Terry Goodkind making friends again

[Stephen Palmer]

A Robert Heinlein for our times...

 

[nixie]

Wonder if it has a demonic chicken

 

[Vladd67]

Wonder if it has a demonic chicken

“But this was no ordinary chicken. This chicken was evil manifest.”

 

[SilentRoamer]

The blurbs should just read:

"Here be evil chickens that are not chickens and noble goats, interspersed between a novel that definitely does not have Fantasy themes (ignore the magic and wizardy) and instead focuses on important human themes"

 

[soulsinging]

What makes me nuts about the fantasy genre is that, unlike any other genre, people become obsessed and focused on irrelevant things. For example, in a detective novel, if a detective has a Snub Nose 38, no one asks him questions like “Can we know more about the Snub Nose 38?” or “Have you ever thought of doing some kind of special story just about the Snub Nose 38?”

I'm no fan of Goodkind, have never read any of his books, and think he sounds like a pretty unimpressive person, but this quote from him is so spot on. I stopped reading fantasy almost entirely because of its obsession with pages and pages of padded descriptions of every item that is seen or exists in a given world or the in depth history of every person that lived in it. It's the Boba Fett problem... many secondary characters are fascinating BECAUSE they have some mystery, and when you try to flesh out every detail for them, the mystery/intrigue fades into weary info-dump overload.

 

[HareBrain]

“But this was no ordinary chicken. This chicken was evil manifest.”

Nothing has made me curious about reading Goodkind apart from this one aspect that I keep seeing mentioned. Are you his publicist?

 

[Overread]

I agree, we need to know more about this chicken!

 

[Boneman]

Trust me, you don't....

 

[HareBrain]

Heedless of Boneman's warning, I now know more about the chicken.

But not enough!! Does Kahlan survive? I have to know!

 

[Boneman]

8 books later, she was still alive...oops, spoiler

 

[Overread]

But what of the chicken?!

 

[Boneman]

It has a dodgy Tikka, ends up in a korma...

 

[C Of K]

Terry's entire body of work is a Snub Nose 38.
Let's ignore the fact that comparing a real object (like a gun) to a magical sword that he made up in his own head is rather strange.
He blames fantasy readers for not being captivated by his world building, because there isn't much depth to it. If I'm going to spend my time reading 1000 pages, I want to be confident that the entire fake world he came up with won't fall apart at the first question I ask the author.
Terry peddles fast food entertainment, where he strawmans ideologies that deviate from his, casts them as mustache twirling cartoon villains, and dares to suggests he's writing about more important human themes than fantasy can handle. Just imagine Tolkien if he couldn't tell you much about Middle Earth or the One Ring, and you'll have a pretty good estimation of Terry Goodkind.

-The Toasted Toads Truth