New Goodkind Books

Posted on 02 May 2010

First: I am blogging up a storm with interviews on Tor.com over the coming weeks. I won’t post each and every, so just check here occasionally.

About a year ago, I had the honor of getting to meet Tom Doherty, the publisher and top dog of Tor books. In the course of the conversation, I asked him if he had any insight or idea of where the genres were headed, and he replied with an odd answer. He said that books like Twilight by Stephanie Meyers are good. Not per se good on their own, but good because they are brining a different audience into genre. It really made me realize that this man could see the silver lining to any genre cloud, and not just one with dollar signs. Although dollar signs might be involved, and I don’t fault him for that. He is a businessman too, after all. (yes, this is quite a setup).

Which is why I don’t fault him in this article. (It’s only a few paragraphs, read it, I’ll wait.)  For those who don’t even want to read that much off my site (and who would), his quote of “We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again. Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story.”

Yes, that is right, Terry Goodkind, the man who believes he has the power to channel Ayn Rand; the man who doesn’t write fantasy novels, but instead philosophical discussions with fantastical settings; the man whom, whether or did it intentionally or not, ripped of Robert Jordan’s setting and trope-mixture four years later, is getting to write three more books for Tor.

Now, I originally liked The Sword of Truth. Even to this day I think the first five or so novels aren’t bad (although number two had a bit much in the ol’ melodrama.) OK, they all have a good amount of melodrama, but I was a teenager when I read them, so sue me. I ate that stuff up. I had tried The Eye of the World, but it didn’t stick the first time, so I had to settle for Goodkind. I will admit, I somewhat regret that, but it’s past, so whatever.

Anyway, it was around book five that he started to get into the political commentary hard and heavy. Saving grace for book five was I really liked the pseudo-villain, Dolton Campbell, for being a sneaky prick who was burnt by his actions and didn’t whine about it, but instead got even.  But after that, the entire story became an Objectivist parable. The writing style also went downhill because at this point, it is Terry F-ing Goodkind, you don’t need to line-edit him!

So yeah, the series jumped the shark, I said F-it after Naked Empire, and finally got my hands on The Wheel of Time and have been happy since. Now if I could only make myself read G.R.R. Martin, but that is another rant.

But now, Goodkind is coming back. Humorously, I hear that he had signed a three book deal at Putnam, and the first one bombed like hell. (pause) OK, I just went and looked up the summary of The Law of Nines on Amazon. I see why. Callbacks to The Sword of Truth in an urban-fantasy (not that he’d call it that, I’m sure). No word, as far as I know, of what happened to his other two promised books with Putnam. I wonder if they just dissolved it after the bomb. Good money after bad and all that.

But, long and the short is, Goodkind is back at Tor, and a small part of me died a little.