Rating: 
Summary: This is firewood, not a good book!
Review: The only reason that I even bother saying anything about this book (or shall I call it a piece of junk?), is because almost every reviewer of this book likes it! I can say countless bad things about this book (the names, the descriptions, the bad atmosphere, the wierd characters and lots of more), but I'll concentrate on the major problem of this book (or is it in fact Goodkind's problem?):There is so much graphic violence, sex, torture and other disgusting things that is in this book! I feel pity for all the young boys (or girls) that have read this book, mainly because of the perverted Demin Nass who favours young boys!!!!!!!!!! What the hell is this Goodkind? Is this the kind of thoughts that are created in your mind?
There are countless other perverted parts and other things that I would not like to mention, I believe that you all know what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: DISAPOINTING
Review: My girlfriend was ranting and raving about this series. She was saying how she couldn't put it down, etc... I was apprehensive but, I thought, "why not?" I didn't even finish the book. I totally didn't like the characters, and couldn't sympathize with them at all. Mr. Goodkind kept stressing throughout how the main character, Richard, and what's her name, Kahlan, couldn't be together. Ok, he spelled that out to us. One minute, everything is fine, the next, they're lamenting about not being able to be together. Then, the next minute, they're prepared to kill each other for their cause, then they had to explain to the readers and each other how they couldn't be together and it would be wrong. HELLO!!! We've already been told a few dozen times. I don't think his characters stay true to who they are supposed to be. Maybe i'm wrong, but, one chapter they think and feel one thing, the next it's the opposite. Very frustrating. And another problem with this book: Darken Rahl, is this ULTIMATE bad guy, and can travel through the boundries with no problems, and seems somewhat omnipotent. And we're told the ONLY person that can stop him is Richard Cypher. Well, what about one of the only remaining GREAT wizards, skiny-naked-guy-on-the-stone? The one that's helping Richard? He knows the whole history and how Richard is "the one" and blah, blah, blah, but he isn't strong enough to defeat Darken Rahl. That doesn't make any sense to me. This old, all seeing, great wizard, has to rely on this guy who doesn't know what the hell he's doing or how to use his sword. Is it me, or are there little(or big) inconsistancies, with the characters? This has to be the worst book i've ever tried to read. If others like it..good for them, god bless. I've read better books, geared towards teenagers. By the way..My girlfriend doesn't like my choice of books, either. The Raymond E. Feist, Riftwar Saga stuff. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Rating:
Summary: Run away! Run away!
Review: If you like lengthy discussions of pedophilia and descriptions of sexual torture, then you'll probably enjoy "Wizard's First Rule". If, on the other hand, you believe that those topics are best excluded from fantasy writing, then you should probably avoid this book like the plague. It would be no exaggeration to say that "Wizard's First Rule" is, by a considerable margin, the worst book I've ever read. It trundles along without any hint of originality or inspiration, and the bizarre and unpleasant sexual content is added frequently in a failed attempt to break the monotony of the paint-by-numbers plot. At the end, all you can do is gape in awe at the author's total incompetence and wonder how anyone with an IQ higher than 30 could possibly find as much as a single redeeming quality in this mess. We start with an evil overlord, who bears the idiotic name of Darken Rahl. (His father is named Panis Rahl. I kid you not.) Darken happens to need a magic object (in this case, it's a box) to fulfill his desire to take over the world. Starting to sound familiar? It gets worse. We meet a noble but somewhat reluctant hero named Richard Cypher. Richard is mentored by a wise, gray-haired wizard. He also falls in love with a beautiful woman named Kahlan. Unfortunately, an ancient form of magic prevents Kahlan from having sex with any man that she's in love with (D'oh!), but she does the next best thing, following Richard all over the place and offering up dialogue so corny that it would make George Lucas blush ("I can't go on anymore without telling you about me. About what I am. It's cleaving my heart, because I'm supposed to be your friend.") The three heroes march off, fighting various monsters and bad guys along the way, and eventually have their final showdown with Darken Rahl (spoiler: the good guys win). Amazingly, Goodkind takes this already thin storyline and stretches it to over eight-hundred pages, filling the space with tediously predictable events such as a scene where Richard must choose between saving his girlfriend or saving the world. For those who haven't studied the art of comic-book plot development, I'll ruin the suspense by saying that the author dodges the dilemma by having him save them both. The characters are unbelievably thin. Darken Rahl has no personality or motivations whatsoever. Will fantasy authors ever realize that undeveloped villains are neither frightening nor interesting? Richard fares little better. Whenever he's not fighting, he spends most of the time wallowing in self pity and wishing he were home, yet these emotions never seem to get in the way of his heroic quest. The behavior and emotions of Kahlan and the Wizard Zedd are almost exactly the same, to the point where you wonder why Goodkind bothered to make three separate characters. The cast of supporting characters is even worse. For example, we have a spoiled, arrogant princess (hey, there's an original) who seems to exist only so that we can have the emotional satisfaction of seeing her get humiliated several times. Whenever the plot slows down, which happens quite frequently, the author tries to keep us awake by providing some violent sexual content. Women are raped, many children get abused and/or murdered, and I'm not even going to mention the man who is forced to eat his own testicles. The high point, or perhaps I should say the low point, of this phenomenon comes towards the end, when Richard gets captured and tormented by a Mord-Sith, one of Darken Rahl's personal torturers. Consider this passage: "There was a stunning explosion of pain in his head. Denna's grip on his hair was all that kept him upright. It was as if she had compressed the pain of an entire death training session into that one touch. He couldn't move, breathe, or even cry out. He was beyond being in pain; the shock took everything from him, and in its place left an all-consuming agony of fire and ice." Now try to imagine this nonsense going on for close to one-hundred pages, and you may start to see the problem. It's interesting to compare the violent content in this book to that in "A Game of Thrones". While George R. R. Martin also included scenes of rape and torture, he always kept them short and never went into unnecessary graphic detail. Furthermore, his episodes always had a purpose, helping to build the characters involved or describe the societies that they live in. In contrast, Goodkind's uses of rape, torture, and pedophilia are pure exploitation. They contribute absolutely nothing to the novel as a whole, and could easily have been omitted without losing anything other than a sizeable chunk of the book's excessive bulk. Believe me when I say that the problems listed above are only the tip of the iceberg. There is literally nothing in this disaster of a novel that is done right. Due to amazon's size constraints, I don't have time to describe the needlessly long and tedious descriptions, the unsubtle sexism and homophobia, the insults to vegetarians and the physically handicapped, the painfully bad fight sequences, the absurd plot contrivances, and the ending that's worthy of a third-rate Disney movie. Suffice to say, "Wizard's First Rule" is a painfully awful exercise in overused stereotypes, without as much as a single redeeming quality. A vengeful Mord-Sith couldn't make me pick up the sequel to this piece of excrement. Nonsense like this is one of the reasons why many people simply choose to avoid fantasy fiction entirely. Luckily, we have masters like Martin or Guy Gavriel Kay to defend the dignity of the genre, but they're going to have an uphill battle as long as talentless hacks like Goodkind continue to crank out garbage like "Wizard's First Rule".
Rating: 
Summary: Very good overall
Review: The skeleton of the book is standard: young man is whisked away on an adventure against an evil tyrant. It's got the requisite magic sword, the dragon, the beautiful woman, the imminent apocalypse, and so on.
Goodkind does very well with the plot and the characters. I found the behavior of his characters to be more intelligent and lifelike than those in the Wheel of Time. The hero wrestles with choices much more intellectually and morally demanding than "save the world, or not." Richard is wise and dynamic, able to think around corners, often finding answers no one, including the reader, had thought of. The villain is not cut from a cardboard mold but is instead a real person. He is obviously evil incarnate, but his motivations and personality are clearly defined. He is quite clever, as well: although extremely powerful, he never uses his power like a hammer, instead using less effort to create greater problems in the form of moral choices and various psychological attacks.
The main predicament in WFR is interesting, also. It follows the standard Doomsday Machine/Countdown to Extinction premise, but defines the machine - and its tyrannical operator - in intriguing detail, also revealing (naturally) that Richard himself has the only "instruction manual."
Where I think Goodkind falls short is in the world itself. Robert Jordan consistently conveys the sense of a large, breathing world, with entire nations hundreds of miles across. In Goodkind's world, I get the sense that everything is next door to everything else. (Perhaps this in intentional - in the later SoT books it is revealed that the known world is only a tiny fraction of the actual continent, the only bit not part of a vast empire.) Also, the ending is a bit predictable, and came too soon to be 100% irrefutable, not because of the book's length, but because it relied on something not yet deeply ingrained.
All in all, this is very good stuff. It certainly kept me awake.
Rating: 
Summary: Sci-Fi? I must be crazy! :)
Review: This book was sitting on my bookshelf when I decided it was time to start a new book. I grabbed this one figuring that it would be a disappointment, similar to the other sci-fi books that i have tried to read. I was so wrong! This has to the the most entertaining and well written series that I have ever gotten in to. I promise you that if you have any sort of imagination and love reading, these monstorous novels will not be a waste of your time! You will not be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: I just couldn't put this amazing book down
Review: I wasn't very enthousiastic at first when my brother told me this was a great book and I should read it. I admit that the first chapter doesn't really make you want to read on, but if you DO read on like I did, you won't be able to stop.
It wasn't like any other book I had ever read. The main character, Richard Cypher, has a many characteristics of a her : he's brave, determined, powerful, and keeps his vows. But, unlike other heros in other fantasy novels, he makes MISTAKES. He makes mistakes and sometimes what he does can seem evil, and I found that very interesting. The characters in this story are HUMAN, they sometimes are wrong, they sometimes make mistakes or chose the wrong side while thinking they're doing good, and I found that quite impressive.
Ok, Richard has to go on a quest to fight the evil-wizard Darken Rahl, and that's not very original, but that is only as it appears. I've read the book twice, and I've realized the evil wizard had good reasons for doing what he did, and he wouldn't even do what he was if other normal people like you and I weren't on his side, supporting him as if he was the victim wanting revenge.
That's the main reason why I love this book, so I really really really recommend it to anyone, and you'll see that, though it's about 800 pages long, it's a page-turner. I read it in 4 days.
Rating:
Summary: Not very good
Review: I first read this book 4 years ago and thought it was pretty good despite the rather graphic and grotesque descriptions of sex, rape, murder etc. However, I recently read this book again and I've come to the conclusion that its a pretty disappointing book. Kahlan and Richard are predictable and annoying and they get even more two dimensional as the The Sword of Truth series progresses. The villains are overly sadistic and certain scenes are disgusting and unnecessary(Richard and Denna, Darken Rahl's method of journeying to the underworld, the rape scene). This book could have been good but somehow Terry Goodkind's fascination with the perverse hindered it.
Rating:
Summary: Could not put it down
Review: I could not put this book down! It held my attention throughout the story. Just when you think you know what's going to happen next, the story takes a sudden turn. I've read books 1-5 and all have been so addicting that I can't wait for book 6 to get here!
Rating:
Summary: Saved by S & M!
Review: I looked forward to reading this novel as I'd often heard positive comments on this Goodkind series. Early on, I was disappointed by what I saw as its hackneyed plot, regurgitated characters, and retread Tolkienesque quest. Surprisingly, somewhere along the way, I found myself starting to enjoy the story, and admiring the character of Richard Cypher. As the story went along, he became more and more interesting--and less and less predictable. By the time I got to his rather hot S & M "thing" with his delicious Mord Sith [sic?] torturer, I couldn't put it down. Unlike some other reviewers, I consider the "breaking" of Richard Cypher to be the best thing about the book. It certainly complicated his relationship with Kahlan--and hopefully made for a more interesting romance down the road.
Rating:
Summary: If you like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, you will like it!
Review: Although there are several parallels between this novel and Robert Jordan's WOT, I believe that this is still a great piece of literature on its own. He weaves a very compelling story of Richard being drawn into a quest to save the world. Terry does weave an interesting history that sets the stage for the events that are unfolding. He also doesn't drown in the details of this history, like other novelists have. When Richards sets out, he knows nothing of the world that he is entering, giving the novel a real sense of the unkown. This keeps you involved personally with the main character by seeing the world through the eyes of a child. The only thing about the novel which is getting annoying to me is that his main idea is perception. He is basically saying that the ideas of 'good' and 'evil' all depend upon perception. It isn't bad that he states it, but he beats you over the head with it. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed WOT.
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