An Improvement From Goodkind! (Sword of Truth 9: Chainfire - Terry Goodkind)

Member Name: andyoz

Product:	Sword of Truth 9: Chainfire - Terry Goodkind
Date:	17/07/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Story, Well Written

Disadvantages: Overly Complicated In Places

So Chainfire is the ninth book in the epic Sword of Truth series by the fantasy author Terry Goodkind. This book follows on from Naked Empire. It was released back in january of 2005. Was another big hit for Goodkind as fans were well and truely hooked on this series by this point. And although the standard of the previous books seemed to have dropped off slightly, fans were still keen to continue the story and find out what would happen to there heros.

So at the start of this book as far as we know Richard and Kahlan are moving there way up from the Old World and everything is reasonably calm. However right at the start of the book Richard is attacked and hit by an arrow. When he comes round Nicci has to heal him as he is very seriously injured.

When he asks where Kahlan is, nobody knows who he is talking about. Richard is confused but finds everyone has forgotten who Kahlan is. He tries to track her, tries to find some evidence of her but is at a loss. Then there is a horrific attack on his men by some unknown force.

Richard later on discovers that the evil Sisters of the dark have created some kind of beast that is now trying to kill Richard. So the story basically follows Richard as her searches for Kahlan, tries to discover why no one remembers her, and then his trouble with this beast.

For me this book is an improvement on some of the recent ones. The story is frustrating in places, again we feel like we are maybe going in circles. But there are some good bits in the book that really keep you interested. The return of some excellent characters, for example Shota and Samuel feature in this book again, this really adds to the story.

As usual Goodkind tries to explain things for us just a little to often. There are long drawn out sections of dialogue where we are just reading the same thing over and over. You could probably cut a hundred pages out of this book and it would make no difference to the final story.

Overall this is a good book, and it does build anticipation for the final two books. The story moves along at a good pace and there is always plenty going on. I certainly don't think this book is as good as some of the earlier books in the series, but its going in the right direction. I'm glad that the story has moved out of the Old World again as well as I prefer the story back in The Midlands and D'Hara.

So this is another good book that most fans of the series will enjoy. Bear in mind that you can't really read this book on its own, you have to have read the other books for the story to make sense. But don't let that put you off getting stuck into the series!

Summary: A Good Solid Read