Just Finished Reading Terry Goodkind's The Pillars of Creation

I have just gotten through volume seven of Terry Goodkind's twelve-part fantasy series The Sword of Truth.  This book, titled The Pillars of Creation, represents a departure of sorts from the first six stories as it introduces a new character, a young woman named Jennsen, who dominates throughout as the chief protagonist.  Richard and Kahlan, the series' traditional protagonists, don't make their appearance until the very end of the book.  Still, the settings are the same as before, only this time the story flows through Jennsen's experiences as she tries to make sense of the war going on between the Imperial Order (the bad guys) and Richard Rahl's D'Haran Empire.  She undergoes great trauma as she witnesses the violent death of her mother at the hands of what looks to be D'Haran soldiers.  But she is rescued by a man named Sebastian...and he just so turns out to be the chief strategic officer for the Imperial Order.  As Jennsen grows closer to Sebastian, she is convinced that Richard Rahl (who is really the "good" guy) had her mother killed and is searching her out to kill her, too.  So Jennsen works hard and fearlessly to support the Imperial Order...and to personally kill Richard herself.  The underlying reason as to why she might be in danger from the Rahls has to do with a newly-introduced idea: offspring of Rahl emperors who do not possess magical abilities are both invulnerable to magical attacks and able to hear the words of the Keeper of the Underworld (like the Roman god Hades) in their minds.  In truth, though, Richard did not even know he had a sister, much less this trait of his non-magical siblings.  In a subplot to the story, Richard's (also unknown to him) non-magical half-brother Oba heeds the words of the Keeper in his head and progressively becomes more evil and sadistic.  At the end...well, I don't want to give it away, but just think: this twelve-part series still has five more books left in it, so how much is going to change?!  I will say this much, though: the "lessons" of The Pillars of Creation are completely in line with those of the previous books: (1) life is in the future while death is in the past, (2) we always have our own choices to make about our own lives and are responsible for those choices, and (3) reason reigns supreme as a force of good.  I can handle all of that...they seem like great ideas to me (although I think I'd like to modify (3) a bit to include "love").  I just wish that the author would be a little more subtle in conveying them...