Review: Not up to par
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 18, 2012
Alright, maybe Terry Goodkind just set the bar way too high for himself with his earlier books, but I honestly felt like it was a bit of a chore to make it through the First Confessor.  Obviously, I read it through to the end, so there had to be some kind of satisfying substance to keep me going, but overall, I am disappointed in this book.The story is fairly interesting, and it is nice to have some back story to accompany Goodkind's Sword of Truth Series.  In this book, we learn about the origins of the Sword of Truth, Confessors, as well as get some reveals about other aspects of the SOT universe(which I won't go into for spoiler reasons).  Characters we have heard so much about in later books such as Magda, Baraccus, and Merritt are the focus in this book.However, one thing I can not get past in this book is the ridiculous amount of wordy dialogue that 1)repeats itself several times over, 2)treats readers like they're idiots by over explaining every last detail, and 3)is about as unrealistic as humanly possible.  I mean, conversations spanning 5-6 chapters... Plus, in Goodkinds prior books, each main character had a certain personality that reflected in the way they spoke or their mannerisms.  The characters here are a bit flat.  There were honestly bits of dialogue without dialogue tags that I  forgot who was even speaking.I am still a Terry Goodkind fan, and I will continue to read his work, if nothing else than for the great times I had with his earlier works.  However, with this and Omen Machine, I can't help but feel that the level of care, love, and attention that he used to put into this world has been replaced with a desire to rush out a few books for some quick cash.  I would definitely recommend reading through the sample before purchasing.