The First Confessor - Terry Goodkind

The First Confessor by Terry Goodkind

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



Gosh, this was awful. I was really hoping it wouldn't be, but it just was. It is actually possible to do this review in one word: repetitive. But that seems too weak. If I could have two words, I’d add te-di-ous. But those words are not going to be enough. I need to rant.

Wow, this could really have used a vigorous editor. It seems like Goodkind believes we need to hear everything three times in a row to comprehend it, and that we forget what we just learned after 10 pages. At 500 pages, I skimmed at least 200 of unnecessary repetition and redundant phrases that were repeated too many times. Conversations and thoughts were explained over and over again. Concepts I had just absorbed were re-introduced in the very next paragraph so that I wondered if I was re-reading portions.

See how that just tripled my word count? Did your eyes start to glaze over with complete boredom? It almost became comical to note how many times the same information was repeated as I was skimming for anything that held a whiff of action or plot or any character actually being interesting.

Somewhere in there, there was a story I wanted to read, and towards the end it did begin to emerge. I was interested in the making of the Sword of Truth, and the first Confessor, and in the last 100 pages something actually happened with them. There are some other old familiars in there - references to the Boxes of Orden, the Temple of the Winds, the Sliph, and the world of the dead. But they are only talked about, not experienced like they would have been in the original series.

I had to trudge through so much extra exposition and junk dialog to get to the story, and the story was just not up to old standards. I honestly found it hard to imagine that the writing could be worse. I was bored out of my mind, and frustrated that just when I would start to get into it, I’d have to read/skim a couple of pages of repetition. Argh. It went way beyond the preachy exposition that he was fond of in the original series, and which I was able to ignore for the most part. The writing was just bad. It's the worst I've read in years and I'm amazed that I finished it. I feel as if I need to go re-read The Wizard’s First Rule to wash the memory of this away.


Nov 15, 2014:

Trying to decide whether to give a 2nd star or not. Maybe by the time I've written my review.