Sword of Truth Series - Movie planned

Has anybody read these? Terry Goodkind? I think one of the more enjoyable long lasting fantasy series ever.

From Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly

Phantom


In the eagerly awaited second volume of bestseller Goodkind's Chainfire trilogy, which will wrap up his long-running Sword of Truth series, star-crossed Richard Cypher (aka Lord Richard Rahl) searches for his beautiful "phantom" wife, Kahlan Amnell, who lost her memory in 2005's Chainfire after the Sisters of the Dark cast a spell on her. Meanwhile, Richard has memorized a magical instruction book, The Book of Counted Shadows, which will help open the three boxes of the Orden, though the consequences could be dire for the Old World: "Open the correct box, and one gains the power of Orden-the essence of life itself, power over all things living and dead... Open the wrong box... and every living thing in existence is incinerated into nothingness. It would be the end of all life." Despite the simplistic good vs. evil conflict and bland prose, the author expertly juggles many complex plot lines and brings to life a host of colorful characters.

Goodkind has recently made a deal with Sam Raimi of the Spiderman franchise to translate the series into film.

 

The movies might end up being good regardless, but that series is an embarrassment. The problem isn't so much that the material itself is bad, but that it blatantly rips off Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which itself blatantly rips off Frank Herbert, among others. I happen to like Goodkind more than Jordan, who is a complete hack, but it still irritates me that it's such an obvious rip-off. I eventually stopped reading both, so I have no idea how they ended up (if they have).

And by rip-off I don't mean "influenced by." I'm not someone who whines every time an idea isn't original because it's damn hard to do something truly original these days. When I say "rip off" I mean that there are connections so obvious that they're inescapable.

 

Goodkind is a staunch conservative. I love the way he trashes liberalism in his books.

There were even characters who represented Bill and Hillary and all their faults.

 

I thought Jordan was boring - I couldn't get past the 2nd book.

The only problem I had with the books is he could have made a great 5 or 6 book series out of it instead of 11. There's way too much detail and redundancy, and I ended up skimming a lot and not missing much. Overall, I thought it was really good though.

 

I enjoyed the Wheel of Time series for the first several books but the last couple I tried got to be a chore. I eventually gave up on it. It shifted away from Rand Al'thor and over to the minor characters and that got really boring.

 

jordan does some thing really well -- namely developing a really good sense of place and culture. but he's not very imaginative in terms of coming up with original ideas, tho he certainly breathes pretty good life into other people's ideas. if you don't mind 20 chapters detailing a trip across the continent.

and yes, we get it -- songs have different lyrics in different areas. you don't have to keep pointing that out. you don't need to pad an 800 page book. not even to show that character A thinks character B is better at something when character B thinks character A is better. understood -- irony, self-doubt, etc. got it. move on. clock's tickin.