How is it that he goes insane?
I've never read this series of books (and given what I'm to understand about Goodkind's political stance in the series, I probably wouldn't care for them), yet I watched the new trailer and found myself quite intrigued.
So I've figured out when it's airing locally, and I'm thinking of checking out the pilot.
See, viral marketing does work.
You might as well check it out. Goodkind doesn't go batshit insane until after the first couple of books. If this series is close to the first book, it should still pretty good.
I never thought that Goodkind went batshit insane. Part of why I like the series is that it presents a viewpoint that you can think and argue about. I don't like Ayn Rand because I like Objectivism, I just like to think about different philosophies.
Lots of spoilers follow:
I like to think about different philoshophies too, but the problem is that the way Goodkind uses Objectivism is shoehorned in and artless. Ayn Rand had her own thing and fair enough, I don't agree with her, but Atlas Shrugged is a classic and stands up very well to intellectual analysis. Goodkind just comes across as Rand's biggest fanboy.
Wizard's First Rule through Temple of The Winds, the first four books, are a good read. They aren't brilliantly written - they won't make you sit and up and take notice, and they won't make you think especially, not like the great fantasy authors, but they are fast-moving, well plotted and you do care about the characters. Now, I haven't reread them since I went off the series, so I have to assume that his objectivist philosophy was still present, but not in a way that hurt the story.
From book five (Soul of the Fire) onwards, things start to go a bit awry. The main characters are abandoned for a large part for a scheming noble couple who are thinly veiled caricatures of Bill and Hillary Clinton. I didn't hate the book - in fact I probably rate it higher than a lot of people do, but it seemed like a very cheap trick for an author who's supposed to care about the world he's created.
Book six (Faith of the Fallen) is when, for me, the wheels really come off. There are PAGES of objectivist propaganda. The main character, Richard, becomes such a blowhard that you just want him to fail. His "lust for life" or some drivel, makes the capital city of the evil empire that he's facing rebel, because he carves a huge statue. An evil sorceress changes sides and becomes a force for good because he makes her feel like she's her own person. Its all just horribly contrived. I get the feeling I'm not explaining it very well, but the book essentially exists to espouse objectivism, which just gets in the way of the fantasy adventure and in any case, Ayn Rand has already done it much better.
Book seven (The Pillars of Creation) is just a bit crap - new characters, boring story, and dedicated to the american secret service.
Book eight (Naked Empire) contains the infamous sequence where Richard slaughters unarmed war protestors, because since the war has to be fought, and they might encourage people not to, they are damaging to public safety. Not an exact quote, but its not hard to see why I found that distasteful.
Books 9 through 11 are one big story and I only read up until halfway through 11, thought, "fuck this" and read the ending on wikipedia. I can't remember any specific instances because I wasn't paying enough attention, but I do remember rolling my eyes at Richard's speeches and how much everyone loved him with increasing regularity as these books wore on. Sorry not to be very specific, but these books really are a blur.
All that aside, Richard, as a main character, started off relatively personable, if bland, but eventually becomes insufferable and he can do ANYTHING. He's a Gary-Stu of the first order. He can do both kinds of magic, he's in prophecy, eventually he can work out the ingredients he needs to cure himself of a poison by remembering the taste of the poison. It becomes ridiculous.
There is a lot of violence, which I don't care about really, but some do - a disproportionate amount of it seems to be sexual and directed towards women, but that's more a problem I've read people had with Goodkind than I've noticed myself - it might be he has a hang-up, or it might be that his critics do.
Goodkind himself rubs me up the wrong way as well. He's written some successful books, and more power to him, but he constantly argues that these aren't fantasy and are important works. Not fantasy... just the first one contains, a magic sword, a dragon, a witch, a winged beast, a magical frigging land filled with magic and wizards and more goddamned magic!
Anyway this turned into a bit of an essay, and didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped. I will point out that I will be watching Legend of the Seeker for as long as I enjoy it, I am still at least a little invested in these earlier stories. I won't ever pretend not to have enjoyed Goodkind's books - I did, right up until book 10, actually - until I started to really THINK about them on a reread and realised they were both formulaic and somewhat distasteful.
Has anybody read the forum's for goodkinds website.... they mention there that the first season of the tv show will encompas the first book. and one book per season for every book there is.... 11 possible seasons.
go vote november 5th.
