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Blood of the Fold (Sword of Truth, Book 3)

Blood of the Fold (Sword of Truth, Book 3)

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A BIG fall down the hill
Review: WHAT HAPPENED? WFR & SoT where great. But this book. Half of it didn't even make any sense. I've read it four times already and I still don't get half of it. I think Terry's just starting to make it up as he goes. The book it self is okay and I would give it a 6, but I gave it a 4 because it's a real disapointment to the series...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Downward Spiral
Review: After reading Wizards First Rule, and Stone of Tears I was, to put it lighty, intrigued by the Sword of Truth series. Yes, I realized it's obvious faults and blantant silliness, but I turned to reading Goodkind after having my mind weighed down by to much philosophy and heavy reading; I needed to think less and observe more. In the first two books, my expectations were met. I was captivated by the story, but to be honest his writing ability does not seem to excede that of a middle school level. Imaginative though. Let's face it, if I had a problem with reading childish gobbledy gook, I wouldn't be be attempting to read fantasy novels, so I continued to "Blood of the Fold" out of a sense of duty as well as an interest. Though about 400 pages shorter than its predecessors, "Blood of the Fold" took me at least twice as long to read. The themes reaked of redundancy, as well as the plot line. I suspect that perhaps Goodkind wanted to save new-comers to the series the trouble of reading the first two novels. This is the only hypothesis that I can form as to why he would write numerous sixth-gradish paragraphs quickly recapping on past novels.

I was, to say the least, disapointed with "Blood of the Fold". The Sword of Truth series takes a plunge for the worst here, and in my opinion, never resurfaces.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great book, Great ideas
Review: Goodking is a really good author. He has a way of trapping the readers into the story. He planned it so well (or went over it constintly) that twisted in the stroyline was inefitiable. I rate it 10/10 and i found NO drawdowns.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Blood of the Fold, GREAT!
Review: I have recently read this book. You will want to read the two books of the series first. If you don't it still expains things. If you like books where a man is in love and is digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble, and manages to get out of it unbelivably, you should enjoy this book. This guy, Richard Rahl,is really cool. He is also very funny and determined. I have fallen in love with the characters and you can too.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: What happend?!
Review: I read the first two books in the sword of truth series and they were amazing! But this one just... I don't it was just bad.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Two times better than book 2 and 3 times better than book 1!
Review: Wow....It just gets better and better! I'm certain I will be at a loss when I finish the series to find a comparable imact. Blood keeps you on the edge from page one...the series is by far the most fluent I've read. I'm there with every battle, every tear, every fear. I cast the spells and learn the gift as does Richard from the gut level common sense farm boy values and attitude. The wonderful blending of high moral standards, erotiscism, even violence and war makes me want to be part of Richard and Kahlans society. The human elements of concern, empathy, and citizenship lost in reality are pleasantly forefront in each book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Goodkind has a fan for life!....maybe
Review: Another great story. Brogan gets his just reward. Sisters of the Dark meets there match in the dreamwalker. Hail Richard Rahl,fuer grissa ost drauka(The Bringer of Death), may your yabree sing with sweet vengeance!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Story Drowns in Sadomasochism
Review: Not recommended. The story of an exciting, if plug-ugly, fantasy world becomes disfigured by sadomasochistic abuse above and beyond the call of plot and theme.

I found the third volume of Goodkind's _The Sword of Truth_ significantly inferior to its predecessors. _Wizard's First Rule_ and _The Stone of Tears_ were interesting, if flawed, in that the tales were fast-paced and the major personal dilemmas of the characters presented in each novel were resolved by the end, making it possible to admire their crafting as stories.

The first two works seem to be flawed by two things. First, there is the kind, extent, and depiction of sadomasochistic sexual violence therein. In _Wizard's First Rule_, I found the portrayal of the Mord-Sith jarring; the emphasis on "training" directed to sexual slavery is so obviously drawn from modern BDSM that it detracts strongly from any sense of the setting as a unique fantasy world with its own development and history. It's intrusive partly because it's out of place: torture directed against the protagonist would far more reasonably have been intended to extract information from him, not make him a Mord-Sith's pet. Instead, the villain allows him to be subjected to this and then simply lets him go free when it fails as an interrogation strategy, despite the protagonist's being a severe danger to him.

Second, none of the peoples in the books are particularly sympathetic, partly because of the abuses of either sex by the various cultures depicted. None of the good peoples in _The Lord of the Rings_ are flawless, but they are very distinctive and it's possible to regard their individual cultures with affection, such that one would mourn the passing of the cultures of the dwarves, the elves, the hobbits, etc., had Sauron won. This is not the case in Goodkind's world. While the 'bad guys' are very dark indeed, in many cases being depicted as sexual perverts or deranged fanatics with a taste for the torture, rape and murder of adults and children, the portrayal of the 'good guys' is inconsistent in that while they are often held up as being genuinely concerned about people, and the protagonist is successfully portrayed that way as an individual, they are often seen supporting political power structures that in practice could not fail to be other than atrociously abusive.

We are, for example, continually told that the Confessors are the protectors of the weak and the innocent against the unscrupulously powerful in the Midlands because they can dominate any kingdom, by virtue of the power of having the ability to commit a form of mental rape that destroys the free will of the victim and bonds them to helpless devotion to the Confessor exercising the power. The Confessors can, and do, take any men they choose as their mates, willing or no, married or no, fathers of families already or no, by exercising their magic of domination; and the Confessor will compel the man to slay any infant sons he fathers--male Confessors will invariably abuse the power. (Evidently, what the female Confessors do is not abusive.) We see the heroine (a Confessor) regarding this as tragic when she falls in love with the hero, but none of the 'good guys' take any exception to the Confessors effectively raping the fathers of their children and forcing them to murder their sons, as a system.

Both sexes are used abominably in this series. Many of the women, important and unimportant, are raped or nearly raped and sometimes mutilated by the villains; this is portrayed as a very deep evil. Men are also degraded, dominated, tortured, and raped by women, but this is not portrayed as a thing so black or unforgivable, by and large: those brutalizing males generally are painted in shades of grey rather than black as are those brutalizing females--though the Confessors, disturbingly, are painted in shades of white. Because of this, it is difficult to love any of the peoples or cultures we see depicted in detail, and, thus, some of the suspense we might have felt at their being imperiled is muted--though the villains are so unrelievedly dark that we are not completely indifferent.

Nothwithstanding these flaws, Goodkind's pacing and scenes are sufficiently gripping that I read the first two books with considerable interest. Unfortunately, the story in this third book, _Blood of the Fold,_ is weaker and the flaws more pronounced, such that I won't be buying the fourth.

In _Wizard's First Rule_ and _The Stone of Tears,_ while some of the sexual violence was perhaps overdone and misdirected, I did not feel it was without relevance to the story. In _Blood of the Fold,_ however, the rapes are joined by sexual mutilations of female characters, whereas the elements of deception and abuse of power perpetrated by the remaining female-led magical institution become more intrusive, in that we see them being exercised personally against major male characters without it even making much sense as a method of advancing the perpetrators' interest. Some of the torture scenes do very little to advance the story; the whole pattern of abuses is becoming both repetitive and gratuitous. Finally, in this book, the major personal dilemmas of the main characters are not resolved by the end. That element of appreciation for a neat storyline that depended on having things fall together by the end of the novel is missing in this third work.

It so happens that I like bloody dark fantasy, torture scenes, and violence in fiction, within limits. With _The Blood of the Fold,_ however, this series has exceeded those limits: I don't think the torture, rape, mutilation, domination, and sexual abuse is sufficiently justified by the plot to account for its plenitude. It's crossed the line between 'bloody enough to keep me powerfully hooked' and 'sadomasochistic pornography.'

The latter distracts me from the story. It seems also to have distracted the author.



Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Blood of the fold by Terry Goodkind
Review: A very excelent book. I have read the series as far as it goes. Reminds me of the Wheel of time books by Robert Jordan. If you have enjoyed this book you should like Jordans. Cant wait for the next book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Do I hear Wheel of Time?
Review: I like the Sword of Truth series but it is sooo much like Wheel of Time. Sisters of Light=Aes Sedai Sisters of dark=Black Ajah Blood of the Fold=Children of the Light Currently I am in the process of writing a fantasy epic but it is not cloned like this is. Read this series if you are desperate for another fantasy series.


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