Terry Goodkind

[Nemesis3]

It is odd that two words aren't the single utterance of everyone that has read recent Goodkind books.. I will get to those three words.

To address something mentioned earlier and certaintly on point with Goodkind's books: is they way he has characters speaking constantly about the value of life..then contradicting himself with the women who are raped in his novels. Often times his seems to equate rape as worse than death and that the women who did die were the lucky ones. This insults every rape survivor of course and trivalizes human life. What occurs during rape is no where near the value of the good things in life and life should not be trivialized by saying that rape takes the value from life. Rape at its core is undesired sexual contact while the scope of human life far exceeds the range and value of that contact and that contact certainly can not take away the value of life. I would suppose in a Goodkind novel it would postulate that prostitues actually desire the sexual contact in their lives as well, or else they are people whose lives are simply meaningless. He would have his readers partake of drivel as to how those women are unable to shut out what is occuring to them for whatever reason they remain prostitues or the inability of rape survivors to realize that they are so much more than a rape victim, as is their lives so much more meaningful than that incident. Where is the focus on the human ability to adapt to the worst of cicumstances and overcome those circumstances as we should all know from real life and history. If Goodkind want to tell the story of rape and put it in context of the scope of human life: Then have a mother offer herself to distract the soldier from seeing her child escape and show how a strong female character would sneer is rape's face to hopefully save her child's life or just to live to seek vengeance upon those who destroyed her homeland and her way of life.

Now with that soapbox out of the way. Two words that jump to the forefront of my mind and resonate heavily when I read a recent Goodkind novel is repetition and preaching. Constantly being bombarded with the same material...while being preached at with not even a thin veil on that preaching. While those two words resonate heavily the last one.. is simply stifling.. and is best left to a phrase that seems to be a Goodkind mantra. "Dumbing it down" Geez,.. I get it.. everyone gets it...stop having your main character explain everything.. about everything..every 5 lines.. repeating the explanation.. to anyone that will listen or is in proximity. We get it..the other characters should get it(at least if the first few 100 repeats or otherwise one begins to see them an imbeciles) the needs of the individual and capatalism in better than the whole (damn you Spock.) We get that magic is emblematic.. The soldiers of the Imperial army are indoctrinated.. from early on..got it.. move on.. When people use "graphical" to describe his depictions of rape and violence.

I guess they are new to the recent novels as it seems to be he has a copy/paste set up for every new town plundered as I am immune to any sense of horror at the atrocities as the audience as it is the exact same horrors described the exact same ways as the last 50 times.. either get creative and somehow embody the point you are trying to make as an author by revisting this occurrence or curtail the description to endless mindless violence raping and pillaging .. and then move on to trying to tell a story.

Read the earlier novels they are telling a story then bam...on comes the preaching, repetition and the dumbing it down.. is Goodkind simply out of story and caught in some nightmarish writer's block and thus this endless drivel in recent novels?

 

[spiralx]

Nice first post

One theory I've heard is that things have gone way downhill since he stopped stealing ideas from Robert Jordan... wouldn't surprise me

 

[Sathai]

I read the first book and thought it was quite good. Then for some reason I read the fifth book of the series. The writing quality was so awful, especially compared to the first book that I had no desire to read the series properly.

 

[CBellenis]

I agree Nemesis3 - [but I would add that his sexual violence isn't jsut aimed at women, there's the stuff with the mord sith. ]

It's about power and humiliation, I suspect his books would be well understood and and SM convention. It seems that we all keep reading the next goodkind book, despite having been disappointed more than once. Is it becuase Wizard's First Rule was so good I wonder? A triumph of hope over experience?

 

[Marvolo]

I agree Nemesis3 - [but I would add that his sexual violence isn't jsut aimed at women, there's the stuff with the mord sith. ]

It's about power and humiliation, I suspect his books would be well understood and and SM convention. It seems that we all keep reading the next goodkind book, despite having been disappointed more than once. Is it becuase Wizard's First Rule was so good I wonder? A triumph of hope over experience?

You know, I never thought of this before. I guess Goodkind does teach us about the triumph of hope. We keep hoping his books won't suck.

 

[suupaabaka]

You know, I never thought of this before. I guess Goodkind does teach us about the triumph of hope. We keep hoping his books won't suck.

Does that tell you something about the nature of hope?

 

[Jason_Taverner]

Does that tell you something about the nature of hope?

Yeah I hope people will stop reading his books, or that they stop getting published, but thats hope for ya

 

[CBellenis]

Yeah I hope people will stop reading his books, or that they stop getting published, but thats hope for ya

I actually think I may resist the next one (unless unfounded optimism gets the better of me!)

 

[Lenny]

If you've read them all, then missing the next one will, to put it bluntly, be rather stupid - it's the last of the Chainfire trilogy, and the last of the Sword of Truth series.

 

[CBellenis]

If you've read them all, then missing the next one will, to put it bluntly, be rather stupid - it's the last of the Chainfire trilogy, and the last of the Sword of Truth series.

Not really - curiosity will get the better of me, I'm sure. I'll read it, be irritated again...and then feel stupid!

 

[Werthead]

Apparently it's the last book in the story arc that started with WFR. Apparently there will be more books set in the same world.

 

[Suzakk]

I was wondering about that... Seemed like a gigantic effort, a personal hardship, etc. to write about this world for 15 years and then just leave it to create another one. Obviously, other writers create multiple worlds, but generally not after writing quite so many books about their first one. I have mixed feelings about starting a new series on the same world with a different story arc...

 

[Lenny]

Knowing Goodkind's style, he'd probably write another 13 book series about the same subject, but from the view of someone in the Imperial Army.

I'd read them all, though, that's a definite.

Or he might write some from before Richard's time, possibly when there were magicians everywhere.

 

[Connavar]

Is rape something happens several times in his books?


Me i dont like the over use of sex in fantasy. GRRM disgusted me when he enjoyed showing us a 13 years old getting raped by her husband doggystyle every night...... It was too real for me.....

I hate when they use untasteful sex scenes as a gimmick.

I mean GRRM didnt have to show me this kid getting raped several times. Of course later she wanted to have sex with him of her will......

 

[Lenny]

Rape... doesn't happen in every book, and I think we're only subjected to reading about the process a few times. Otherwise it's just said that rape had happened.

 

[Connavar]

I know it didnt happen in every book nobody is that sick(hopefully) but just wondering if he liked to write as much as Nemesis3 said.

 

[Lenny]

It's not on every page, and it's not in every chapter. If a character does get raped, Goodkind doesn't go into every little detail and write about if for pages and pages, but rather a few paragraphs at most.

There are a few passing mentions - for example, in cities that have been attacked by the Imperial Army, the women will have been raped.

He's nowhere near as bad as many people and making him out to seem.

In the first few books there's hardly any mention, if at all. As you get to the later books, however, there are more mentions of it, but usually only because in the later books, the Imperial Army is getting deeper and deeper into the Midlands, and so are attacking more and more towns and cities.

Don't just take my word for it, though (it's been some time since I read the bulk of the series, ad I tend to just read - I take in the story, not the minute details), and don't just take the word of those who abhor Goodkind and like to make him out to be some kind of demon, but read them for yourself - starting, of course, with Wizards First Rule. If you don't like it, or if you think that Goodkind goes into things too deeply, then toss the book aside.

 

[Werthead]

Is rape something happens several times in his books?


Me i dont like the over use of sex in fantasy. GRRM disgusted me when he enjoyed showing us a 13 years old getting raped by her husband doggystyle every night...... It was too real for me.....

I hate when they use untasteful sex scenes as a gimmick.

I mean GRRM didnt have to show me this kid getting raped several times. Of course later she wanted to have sex with him of her will......

Curious. When does this happen in the series? If you are talking about Daenerys, it's consensual from the start. And a lot of people do get turned off by the fact that a thirteen-year-old girl is sexually active, but OTOH girls younger than her did get married and did have children in the Middle Ages, which is the underpinning of the series.

 

[Werthead]

I try to steer clear of Goodkind-bashing these days. There's far too many good authors to be writing about instead. However, this post from another forum sums up Goodkind's weaknesses quite well (edited for language):

Goodkind's appeal is like McDonald's appeal. It's quick and easy to eat (read), it tastes good (it is satisfying on a basic level), it's easy to digest but wreaks havoc on your body (it takes very little reflection to swallow and destroys your ability to critically analyze), and if you really thought about what goes into it, you wouldn't eat there (actual reflection reveals the intensely harmful, shallow and desensitizing nature of the writing and world).

Goodkind's writing taps into basic human instincts, and I mean like, caveman basic. It's the same instincts that make you slow down for a car accident, turn and look when you think you see a naked person, and cheer on [national event] Day. It's the novel equivalent of a slasher flick - a bit of violence, a bit of boobs, and in the end the good guy wins. It's not news, its olds. It's Cops, Montel, Sally Jesse, TLC presents the World's Fattest Man. It's news about the guy who kept a girl locked in his basement for 5 years then killed himself on a set of railroad tracks. Worse, it's a fly-on-the-wall view of what happened in the basement, then the train running over his head. It's every movie where the good guy gets beat to a pulp, but somehow manages to get up and win. It's the War on Drugs propoganda without the CIA forcing people to chose between growing the only viable crop in their dry, nutrient depleted soil while there's a gun pointed to their head or starving.

People want to see gross things, horrible things, but they also want in the end to see the bad guys punished and the good guys to win. Everyone is safe, even if they have to go through something harrowing in the end, the main people are safe. Richard will get tortured again and again, Klan will get almost raped, but you know they will never die, or actually be raped. Richard and Klan can get away with whatever they want because they are right, the people are right, not their actions. It reduces the world to simple things, we never have to wonder who is right, who we should cheer for, because no matter what, it is always Richard. The complicated world is distilled down to a simple fact of 'believe in this person, and you are correct'. It's the same simple view of the world that gets America criticized in foreign policy, so there's already a built-in audience for it. 300 million bored people with tremendous disposable income and a pre-existing penchant for unquestioning acceptance of 'the good guys' (Fox 'News' and CNN), who are already fed a steady diet of violence, sex, black-and-white good and evil on the evening news, freaks and titilation, the moral restraints of the Bible along with constant access to everything the Bible is against, all wrapped up in the idea that an action can be good or bad because of who does it, rather than what is done or why. On top of that, it's got a 'you can do anything if you try it, because you are soooo smart' invincible superman who is good at everything (when really he's not smart, he's magically enhanced) that we all wanted to be when we were kids that we can live out our fantasies in. Plus, he's got a hot girlfriend who's demure and pure when in public but has a turboslut switch he can flip on whenever he wants. And she's not quite as smart as he is, she always listens, and when she does disagree, she's always wrong.

In short, Goodkind provides a series of voyeuristic narratives which maintain a gruesome level of contrived tension, in easy language, with a protagonist we always wanted to be, lots of naughty bits, all wrapped in a ridiculously uncomplicated worldview that simplifies problems down to cushy decisions that generally can be solved with some speech showing how smart you are (against a straw opponent) or a sword. The villain always wears a black hat and the hero always gets the girl (who is a cheerleader in public and a harlot in the bedroom). All decisions are easy and all problems are resolved in 700 pages or less.

Or to be really short, it supports the idea of an world free from doubt.

But that's just what I think.

Side note - if I have to read one more time about how the Mud People 'jabber' I'm gonna lose it. The few other people who speak a different language don't 'jabber', they talk. His contempt for any non-European descent people makes my knuckles itch. And Richard's 'no, you'll do it my way because I said so and I'm important' utter disregard for their traditions also pisses me off. Traditions in societies exist for a reason, to keep the society functioning within the culture and environment in which evolved for hundreds to thousands of years. The contempt for primitive people because they are not casting off their historic cultures and embracing the 'modern' lifestyle with all of its attendant fragementation, alienation, isolation and general interpersonal crappiness really aggravates me. We may have more stuff than a tribal herdsman, but he has a family that is much closer and loving, and if a nuclear war broke out, he's far less likely to resort to cannibalism than I am because he can actually take care of himself. To show contempt for them because they don't 'choose' our life (and that's the implied criticism in all the 'jabbering') is ignorant and short-sited.

And how does a single village of people survive? Who are they related to? A single village, assuming perhaps a couple hundred people would inbreed themselves out of existence within six generations. His 'I do important human themes, not worldbuilding' is such a cop-out for crappy writing and continuity.

 

[Connavar]

Curious. When does this happen in the series? If you are talking about Daenerys, it's consensual from the start. And a lot of people do get turned off by the fact that a thirteen-year-old girl is sexually active, but OTOH girls younger than her did get married and did have children in the Middle Ages, which is the underpinning of the series.

To me its rape when she cries every night cause the only time she sees him was in the nights when he took her by force.

Also its rape cause her brother forced her to that guy and she was afraid of the sex cause she didnt have a choice.

Mostly i disliked that cause she was soo young and the sex scenes was too vulger.


He didnt have to show that much sex scenes with her even when she wanted to have sex with him.

Its sick cause of her age.

I dont care how young they got married in those times, he didnt NEED to show us that much.

Another reason i liked Gardens of the moon, erikson was good enough not use the sex scene as a gimmick to shock us or something like GRRM.