Goodkind Driving Me Nuts With Boring Novel

I wonder how many people picked up the first of Terry Goodkind's 12-volume Sword of Truth fantasy series with the firm determination to read through the entire series, only to become so frustrated in the first few chapters that they put it down, never to pick it up again. I know that's how I am feeling right now, about halfway through the first book, titled Wizard's First Rule.

One of my major gripes about Christopher Paolini and his Eragon fantasy series, besides the suspicion that he ripped off just about every major (and minor) idea of his from other writers, is that he tediously goes on for page after page exploring the innermost thoughts of his characters. Maybe you're the kind of reader who digs this, but I find it to be a literary cop-out, a short-cut around using the unraveling story as a way to better get to know the characters and their personalities. But at least I thought that, well, at least here Paolini is writing with some originality (very boring originality, that is). Ooops, maybe he wasn't after all...

No, I don't know whether Paolini read Goodkind or not. But I would be surprised if he hadn't at least begun to read the first book even if he, like me, later laid it down in frustration. Because Goodkind, who began writing his Sword of Truth series several years before Paolini, is eerily similar to the latter with his endless excursions into the thoughts, sub-thoughts, and micro-sub-thoughts of his characters. No wonder that this series is so damned long! Ironically, though, Goodkind has (at least so far) spared the suffering reader with this torture regarding the antagonist, Darken Raul (doesn't that sound a lot like Star Wars?). With Raul, Goodkind lets his actions speak for what kind of person he is. And although those actions are dastardly and nasty, at least I know when I come across a chapter featuring the "bad guy", I will enjoy a kind of reprieve from the mental tedium pervading the "good guy" narrative. The result is that I am unwittingly beginning to root for the antagonist to vanquish those god-awful-boring heroes!

So I don't think I'm going to make it through the first book, much less the whole series. But that may be just as well: I saw Stephen King give a speech and Q & A on C-Span and he is soon coming out with two very interesting stories.

Now what will I ever do if THE KING retires from writing??!!