Review: strange choices
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 4, 2013
I love magic and fantasy and sword play and wizards and  have been hooked on Terry Goodkind's writing since finding the books at the Chetco Community Library. I tend to read and write for young adult audiences, so at first the intense descriptions of torture and bloodiness were overwhelming, but over the development of the Sword of Truth series I came to appreciate the way that you could see the impact of the brutality in shaping the personalities of each character.  Terry Goodkind tells wonderful stories, but it is his characters that really bring the story to life.I was interested to see that someone who has so many traditionally published books would choose the self-publishing route, and limit the book to e-readers.  Trying this with a story that goes back to the beginning of his series and explains and develops plot-lines which have carried his loyal fans along through so many novels, is an interesting choice.  I get the concept that the medium of choice for storytelling has changed over the millennium and using cave walls or parchment scrolls are no more or less the correct medium than paper-books or kindle, but excluding a lot of his fan base this way feels very unappreciative of the kind of loyalty which has carried him this far.I love the Confessors and the people who were unwillingly changed into various other tools of magic.  It was fascinating to see this novel attempt to explain how people can be led to make the very choices they could never imagine themselves making.  Maybe dealing with these unlikely choices helped him make the unlikely one of setting out to self-publish. I enjoyed the book a lot and was torn between 4 & 5 stars.  It isn't the best book he has written, and it may not be the best editing he has ever put in front of an audience, but I enjoyed it a lot and it was fun to dip back into a world which has captivated me over and over through the years.