extreme. In other words, it seemed like every time Richard encountered a new emotional experience it was the most extreme feeling of that experience that he had ever felt or would ever feel again. For example, his interactions with Denna the Mord Sith (a woman whose job was to bring days, weeks, months of endless pain to her captives) brought him the most physical pain ever while the thought of losing Kahlan makes him feel the greatest feeling of despair that he could ever feel. Hopefully, that style of exaggeration diminishes in the future novels in The Sword of Truth series because if it doesn’t, then that would be the worst thing ever!

If you don’t understand what hyperbole means in literature, then the really lame literary joke that I made in the last sentence probably didn’t make any sense. No worries. Moving along now!

Granted, even though I’m a Tolkien maniac I did notice the influence that certain elements of the Lord of the Rings had on Wizard’s First Rule. For example, in the Lord of the Rings series you have the deformed former hobbit Gollum who is twisted and deranged by the power of Sauron’s one ring. Well, in Wizard’s First Rule you have Samuel – a former man who was the Seeker and wielded the fabled Sword of Truth that Richard now holds. His lust for the Sword of Truth deforms him into a very Gollum-like creature who is constantly saying that sword belongs to him. Gollum and Samuel are very, very similar and I hope that Samuel being modeled off of Gollum is more or less a tribute to Tolkien and not something that the author would argue was organically created in this story.

Before I wrap this up I thought I’d provide another comparison. A Game of Thrones was 733 NOOK book pages while Wizard’s First Rule was 681 NOOK book pages. The difference between the two isn’t just the 52 additional NOOK book pages. The difference is that those 681 pages of Wizard’s First Rule are packed with storytelling, drama, intrigue, mystery, exciting people and lands, treachery, despair, triumph, etc. Meanwhile, those 733 pages in A Game of Thrones is packed with – well, ultimately useless words – lots of words that evoke little-to-no emotion and tell little-to-no lasting, meaningful story. It’s 733 pages of wasted time.

Reading Wizard’s First Rule sold me on two things:

First and probably most importantly, I’ve become a fan of Terry Goodkind. The man can write a fantasy novel! Here’s hoping that the intelligent fun and excitement of Wizard’s First Rule carries through to the rest of the series. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve already completed the second book in the Sword of Truth series though I plan to delay diving too far into the third book as I finish up some Bible readings that I started a few months ago.

Second, as a reader who is reluctant to change I’m beginning to understand that there is a vast fantasy and science fiction world out there besides the master of the genre, J. R. R. Tolkien. And that may not be as immediately important of a learning point as becoming a fan of Goodkind, but if I can manage to put my Tolkien mania aside again (after finishing the Sword of Truth series, that is), then the sky really is the limit in how many books in this genre that I might find interesting.

In short, if you’re looking for a good fantasy book to read, then I suggest picking up (or downloading onto your NOOK) a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. This is what a fantasy book should be!

NOOK Book Review: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

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Wow. I don’t even know where to start this NOOK Book review so I’m just going to begin at the beginning and take you through my experience with A Game of Thrones. Like most folks, I heard about A Game of Thrones because it’s a big hit on HBO and has a pretty large fan base with respect to readers of the novels. I’m the type of person who at least likes to be aware of what’s going on in pop culture and when A Game of Thrones hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, I thought that I should probably give the story a shot. Plus, I’ve been looking (not that hard) for a good fantasy series to read since I’ve pretty much read and re-read everything that the master of the genre – J.R.R. Tolkien – published.

So with the thought in my mind that this was a New York Times bestseller, a hit series on HBO, and a fantasy story that was gaining momentum in pop culture I got myself the NOOK Book version of A Game of Thrones. For reference, the NOOK Book version of the novel has 753 pages, some 733 of which are the actual story versus the final 20 NOOK Book pages which are an appendix listing the relationships of the different characters in the story.

I’m not sure how deep into detail I want to get with respect to the story itself, but there are a few major, overarching points that I want to make about this book.

First, A Game of Thrones does not read like a fantasy or science fiction story except in certain places. Other than the opening prologue, the reader has to wait hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pages before any event occurs that is actually supernatural in its nature. Further, the reader isn’t treated to a second supernatural, fantastical event until the very last page or two of the book. And even at that, after the reader gets through 733 pages of this “fantasy” novel the fantastical event at the end of the novel is good, but not enough in this reader’s mind.

Second, this is a long book. A really long book. As a reader, I enjoy long books because they give me a chance to get wrapped up in a story and really try to understand the perspectives of the characters, why they do what they do, what larger issues are being commented on by the story/author, etc. I didn’t get much of that from A Game of Thrones and, frankly, the lack of both character depth and progressive character development for the majority of these 733 pages is alarming. Based just upon the character depth and development alone, I’m shocked that A Game of Thrones made its way to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Shocked.

Third, while I eventually began to accept what A Game of Thrones had to offer, I can’t really say that I enjoyed reading the book. Don’t misunderstand – I didn’t loathe reading the book. If I hated A Game of Thrones I would have just stopped reading it and went on to the next book in my unread stack. There’s something in this story… there’s something there that made me – as a fan of fantasy and science fiction writing – want to see the superiority and depth of this story and its characters. But I just couldn’t get myself into it that deeply.

The story of the Stark family ruling at Winterfell, being split up, and ultimately having the head of the family decimated in King’s Landing after King Robert dies is certainly a good story. But the reasons behind the various actions that lead to the end of the novel are not that deep. Look, the Lannisters are scumbags and they do whatever they want to do without regarding for right or wrong. They put an inbred young king on the throne who doesn’t even know that his father is actually his uncle and I guess that there is supposed to be more of a gripping story than appears to the naked eye there, but I didn’t see it. However, a more compelling story for this reader was that of Dany and her brother Viserys and their interactions with the Dothraki. And yet even in that story, Martin (seemingly randomly) chooses to kill off one of the most interesting characters in the novel, Khal Drogo, to reach the storyline progression that is achieved at the end of A Game of Thrones. It just seemed to me that in terms of storytelling, Drogo could have made it a little bit further in the story.

There are a variety of lesser stories interwoven throughout the novel that also have potential, such as the stories regarding the Mormont family, the different characters and their interactions in the Night’s Watch, the Others beyond the Wall, etc. But Martin doesn’t really get into those stories too much. One would think that with 733 pages of story, he could dive into one of those sub-stories and really give it some color. The again, if he chose not to give a depth of color to the main characters, I guess it would seem silly to do that with the minor ones instead.

I know this NOOK Book review seems more like I’m complaining than anything else, but I just can’t figure out what my exact gripe is with A Game of Thrones. My gripe is not that the story is mostly sluggish or mostly boring – I can imagine many folks enjoying this read. And my gripe also doesn’t have to do with the extremely repetitive words and phrases that Martin uses throughout the novel (if I read that a character ate something “to break his/her fast” again or that a warrior was robed in armor that looked like “a lobster,” I’m going to punch someone).

In general, I think my problem with A Game of Thrones is that it really does take hundreds of pages for Martin to reveal a plot point that any astute reader had probably already discovered and processed the moment that the plot point was hinted at… hundreds of pages earlier. In addition, while Martin’s writing style isn’t necessarily bad, his narration style leaves a lot to be desired. A Game of Thrones does not benefit by the way Martin jumps from one part of the story to the next (very similar to the way the Lord of the Rings movies follows the progression of the story). Aside from being distracting to the discerning reader, jumping from one scene to a completely different one reveals another one of my gripes with this story – it seems to have almost been written in a format that would make it easily adaptable to television.

After 733 pages of NOOK Book reading, I can’t quite put my finger on the element of the book that makes A Game of Thrones a hit show on HBO. However, there is little doubt in my mind that this story was written – at least in part – from a desire to see the characters come to life on film or television and that is what is at the core of what bothers me. When you read a book like Tarzan or a book like The Hobbit or a series like The Lord of The Rings, you aren’t reading about characters who were created to eventually be placed on the big screen. Go back and read a book like Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe and tell me if you think that the characters in those books were written with the express purpose of eventually making a video game or television series based off of the characters. The answer is clearly no (and not just because those mediums of entertainment didn’t exist when the books were published). These books were written to tell a compelling story and let’s be honest – content is king.

The reason why The Lord of the Rings has stood the test of time is because J.R.R. Tolkien created a story with characters that are so deep and with such a rich back story that a fan of fantasy novels can get lost in his legendarium and never cease to be amazed at a new discovery that informs the core story of good versus evil. It’s that content that made Tolkien a master of his craft. And in truth, it’s that lack of content – the lack of any compelling, overarching reason as to why events are happening – that brings down A Game of Thrones for this reader. I understand that there are other books in this series. However, I have to ask the question – if a deeper, compelling story isn’t revealed after 733 NOOK Book pages of reading, then what else is there? Could Martin have made the next books in this series any less substantive, any less dramatic, any more unnecessarily graphic, or any more frustrating to read than A Game of Thrones? I have access to the next book in this series, but I’m unsure if I’m going to read it yet. I might give the first chapter a try just to see what’s doing.

For those of you out there who are looking for something different to read – A Game of Thrones is definitely different. However, if you’re looking for a good science fiction series or a fantasy series with a deep, compelling story to get into, then I don’t think that A Game of Thrones is for you. The story isn’t quite science fiction nor is it quite fantasy except in very few, very brief instances in its 733 pages. And for a science fiction or fantasy fan, that’s just not enough. The book is long – that’s for sure. But length aside, A Game of Thrones is a case where quantity does not equal quality.