Many books aim to please. They strive for success – or at least attempt to deliver a good read – and fail. Occasionally, though, I come across a novel which aims to sleaze, which seems to have been written for the express purpose of making the most money for the least effort. Like any mediocre romance novel, such a book relies heavily on clichés, throws in some titillation and idolizes its protagonists; rarely, though, does such a book sell well or spawn a long line of sequels. That Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule did so is notable, since the poorly written doorstopper comes off as a repository of every possible cliché of the genre, though it will occasionally rise above mediocrity and rip off George Lucas instead. This is a fantasy novel all right – if you enjoy a bizarre wish-fulfilment fantasy populated with perfect people. So let’s begin with those people, the peerless luminaries of their respective fields, and at least in the case of the hero and heroine, as hot as they are shallow.
Richard Cypher : The stereotypical orphan boy of fantasy who finds out that his father is a famous person and that he is going to save the land. Richard might start out as a simple woods guide, but at the end, he’s got titles, accomplishments, famous relatives and a magic sword to kill them with. Unfortunately, he’s less well endowed when it comes to personality; I’ve seen Tic-Tac-Toe games that were more complex.
Kahlan Amnell : The beautiful (of course) and desired-by-all (what did you expect?) heroine, beneath her uberpower lies a heart heavy with angst and loneliness, weeping bitter tears of loss and grief. She does smile a lot, however, in order to assure everyone that she is indeed beautiful and special.
Zeddicus Zuul Zorander : ZZZ. Yes, that was frequently the reaction I had to this book. Getting back to this fingernails-on-a-chalkboard character, though, he’s a great and powerful wizard whom we first encounter while he’s standing naked on a rock. Considering that he’s a skinny octogenarian, he’s possibly the last person in the novel who should be stripping in public, but that’s actually one of the more pleasant images in the book.
Darken Rahl : The antagonist. Subtlety, thy name is Goodkind. As is typical of most over-the-top caricatures of villainy, there is no moment in Rahl’s life when he is not performing some vile and despicable action. Descended from a line of Eeeeevil Overlords, this vegetarian tyrant rules his people with cruel laws and keeps a harem of leather-clad dominatrices. I know, one of these things is not like the others and one of these things doesn’t belong, but it’s there anyway. Real men eat meat and real women cook it for them.
Since it would be far too taxing to deal with more than one dimension, the antagonists, from Rahl’s henchman to Richard’s older brother Michael, are all defined by their sexual perversions. The henchman is a pedophile and Michael grabs the lovely Kahlan’s lovely bottom, so right away I knew he was rotten to the core. And later on it’s revealed that he’s not actually a biological relative of Richard’s, which explained his depravity. When it comes to secondary characters, the novel follows a simple pattern – if a person is good, they will sooner or later realize just how wonderful Richard and/or Kahlan is, and act accordingly, whereas if a person is bad, they will have designs on Kahlan’s bottom. Since the characters are so flat and predictable, there are no surprises, unless you count amazement at Goodkind’s chutzpah in ripping off Star Wars. What you expect to happen happens, though it happens in a slow, tedious slog that’s all but anesthetized by Goodkind’s elementary school style. So let’s embark on the tour through the Westlands and its carbon copies, the Midlands and D’Hara; perhaps one of these lands will stock an interesting and unpredictable plot.
Richard is a woods guide in the Westlands who sees a Midlands woman being pursued by a squad of four men, called a quad. Terry, dude, don’t go using up all your imagination at the start of the book like that. After the quad has been killed, Richard decides that he is going to be her friend, since she is pretty, and he has the unique talent of being able to deduce personality traits through iridology.
In her eyes he saw something that attracted him more than anything else. Intelligence. He saw it flaring there, burning in her, and through it all he felt an overriding sense of her integrity.
He looked deeper into her eyes and saw, in Sherlock Holmes fashion, that she owned a poodle called “Fluffy” and had eaten a bad breakfast burrito that morning. Kahlan also recognizes that Richard is going to be her BFF (best friend 4-evah).
She did not blush, but smiled again. It was an odd sort of smile, a special smile, not showing any teeth. Her lips were pressed together, as one would do when taking another into one's confidence. Her eyes sparkled. It was a smile of sharing.
Exactly the kind of smily smile one should smile after the deaths of four men. A special smiling smile. Michael, Richard’s brother, is also attracted to Kahlan, and gropes her while Richard stands there with his mouth (and possibly pants) open.
Richard was dumbfounded. He couldn't believe what his brother was doing. "Michael! Stop it!"
“You could get girl-cooties that way!”
After she has scratched the lecherous Michael bloody to teach him a lesson – never touch the hero’s love interest – Kahlan explains to Richard that the quad was sent by “a very wicked man” called Darken Rahl. Rahl is the ruler of the easternmost land, D’Hara, which is separated from Kahlan’s homeland, the Midlands, by a magical boundary. The boundary, however, is coming down, and therefore Kahlan has come in search of a great wizard who is in the Westlands.
“As punishment, the great wizard told them he would do the worst thing possible to them; he would leave them to suffer the consequences of their actions."
Richard smiled. That sounded like something Zedd would say.
Gee, I wonder who this great wizard could be. Secrets in this book tend to be telegraphed well ahead of time; I’m not sure if this is because Goodkind honestly believes he’s dropping cleverly crafted clues to people’s identities, or because he just doesn’t care and writes in the most simplistic style possible. Anyway, Zedd is identified as the superwizard soon enough, and after he’s put his clothes back on, Kahlan continues to serve her exposition function. She is what’s called a Confessor, and she has hotfooted it to the Westlands because Darken Rahl is looking for three boxes of magic. I’d wonder whether this is an allusion to The Merchant of Venice, but that would be an overestimation of the author’s erudition.
"I have come in search of the great wizard… He must appoint a Seeker."
"What!" Zedd jumped to his feet…. "Seekers appoint themselves. The wizard just sort of recognizes what has happened, and makes it official."
So we need a Confessor to find a wizard to appoint a Seeker to stop a dictator. It’s like the three most special people in the world coming together in a holy trinity. And then there’s the Book of Counted Shadows, which is involved with the opening of the Ark of the Covenant… er, I mean the three boxes, since three are much more special than one. Coincidentally, Richard’s late father made him memorize the entire Book of Counted Shadows, probably giving him a lollipop for each correct chapter, so he was pretty unusual even before he turned out to be the Seeker (was that ever in doubt?). Zedd makes a funny about this.
He broke into a broad grin. "I have chosen the Seeker well. I am proud of myself." Richard and Kahlan laughed at Zedd's self-congratulation.
Having gotten that knee-slapper off, the trio ride off to the Midlands, while Richard makes the profound observation that “They were going places he had never been. Dangerous places.” Such insight from one so young. Since this is supposed to be a fantasy, though, it must have occurred to Goodkind or his editor that an unusual animal or two might not go amiss. Therefore, we get the predatory gar (which probably lives in a lair called the garden). In a clumsy stab at symbiosis, the gar is described as having blood flies which flush out prey so that the gar can kill them.
"Long-tailed gars are stupid. If it had been a short-tailed gar, we would be dead right now. Short-tailed gars are bigger, and a lot smarter." She paused to make sure she had his full attention. "They count their flies."
This provided me with a vision of the short-tailed gar sitting down after each kill to check that each blood fly is home safe, instead of being squashed, or eaten by a vole, or dying a natural death. “OK, that’s Megan, Derek, Jason, Bob Jr., Alice, Coral, Paul, Max, Steven, Ama… hey, where’s Amanda? What’s happened to my baby?” Seriously, though, this is the best that the novel has to offer in terms of biodiversity, but it’s still better than the angst-fest in which Kahlan wallows when she and her best buddy are alone.
"My . . . mother," she sobbed, "I haven't seen her in so many years ... and ... my dead sister ... Dennee.-.. I'm so alone . . . and afraid. . . ." As she cried, she started gasping for air.
If that’s an asthma attack, I can only hope she left her inhaler in the Midlands. She recovers, though, and goes on to have another weepfest where she laments her loneliness and blathers on about how Richard is her friend. “His eyes make me feel safe,” she sobs. Fill out an organ donor card then, and keep a jar of formaldehyde handy. The constant references to friendship are like watching an interminable episode of Friends, but occasionally there’s a little horniness on Richard’s part… wait, that would be an episode of Friends. These scenes are written with all the scorching passion of an Archie comic, since all Richard can do is fantasize about kissing Kahlan (he probably never got beyond that stage with other girls or farm animals), and all Kahlan can do is “smile over to him with the special smile she never gave anyone else.” At this point I wondered if Goodkind was using Kahlan’s marvelous mouth movement as an euphemism for her virginity, but either way, Richard is besotted with the special smiling smile that she never smiles at anyone else with.
She looked so beautiful in the moonlight, but it wasn't only the way she looked, it was what was inside her.
The longest tapeworm in the Midlands.
He knew he would never want anyone else for as long as he lived. He would rather spend the rest of his life alone than with someone else. There could be no one else.
And women all over the world breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have this weird, smile-obsessed halfwit attaching himself like a barnacle to them. Since the romantic aspect of the novel has now been settled – Richard loves Kahlan’s smile and Kahlan loves Richard’s adoration of strangers who grin with their mouths closed – the plot can continue on its lurching voyage. Zedd is thankfully ditched somewhere along the way, so Richard and Kahlan enter the Midlands and meet the Mad People – oops, I mean Mud People, a race of noble savages with amazing powers of perception. “You wear odd things,” they say to Kahlan. “Different from before." I could be wrong, but I think the Mud People have eyes (though obviously not the kind which make Kahlan feel safe). Nevertheless, they all take a shine to Richard, recognizing that the White Man has Powerful Magic, even though they speak not his foreign tongue. “Kahlan translated. Richard laughed. She liked his easy laugh.” She was less enamored of his difficult laugh, which sounded as though he was trying to hide the fact that he had just sat on a cactus spine. But still, as long as it was Richard laughing, she liked it. And Richard liked her. He liked her smile. And she liked to smile. Because she liked him.
Speaking of magic, in this novel, magic seems to be whatever will help Richard when he needs it. His anger is magic. Bones are magic and will help him get through the underworld. Need light? A special magic stone called a night stone provides it. Kahlan’s magic, Rahl’s magic, it’s all Play-Doh to be manipulated in whichever way stretches the book out longest. There are prophecies and wishes and spells and a talking wolf thrown in hodge-podge, as though the author had heard of these being used in other novels and had therefore decided to incorporate them into this one. Zedd turns up to give a magical math class, explaining that there’s Additive Magic and Subtractive Magic. The vivid, poetic imagery, the creativity… it must have taken Terry Goodkind weeks to devise those imaginative names. Anyway, Richard and company arrive at a city where he soon has a chance to flex his biceps and play the my-sword-is-longer-than-yours game.
The Sword of Truth came out, sending its distinctive ring around the huge room, the stone amplifying the sound. With the sword point an inch from Princess Violet's nose, he let the anger of it rage through him, to make his words more dramatic.
Goodkind has been building up to this testosterone-drenched moment by describing Princess Violet as a nasty spoiled brat, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still a child. Richard doesn’t have the same excuse, but then again, the Queen is not kowtowing to his girlfriend, more than enough reason for him to threaten her daughter’s life.
"Bow to the Mother Confessor," he hissed, "or die."… "Be careful how you use that tongue," Richard sneered. "The next time I will separate it from you."
Goodkind’s treatment of Richard reminds me of a fundamentalist’s regard for the god of the bible : no matter what vile actions the deity commits, he will be excused, exonerated and mindlessly adored. Our hissing, sneering hero is separated from his disciples by a spell of some kind (see my previous comment about magic working whenever and however the plot requires it to) and he is then taken prisoner by a Mord-Sith (see my previous comment about ripping off Star Wars). This is a member of Darken Rahl’s elite guard/harem, female, clad in leather, who insists that Richard address her as “Mistress Denna”. Considering how juvenile the sexuality is in the first part of the book, I wish I could say that it matured here, but Denna is such a caricature that she comes off as something Terry Goodkind wanted to get for his bachelor party. She also wields a long red rod called an Agiel, so it’s like a contest to see who has the better phallic object as the plot slithers into three chapters of BDSM. This might be disturbing if it was at all plausible. I did not for one moment believe that Richard could survive broken ribs, welts, bruises, cuts, sexual assault, sleep deprivation, food deprivation and time in a torture device which sounds like a strappado, but of course he does, and Goodkind chronicles each moment of agony faithfully if somewhat coyly when it comes to actual details. For instance, after Denna strips Richard, does she put the Agiel where Agiels should never go? As for Richard, he weeps as copiously as he bleeds, sobbing every few paragraphs. Tell me again, what’s heroic about this crybaby superman?
Denna takes Richard to D’Hara and Darken Rahl’s palace, pausing along the way to periodically humiliate/torture Richard. These interludes owe their existence to either voice-recognition software or one-hand-on-keyboard typing. Once in D’Hara, she sticks the Agiel in Richard’s ear, presumably to see if the tip of the rod will emerge from the other ear, and then makes him her slave. Has all the pain and suffering and pleas for mercy and tight-fitting leather turned you on/made you sympathize for poor abused little Richard yet? I could certainly see why women might like these delightful episodes : it’s the usual hurt/comfort scenario, where the hero is brutally tortured and has to be restored by a woman’s tender ministrations. Except that in this case, the woman is Denna, who is eventually won over by Richard’s particularly bad case of Stockholm Syndrome and who tells him what a very special, wonderful person he is before she asks him to kill her and thereby make his getaway. Darken Rahl, having murdered a small boy and eaten his testicles (next time, if you want a change from an all-plant diet, try tofu), decides that Richard should be released. Yes, it didn’t make much sense to me either, but it was patently obvious that Goodkind had written himself into a corner here, so Richard is released with a spell that will make him look like Darken Rahl to his friends. Man, I guess Kahlan won’t be giving him the smily smile until the spell wears off. Considering that Darken Rahl wanted to make her his consort, I was rather hoping she’d never give the smily smile again, actually.
Richard bumps into a red dragon called Scarlet. The nomenclature in this novel is so inspired; I’m not sure I could do half as well, but then again, I’ve never been drunk enough to try. In a scene that I would suspect came from a role-playing game if I thought the author knew people willing to play with him, Richard rescues Scarlet’s egg from a valley of gars, which causes the dragon to recognize his moral superiority and fly him off. Meanwhile, Zedd and Kahlan are attacked and captured by Darken Rahl’s henchman, Demmin Nass, orders his men to rape Kahlan. Silly Demmin, don’t you know that while the villain always has designs on the heroine’s luscious bod, he never actually gets to put his lecherous schemes into practice? Kahlan screams at him that he’s not capable of doing anything to her himself, so he prepares to anally rape her (see my earlier comments regarding her bottom). And this is about time for Terry Goodkind to pull a deus ex machina out of his, so Kahlan releases some magic called the Con Dar, not to be confused with Star Trek’s Pon Farr. This makes Demmin loyal to her, so she orders him to eat his testicles.
Chase smiled as he watched. "Good for her," he whispered to no one in particular. "A woman who knows the meaning of justice."
We’re obviously dealing with a different definition of “justice” here, since in my parlance, torture does not equal justice, but then again, Richard and Richardette can do no wrong. After she has proven that she can sink to the same level as Darken Rahl, Kahlan kills Nass – what? So quickly? No more justice? We want justice, damn it! Can’t you stab his mutilated corpse? – and they plod on into Rahl’s palace for the (anti)climax. Rahl threatens Kahlan, so Richard recites the Book of Counted Shadows, but somehow it all goes horribly wrong for Rahl and horribly right for Richard. Was that ever in doubt? Darken Rahl dies with one final cliché for the road.
"I am his father?" Rahl whispered.
Yes, Luke, I am your father. Naturally, Richard inherits the palace, the land and the Mord-Sith, though the only woman for him is the literally ball-busting one. Kahlan is terrified that she has touched him with her power and rendered him her puppet, but she’s far too late : he was Goodkind’s puppet from the start. Richard explains that he loves her so much that her Con Dar (which sounds like a cousin of Conan the Barbarian) magic had no effect on him. See previous notes about magic working in any way the plot requires it to work. Finally they both fly away on the dragon to get married, which is definitely an unusual and otherworldly stage in a relationship, and I was never so happy to stop reading a book.
Goodkind’s writing style is as childish and simplistic as possible, spelling out every detail beforehand and avoiding even an attempt at originality; at one point, Kahlan is described as being “white as a lily”. The lethargic narrative is enlivened only by the periodic descriptions of child abuse, torture, rape and murder, thrown in like treats for those who have managed to keep reading up to that point. As for characterization, that never has a chance. Richard might start out as a simple woods guide, but at the end of the book he is the
He’s also an honorary Mad Person and a dragon rider, plus he has a healing ability that rivals Wolverine’s. I hope I haven’t left out any of his awesome skills and accessories, but you get my drift. He fulfils one of Goodkind’s fantasies, while Kahlan and Denna, providing the Madonna-Whore complex, presumably fulfil the others. I recommend this book to anyone who likes soap-opera characters murmuring sweet nothings to each other when they aren’t killing people right and left. Oh, and the Wizard’s First Rule is that “people are stupid”. I believe this is a heartfelt sentiment on Terry Goodkind’s part, since if he thought his readers had any intelligence at all, he would have put a bit more effort into writing this book.