The “Sword of Truth” is a series of fantasy novels made up of 11 books by Terry Goodkind. Thats quite a lot of books and as you would expect it makes for quite an in-depth story. I just finished it in about 3 months so I thought I would right about it. It recently got made into a TV series (Legend of the Seeker) that started off well but descended into dully formulaic in the second series. Still it does have these lovely ladies as main characters so it is pretty easy to forgive it for that:

It is quite sad that after the first book the story goes down a path the TV series cannot follow. The TV series is fine with the whole plucky band of heroes out to defeat the evil empire. When it gets into the stories where the main character is leading an empire and the scenes move from pretty New Zealand countryside to vast palaces and fantasy cities it can’t keep up. As they don’t have the budget for either the sets, special effects and the volume of characters required they don’t even bother and just deviate from the books plot almost completely. Instead it becomes too much of a modern version of Xena Warrior Princess. Which considering who produces the show is to be expected. Also Craig Horner has way too many abs for my liking, damn him.

But this meant to be about the books not the TV series! Even if the TV series is prettier to look at. 

If you are familiar with the TV series and it is almost family friendly nature (people die in it but there isn’t much blood) then don’t assume the books are the same. They aren’t. Not a single one of the 11 books goes by without a main character (and hundreds of minor characters) being murdered, raped, tortured, mutilated or otherwise brutalised in some horrifying way. Seriously not even the golden boy protagonist or children escape this kind of treatment. This isn’t some Video game where the evilest thing anyone does is kill people or lock them in a dungeon. Hell the two characters I just gave you the easy on the eye pictures of have abilities and or natures that would scare the fuck out of you in real life. One is a Confessor who with a touch can steal your soul and make you her compliant slave for ever and the other is a Mordsith. The Mordsith is captured as a young girl and tortured and abused into being a relentless killing machine and arch-torturer.  It is a pretty fucked up world from the outset but it just gets worse as the story progresses. Seriously these books are for adults but young teens would love them too.

The basic plot is thus. The young Richard Cypher lives in an area of the world devoid of magic and separated from the rest of the magic ripe world by magical barriers. He is a good, smart lad and works as a woods guide, you know guiding people through the woods. One day he falls in love, discovers he has a great destiny and goes off to save the world. Actually lots of other stuff happens and a lot of it is pretty brutal but I don’t want to spoil too much of it. I know me not purposely giving out spoilers. There are some below but nothing massive. Wash dies by the way. It sounds pretty standard Fantasy stuff but Goodkind is a very good writer, with a vivid imagination and quite possibly serious women issues. Sure men get brutally treated in these books but the really special stuff is saved for the women. Also most of the really overtly powerful characters are women. I’m thinking he had an overbearing mother or something.

Goodkind does have a talent for world building. The places he creates are believable and feel real. Each place we visit is different but their is still consistency of culture and belief where it shold be expected. Indeed the TV show taps into this buy filming in New Zealand. I think New Zealand ha snow become short hand for fantasy world in TV and Cinema.

The basic themes of the stories are dualistic. As well as the standard Good vs Evil there are some other deeper battles going on. Perhaps the primary aspects besides Good vs Evil are the ideas of Free Will vs Prophecy and Individual Freedom vs The Common Good. Now Goodkind is firmly in the Free Will and Individual Freedom camps and the Big Bad that appears after the first novel is a pretty obvious analogy to Communism. Now this means much of the political discourse in the books seems like pretty standard Right-wing American arguments for the right to deny people healthcare and shoot people who walk too slowly past your drive way. He does balance with the notion that doing good for others is a good thing but it should be a personal choice and not forced on them by society.

On the flip side there is another battle that threads its way through all the books that separates it from being the usual mad yank ramblings. Faith vs Reason. Despite what you might think from the previous paragraph Goodkind and his books in no way value faith. The good guys are all about reason (even if they don’t always reason particularly well) and the bad guys are all about faith. This is linked to Free Will vs Prophecy. In the first book it appears that Prophecy and buy extension Faith are what helps Richard defeat the Little Bad but it turns out not to be the case. It quickly become apparent in later books that it is Richard’s dedication to Freedom and Reason that repeatedly save the day.  As well as being faux-Communists the bad guys are also religious fundamentalists. It sounds contradictory but it makes sense in the context on the world the story inhabits. I guess the moral of the books is all about choice. The importance of having the freedom to make choices, that if you make a choice you have to face the consequences of it and if you make a bad choice you can recover.

Pain and anger are also important elements of these books. Like I already mentioned few characters escape without experiencing a great deal of physical pain but they also get put through the emotional wringer too. However it is often the case that the pain these character experience is what allows them to survive even more harrowing experiences down the line. For example being captured by a Mordsith and being ‘trained’ with pain is what allows Richard to survive later events that would have otherwise stopped him dead (literally in most cases). What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (or leaves you a cripple). Focused anger is seen as a good thing in a Bruce Lee ‘emotional content’ kind of way while unfettered rage is a bad thing.

Each book reveals one of the wizards rules as below:

• “People are stupid.They will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”
• “The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.”
• “Passion rules reason, for better or for worse.”
• “There is magic in forgiveness, the magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, but more so, in forgiveness you receive.”
• “Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.”
• “The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason”
• “Life is the future, not the past.”
• “Deserve victory.”
• “A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.”
• “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one’s self.”

Each of which is a nice little pill of wisdom that defines the story of that book. None of which particularly original but as far I can see are pretty much all sound advice. But there is one missing you say? That would be the unwritten rule that is way to big a plot spoiler to give away here.

Goodkind also has a talent for creating likable characters and despicable villains. He can also take one and make them into the other without destroying the nature of the character. A character can make the transition from evil to good or vice versa in ways Anakin Skywalker couldn’t. Unlike many stories these days the characters evolve and grow over time and you can’t help but getting invested in their stories. The essence of Richard’s nature never really changes as much as it matures. He morphs from simple wood guide, to warrior, to emperor to a wise wizard over the course of the 11 books. He even makes mistakes that cost people their lives and nearly doom the world but then so do many characters. Other characters change a great deal, like the freed Mordsith who before your eyes get to experience a compressed childhood and become real individuals. The concept of these truly frightening creatures who from a young age are tortured into being the evil enforcers of a mad wizard taking joy in feeding chipmunks his quite amazing. No characters in the books are beyond redemption either. Many enemies become allies and even trusted friends if when finally given the choice they have been denied they make the right one. It is the interactions with Richard and his eventual wife that mostly change the characters for the better.

Perhaps the only real negative to the books is that Richard has tendency to learn what he needs to know jut in the nick of time or his allies turn up just when he needs them most. However considering that much of what happens in orchestrated by people with access to prophecy or characters who can see selectively into the future the latter is really simply the nature of the world these stories take places. The books can often build very slowly and then seem to conclude quite quickly but they do generate an air of tension and/or urgency. Most of the books are self-contained stories that are part of an over-arching plot. However the last 3 books are part of the same story and have cliffhangers. Which comes as a shock I can tell you and you can find yourself wait for Amazon to believer the next one.

Also one of the books has a Dragon named Gregory in it. Completely awesome on the grounds there can’t be a less appropriate name for a Dragon.

Probably the best fantasy series I have read since Lord of the Rings or His Dark Materials. However I’m not actually that much of a fantasy reader so perhaps there are better. I however really enjoyed them, even the sick bits. Then I am chaotic evil. I recommend you read them, all. I am now in search of other Fantasy tales to read so perhaps I will find better.