What kind of Terry are you reading?
So, I've been out of town for the past week and am horribly behind on catching up with the flist, but you know that's half the fun sometimes. ;) While on vacation, I finished the book I'd brought with me sooner than expected, and picked up a second book at the airport.
Now, a few disclaimers:
1. Like mike-smith on Harry Potter, I picked up the second-to-last book in the series, so I'm trying to allow for ten thick novels' worth of world and character building, not to mention plot. (That said, I'm expecting that there is ten previous novels' worth of character building so that I can tell the main adult characters from the spunky young girls.)
2. My previous read was Gregory Macguire's Mirror, Mirror, in which the Wicked author achieves a vaguely Gaiman-like (and often very vague) Snow White retelling, so a lot of the flaws stand out more merely by comparison.
3. Rahl almost redeems himself in my eyes, 330ish pages in. But still, he redeems himself. Over three hundred pages in. Almost.
You know how people love to hate on Eragon? The MST of Wheel of Time? The flaws you can't help but point out in Eddings' various books or Lackey's Valedmar? These got nothin'. For Pulpiest Overblown Trashy Pulp Fantasy Series Evar, I'd like to offer for your consideration: The Sword of Truth.
First of all: Series title and Grand Weapon O' Doom? Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Grand Weapon O' Doom in Terry Brooks's Sword of Shinarra Series? A sword that shows the truth. Both series have a few good ideas buried under all the poor Tolkien riffs, but tend to fall apart under cursory critical thinking. Coincidence? Probably not.
Speaking of critical thinking and the truth, how is it that a good ol' fashioned Morporkian "welcome" or total guerrilla warfare never seriously occurred to any of these people so obsessed with seeing the truth of the world and not believing in wishful thinking? Guess it's a lack of imagination. There's no Rincewind here to willingly run away, no Alberich with spying and assassination skills, no Polgara to finesse, finagle, or flagellate the diplomats into action if need be, and not even a Mat Cauthron who compares battle to dicing. Certainly there's no Denethor here, though the mindset of choosing one's own end is painfully obvious throughout.
And I do mean painful. When the first major scene includes the alleged loveliest lady in the series getting a piece of ceramic through her jaw, you know that this can go two ways: Whedon's way, in which the characters are clever and hardened enough to bring down the horse because it's the quickest method of dispatching an enemy, or the Eragon way, in which you get this sort of gory detail because the characters aren't capable of solving problems without the use of brute force, and there has to be some method of dividing up the action. Well, maybe I shouldn't lump Goodkind in with Paloni. Paloni doesn't go nearly as much for the shock trigger.
I mean, yes, Gaiman's novels and short stories can have the occasional mind-blowing bit of beastiality, incest, or straight up wierdness, but he usually keeps it down to one or two disturbing images per novel. Goodkind seems to be ratcheting up for as many as he can fit in, but by the third throat-cutting scene, it becomes much like the rehashed conversations in Eddings' Younger Gods series: k, yesh, I do possess some memory and some mental imagery here. Can we get to the warprotest sit-in now? And no, the "I love you more" scenes aren't getting any fresher, either. How's about you tell the insane queen (and furthermore, the Warg,) about the best case scenario for sitting on the fence with a huge-ass homegrown army if that land down south happens to pull some superweapon outta their armpit and drive away the Gigantomongous Invasion of Superevilmonolithicfaith DOOM, eh? What'd the people with the shiny deus ex machina think of your fence-sitting army then?
As to the Superevilmonolithicfaith thing, can you stop being on my side now, Goodkind and Paloni? Yes, believing just because you need something to believe in can be a little dumb, but that doesn't make the believers evil. Not all believers believe in a total vacuum, either. They haven't amassed enough proof for me to join their ranks, but they probably need something more than brute force and old tales before they're quite so rabid as the ones you're portraying. Hells, the fact that this G. I. o. S. D. has managed to string together so many men, so many supplies, so much land, and raped so many women without mention of a single STD looks like either they're not quite so barbaric as Rahl and company would have us believe, or there's some divine intervention goin' on.
I'm not going to comment too heavily on the name combinations, lapses into the modern and/or trite, or flat, interchangeable characterizations; I've probably ragged on Phantom more than it deserves and I'm missing lots of background info. However, as enthralling as a trainwreck can be to read on an airplane, I can't say I'm eager to find out the engine numbers, if you know what I mean.
Now, a few disclaimers:
1. Like mike-smith on Harry Potter, I picked up the second-to-last book in the series, so I'm trying to allow for ten thick novels' worth of world and character building, not to mention plot. (That said, I'm expecting that there is ten previous novels' worth of character building so that I can tell the main adult characters from the spunky young girls.)
2. My previous read was Gregory Macguire's Mirror, Mirror, in which the Wicked author achieves a vaguely Gaiman-like (and often very vague) Snow White retelling, so a lot of the flaws stand out more merely by comparison.
3. Rahl almost redeems himself in my eyes, 330ish pages in. But still, he redeems himself. Over three hundred pages in. Almost.
You know how people love to hate on Eragon? The MST of Wheel of Time? The flaws you can't help but point out in Eddings' various books or Lackey's Valedmar? These got nothin'. For Pulpiest Overblown Trashy Pulp Fantasy Series Evar, I'd like to offer for your consideration: The Sword of Truth.
First of all: Series title and Grand Weapon O' Doom? Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Grand Weapon O' Doom in Terry Brooks's Sword of Shinarra Series? A sword that shows the truth. Both series have a few good ideas buried under all the poor Tolkien riffs, but tend to fall apart under cursory critical thinking. Coincidence? Probably not.
Speaking of critical thinking and the truth, how is it that a good ol' fashioned Morporkian "welcome" or total guerrilla warfare never seriously occurred to any of these people so obsessed with seeing the truth of the world and not believing in wishful thinking? Guess it's a lack of imagination. There's no Rincewind here to willingly run away, no Alberich with spying and assassination skills, no Polgara to finesse, finagle, or flagellate the diplomats into action if need be, and not even a Mat Cauthron who compares battle to dicing. Certainly there's no Denethor here, though the mindset of choosing one's own end is painfully obvious throughout.
And I do mean painful. When the first major scene includes the alleged loveliest lady in the series getting a piece of ceramic through her jaw, you know that this can go two ways: Whedon's way, in which the characters are clever and hardened enough to bring down the horse because it's the quickest method of dispatching an enemy, or the Eragon way, in which you get this sort of gory detail because the characters aren't capable of solving problems without the use of brute force, and there has to be some method of dividing up the action. Well, maybe I shouldn't lump Goodkind in with Paloni. Paloni doesn't go nearly as much for the shock trigger.
I mean, yes, Gaiman's novels and short stories can have the occasional mind-blowing bit of beastiality, incest, or straight up wierdness, but he usually keeps it down to one or two disturbing images per novel. Goodkind seems to be ratcheting up for as many as he can fit in, but by the third throat-cutting scene, it becomes much like the rehashed conversations in Eddings' Younger Gods series: k, yesh, I do possess some memory and some mental imagery here. Can we get to the warprotest sit-in now? And no, the "I love you more" scenes aren't getting any fresher, either. How's about you tell the insane queen (and furthermore, the Warg,) about the best case scenario for sitting on the fence with a huge-ass homegrown army if that land down south happens to pull some superweapon outta their armpit and drive away the Gigantomongous Invasion of Superevilmonolithicfaith DOOM, eh? What'd the people with the shiny deus ex machina think of your fence-sitting army then?
As to the Superevilmonolithicfaith thing, can you stop being on my side now, Goodkind and Paloni? Yes, believing just because you need something to believe in can be a little dumb, but that doesn't make the believers evil. Not all believers believe in a total vacuum, either. They haven't amassed enough proof for me to join their ranks, but they probably need something more than brute force and old tales before they're quite so rabid as the ones you're portraying. Hells, the fact that this G. I. o. S. D. has managed to string together so many men, so many supplies, so much land, and raped so many women without mention of a single STD looks like either they're not quite so barbaric as Rahl and company would have us believe, or there's some divine intervention goin' on.
I'm not going to comment too heavily on the name combinations, lapses into the modern and/or trite, or flat, interchangeable characterizations; I've probably ragged on Phantom more than it deserves and I'm missing lots of background info. However, as enthralling as a trainwreck can be to read on an airplane, I can't say I'm eager to find out the engine numbers, if you know what I mean.