Faith of the Fallen

Terry Goodkind

We are six books into the Sword of Truth series, and one fact has become undeniable. The farther along you are in the series, the more time Goodkind is going to spend reprising old stuff. It's starting to feel almost as if he's not refreshing the readers' memories of past events, but his own. When you've gotten a hundred fifty pages into a just-over-five-hundred-page novel before anything actually happens, you're probably in trouble.

Once the action picks up, though, it rolls along much like the Sword of Truth books of yore. Jagang has taken Anderith (in Book five), led a bloodless revolution in the Westlands, which are now loyal to him (Between Books Five and Six, implied in the first scenes of Book Six), and is poised to make an attack on the Midlands, an attack which Richard, commander of the D'Haran Empire, refuses to challenge, fearing the people cannot be led; they must crush the revolt themselves. As the book opens, Kahlan has been attacked and badly beaten by a number of people Richard grew up with; their loyalty to the Order has overrideen their friendship, forcing Richard, Kahlan, and their guardian Cara into the high, secluded forest of the western Westlands. While there, Richard is trapped by an old foe, leaving Kahlan and Cara to their own devices. Meanwhile, many of the other characters who have splintered off are touched on (the only one conspicuous in his absence is Nathan, the prophet, who is in hiding), sometimes only briefly, and a few new twists are added. (One expects to be seeing a lot more of The Healers in the remaining books.)

This should sound somewhat familiar to viewers of daytime television. Yes, the Sword of Truth is becoming quite the soap opera. And while the writing continues to be strong and easy reading, it's becoming more predictable as time goes on. Simply put, the quality is going down, and I fear for the next novel (which many fans of the series seem to regard as the nadir), The Pillars of Creation. Still, reading it was like being back with old friends. It's still a barnburner of a book.