I was Given this book to read by a friend who said, "If you liked 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever', you'll like this." He was wrong - Both to assume That I would care for Goodkind's work and to assume did Goodkind's work had anything nearing the depth and breadth of Donaldson's trilogy (the 1st one). I finished "Wizard's First Rule", but only by skimming the last 300 pages. While some ideas in this novel could have been compelling, The Execution of them is on par with the average junior high school student's. (In the days when I taught creative writing to junior high school students, some oft wrote Consistently better than this.) Goodkind CLEARLY hasnt Given much thought to how people interact Actually, think, or act When in desperate circumstances. Character development is not a high priority in this book, nor is believability. Consider our first view of the villain. Ignore for a moment the one-dimensional portrayal (with its self-conscious mentions of the villain's fingering his eyebrows). A child is buried in sand up to his neck. Our villain talks to the child Briefly. Why does the child never asks why he * once *'s been buried up to his neck in sand? Why does not he talk about how hard it is to breath? Why does not he panic? The novel is emotionally wrong Throughout, thanks to scenes: such as that. Usually I can overlook a great many problems in a book, but the trite dialogue, lack of character development, emotional incongruity, and Generally very poor writing kept leaping off the page to remind me That I've read much better books than this.
