Book Review: Wizard's First Rule

For my first post on this blog I thought I'd review Terry Goodkind's 1994 release Wizard's First Rule. I had been pussyfooting around reading it for a while (daunted by the 820 page volume), but finally decided to pick it up a couple of months ago. What really tipped me over into reading it was receiving a free copy of The Law of Nines, which is Goodkind's 2009 book that is somewhat of a spinoff to his Sword of Truth series. I know the purists will scoff as I went out of order, but I guess I'd respond that I did what Goodkind had intended: attract readers to his Sword of Truth series from the masses of fiction readers who would normally not pick up the 820 page first book. Even the Law of Nines' page count of 576 pages seemed to be weening the reader into his more longwinded series.

But on with the review. The main character, Richard Cypher, meets a mysterious woman in the woods and is compelled to help her, which starts him on a whirlwind of a tale. The pacing was relatively fast and the characters were each examined extensively so that each had parts that were likable and each had their flaws. They were real. I'm impressed that Goodkind created a character in Kahlan that is truly powerful in her own right. From the beginning I was captivated by the mystery behind her.

There were twists that I expected and twists that I did not. Obviously, there were enough twists that I did not see coming to keep me interested and reading. It came as a bit of a shock in the last third of the book when there were graphic scenes of torture, rape, and dominatrixes. Up until that point the book would have qualified for PG-13. On the plus side, those scenes added a depth to the story and writing that made me feel for the main characters even more. On the minus, I'm not sure I can ever unread some of the Mord Sith scenes.

The ending carries several twists, none of which I will discuss here, and becomes a bit of a cliffhanger. I suppose that makes sense, given the number of books in the series now...Overall I was still satisfied with the outcome of Wizard's First Rule and look forward to reading the next installment, Stone of Tears.

Bookophile Rating: Excellent