Rating: 
Summary: Naked Empire good and the bad
Review: This book in not one of his best but is still a good book there are a few part where it lags in the middle of the book but the good news is that he stoped switching between Characters so often in this book, making les frustating to read trough those dull molments, over all i say it was a prity good book, it left me begging for the next one wich thay have not announced yet.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: Wonderful book. Great character development in the series overall, and further in this outing. As to the opinion that TG wrote this book to expound upon the Iraq war, I say RUBBISH. Many writers have put there personal thoughts in an allegorical manner. I thought his book made sense, and put down ideas that are as valid today as they were in yesteryear.
Rating: 
Summary: The end of the Sword
Review: The first 6 books of the series were fun to read. Filling his tales with magic and serpentine plots, the reader could ignore his sophmoric writing, but with 'Pillars of Creation' the series started coming apart. 'Naked Empire' is the final nail in the coffin. (I hope) The first quarter of the book is nothing but a retelling of the first 7 books as the characters move from the middle of a desert to it's edge. The plot twists are transparent, the writing dull and repetitive. It reminds me of the Hardy Boy books I used to read when I was 10 years old, except for the extreme violence. Mr. Goodkind has a creepy fascination with rape and violence and that disqualifies this as a children's book, but that is basically what it is. The author spends hundreds of pages saying absolutely nothing and I for one, was insulted. To quote Terry Goodkind, "Dead is Dead". Let's hope he heeds his own advice and spares us any more trips to this very dry well.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: Hey guys if any of you didn't like this series or book i would urge you to read Robert Jordan's Series The Wheel of Time, because you would come crawling back to Goodkind after the first few books. At least with the Truth Series stuff happens and its interesting and all the characters dont act the same and have the same stereotypes and say the same things over and over and over again. If you need a good nap i suggest Jordan over Goodkind anyday.
Rating: 
Summary: At least it continues the story line...
Review: At the end of the 6th book, "Faith of the Fallen", I was actually EXCITED about a book, and couldn't wait for the next one. The 7th book, "The Pillars of Creation", was well written, but it disapointed in that it deviated so much from the storyline (Richard and Kahlan don't appear until very near the end of the book). It does, however, ultimately introduce a new plot line (people who are totaly separate from Magic) which is advanced in the 8th book, "Naked Empire"."Naked Empire" has the kernel of a decent novel, if you can get past the sermons. There are places where I got tired of the preaching and skipped whole pages. The bad thing is that I actually AGREE with most of the points; I just don't want to read pages and pages of empasioned explanations and justifications of them. Just like the 7th book, the ultimate plot line is only slightly advanced. Actually, the 7th and 8th books could probably have been combined fairly easily. I'd recommend borrowing this book from a friend or buying a used book before investing in a good-quality hardcover for your collection. Some people really liked it. I didn't.
Rating:
Summary: what happened to this series???
Review: I started with the first few books of Terry Goodkind's 'Sword of Truth' series enjoying them wholeheartedly. The quick action scenes, combined with descriptive and imaginitve scenes, dialouge and great plot twists got me hooked. But as the series proceeded, i started getting a feeling that Terry was trying to get at something. Now with book 8, Goodkind has thrown any pretext of a 'Novel' aside and has reverted into the kind of raving dribble usually relegated to AM radio. First Richard had to battle an 'evil' empire that remarkably resembled communism, by using free market ideals to inspire the populance. Wow, thats insightful.
Now we find our intrepid hero doing battle the 'evil doers' that are just plain evil (osama anybody?) and what stands in his way?
Peace protesters shouting "no war", fortunately our brave hero wastes no time hacking the unarmed women and children to bits before doing battle with the evil ones. As the series progressed, less and less imagination has gone into the plot. And far more energy has gone into pushing Mr Goodkind's right wing maniacal vision. What started out as a promising series, now has degenerated into an Ann Coulter diatribe with battle scenes. If youre at book 5, stop there and start reading a new author. If you have any doubt about this, check this guys photo. He has a pony tail for gods sake. I bet hes 5 foot 2.
Rating:
Summary: Back on Track
Review: Terry Goodkind seems to have realized the mistake he made by moving the focus of the series away from Richard and Kahlan. Unlike "Pillars of Creation" which spent the majority of its time on secondary characters (who knows, they may become pivotal in the next few books), in "Naked Empire" we again follow the wayward couple as they enter a new area of the Old World.
I won't give away plot details, but will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The plot twists kept me awake several nights as I couldn't put it down. Although certainly not the best in the series, this definately ranks high for sheer entertainment value. If you're a fan, pick it up and dive in. You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Easily the worst book in the series
Review: Goodkind's writing has become flat, the dialogue bland, and Richard is overly preachy. His new characters are boring, and Kahlan and Richard barely changed, other than some of Richard's big revelations about his gift. This book is pretty much a 667 page argument for the death penalty. After a stunning 6th book, I was looking foward to the continuation. Both book 7 and this book are far bellow what Goodkind is capable of. And after everything Richard and company has gone through, they aren't even one step closer to getting rid of Jagang. Hopefully the next book actually advances the main plot.
Rating:
Summary: The Summer of Love becomes the Winter of Discontent.
Review: If you hate hippies, this is your book. Our hero, the Seeker of Truth, he of the prophecy, 3000 years in the making, King of the D'Hara is wandering in the desert, having headaches, not eating meat, and wondering how to beat back the evil Empire and conquer the world. There are only 6 in his party, which is a small number to conquer the world with. Fortunately, he meets the cannon fodder to build his army from. Unfortunately, they live communally in (shudder) wooden buildings, make decisions by consensus, and live by a strict code of non-violence. He must convert them into bloodthirsty warriors capable of the cruelties of guerrila warfare. He does this with some really tedious speeches which show them that non-violence can not win against true evil - and that the enemy is true evil. They soon come around to Richard's version of libertarian or even anarchistic morals, and kill each other and the enemy with vivacity and verve. Richard regards this as an enormous moral advance. This is a novel of ideas, which shows all of the flaws such novels often have. The plot is driven by the ideas, not by reality, even the reality of the fantasy series. The book is full of deus ex machina rescues and plot turns which even in an action novel would probably upset you because they are so unlikely. If you are following the ideas perhaps you won't care how implausable the actions are, I guess. There are no real characters, either. Everyone is a cardboard cutout set up to hang an idea on. Some people change their ideas but no one develops as a human being - and no one is interesting as a human being. Richard's true love is seized by the evil slide, which is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to her, and it doesn't matter a bit. Who cares? He rescues her anyway as we knew he would, and it really wouldn't matter if he didn't. She is a bit player who gives him that special smile a couple of times and worries about his headaches.
What ideas then are being presented? Let each person follow their own conscience. Be sure you are right, then go ahead no matter what the cost to you or others. You'll make mistakes (like destroying the barriers that protect the good guys from the evil empire) but the issue is not the mistake but how you respond to having made it. Suck it up and move ahead. Deserve victory. It is hard not to see the actions in this book as the delusional fantasy of a bi-polar Richard. His magic sword magnifies rage, for instance. He is plotted against by powerful enemies who can, among other things, inhabit animals and birds, and seize souls. You never know when something appearing natural will be the enemy in disguise. The hero is, in effect, a terrorist, who has his own private reasons for each bit of death and destruction he causes. Richard could blow up the World Trade Center without batting an eye, if the evil empire controlled it. Speaking of the evil empire it was very hard for me not to see Bush in the actions of the masters of evil, particularly in their waste of the talents of others and subversion of knowledge, but I don't think that was the author's idea. Still, in the end the book's ideas are really more sympathetic to the bombers than to the government. Richard is more Timothy McVey than George Bush. But I don't think that was the idea, at all. That's the real problem with this novel of ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Really, Really, Really Awful book
Review: I read this book all the way through as it was so bad it was unintentionally funny. There are many, many problems with this book that others have mentioned but I just have to mention a few problems with the book I had. At one stage our Hero Richard who is a paragon of Goodness decides that the only moral course of action he can take is to murder defenceless anti-violence protestors. This is despite the fact that he feels these people are deluded and that he has previously converted such people with an excruciatingly bad monologue (maybe he feels it would kinder to behead them). He kills these people as they are in his way, stopping him from reaching an antidote and saving his wife (yet again, how many times can this so called smart powerful women be the damsel in distress!!). Yet it turns out that he actually doesn't need the antidote and his wife wasn't there. So Richard has killed these people for nothing. Does Richard admit his mistake or show remorse for his error? Of course not. Showing all the insight and intelligence of the zealous fanatic the character has become Richard just says that anyone who opposes him had it coming. All this wouldn't matter so much if this weren't quite clearly an articulation of the author's own beliefs. Still Richard clearly isn't that smart so maybe it doesn't occur to him that he has done anything wrong. At one stage Richard and his band of dull witted cohorts find out that their nemesis can observe them through the eyes of animals, most often some large hawks that are some of the least scary monsters ever (At one stage hundreds of these things attack and the party only suffers a few scratches), and then proceeds to wonder how the enemy knows their every move while they have Betty the wonder goat with them.
Still maybe I am being unfair to an author that started this series with such promise. Perhaps he is writing an examination of how a man can become that which he most despises by constant obsession. The character has moved from the balanced interesting hero of the first book to the murderous fanatic of this book whose ends always justify the means. It seems extremely unlikely that this is Mr Goodkinds intent however as the last three books have been preaching his message ad nauseum at the expense of moving the narrative along and interviews Mr Goodkind has conducted in the media seem to support Richard's views as his own. I would recommend some basic philosophy (eg the Philosophy Gym or Sophie's world) to show how daft this puerile nonsense is. Alternatively for a far more intelligent take on libertarian views take a look at John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". I would only recommend people read this stuff in the way that you might read David Irving or Mien Kampf to see what tragic paths an extreme ideology can lead you down. Finally some might be tempted to say "this is only fantasy" however the author has denied this saying that he wants his books to be considered philosophy. In that light I think the above comments are relevant. Read George RR Martin instead (Fire and Ice series) as a much more enjoyable, intelligent series without being preached at by a zealot.
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