Wizard’s First Rule – Terry Goodkind

Okay, I have been bugged for years from numerous people to read this book, been told what an excellent book it is.  My son even gave me a copy of it and told me how highly he thought of it.  Normally this would either make me run in the opposite direction thinking I would need a PhD to understand it, be intrigueed or be a bit nervous.  None of those really applied here. Its not that there isn’t a good story here.  There is.  And I have to also take into consideration that I “read” it by listening to an audio book on it.  The reader, though he read well, did not add much to the story.  The voices he gave people were either whiny or monochromatic.  The basic story is decent, the characters not unique, but interesting.  Its a sort of fantasy knight’s tale with wizards and enchantresses and people using and afraid of magic. Nevertheless, the main thing that needs to be done with this book is for a good editor to take an industrial wordwhacker to it!  Its absolute biggest failing is its overwhelming and unnecessary wordiness.  You could probably cut the book in half by eliminating the times you are reminded (in detail, long drawn out, exhausting detail) scenes you had already read in detail (almost the same long drawn out exhausting detail)  Then there is the excessive telling and lack of showing.  You are instructed why the character feels the way they do, complete with a history (often a repeat of something else identical discussed earlier) However, the story was interesting enough that I did suffer through all the pain and frustrations of its unnecessary length.  I doubt that I would have made it to the end if I had read it as opposed to having it read on my car stereo.  I looked at other reviews when I was nearing the end of the book and found that I was not the only one that held the opinions I did on the book.  Maybe if the writer had invested the time he used to write all those excessive passages to rewriting the ones he was duplicating in a more memorable way, the reader could have figured it out on their own without being brow beat with the same information dozens of time and could have stayed immersed in the world he was creating instead of cursing, “Not this AGAIN!” I’m still trying to decide if I am going to attempt the second book to see how much was the reader versus the book, but I doubt I will find it to be significant.  I’m not too worried about giving such a poor review on this book.  Its been around for a long time and there’s enough fans that I doubt my thoughts will harm his reputation.