Okay George,

I finally read a book of yours.

Overall, Wizard’s First Rule was pretty good, and Goodkind does a great job describing emotions and motivations, but the same well-emoted characters were rather stupid. Actually, I suppose it was more a combination of two things: 1. the book was twice as long as it needed to be, 2. I could immediately see solutions the author obviously never thought of. These two things made the characters appear more stupid than they should’ve since over the span of *chapters* I already knew how they could end their suffering and was incredulous that they couldn’t see the same solutions.

Here’s a list:

1. It was obvious from the get-go that Michael was Rahl’s ally.

2. When Rahl told Richard near the end that a spell had been cast on him which made him appear the enemy to his friends, it was obvious what the witch Shota’s prophecies were about.

3. One of the main obstacles of the book was that the Confessor would not be able to truly have a lover since she would inadvertantly use her power on him when she relaxed in love-throes, which prevented Kahlan and Richard from being together. In fact, the book almost hinged on this fact, as when I said the author did a great job of describing emotions, one of those emotions was love (the others being hate, rage, fear…) But another item of note was that each time a Confessor used her power on someone it took a while for her power to regenerate. Furthermore, the power could be used on animals, too, though it had little effect. Well, obviously the solution was for a Confessor to touch an animal before going to bed with her lover. Duh.

4. Another weird turn of events towards the end of the book detailed how Richard was tortured by Mistress Denna and how he wished he could kill himself but had no power to do so. Well, he still had the night stone and if he had been as smart a character as the author intended, he would’ve used it.

5. The Bird Man could not teach Richard how to use the bird whistle. Well, duh, try letting Kahlan learn how to use it instead.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of the series unless you say they get better, G.

Before this I read 2.5 books of the Manifest series by Stephen Baxter. Partway through the last book, though, I realized that the problems of the first two books, namely that he has some great ideas but isn’t a good enough author or thinker to think them through to their logical conclusions, was also in this last one, so I put the book down.

On to David Eddings. He’s a Reedie. Let’s hope that doesn’t mean the books will be drawn-out and esoteric.