Audiobook finished

[johnridley]

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind

Meh.

I figured I'd give it a try, but as TWO friends at work who have both read the series said, "Life is too short to read mediocre books."

I mean, it was OK, but it certainly wasn't great.

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

This fits with what I've heard from others. I may do the second book and leave off there. I haven't found anyone who thought 3 and on were worth the time.

I just loaded the 5 books of the Belgariad (Eddings) on my reader, but I have at least 3 other books in front of that so at my reading speed it'll be at least 2 or 3 weeks before I can start on those. I decided to give them a chance largely because an Amazon reviewer said that one of the reasons that they were good was because they actually started, went on, and ended. But mainly ENDED.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

With regard to Eddings, I read the Belgariad and the followup series the Mallorean along with one book of another series (the Elenium) along with the standalone but post Mallorean books on Polgara and Belgarath. I found the Belgariad and Mallorean to be popcorn fantasy, but enjoyable and very readable. The Mallorean was perhaps only interesting because I'd read it years after the Belgariad, but even then the books call out to the reader that THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE. The Mallorean largely repeats many of the elements of the Belgariad (and is peppered with the characters in the story saying "haven't we already done this?") but again is good popcorn, just a bit more stale. The standalone books aren't bad reads but mostly suffer from the fact that they end up pulling in too much material from the base series at points and also are Too Damned Long.

Overall, I'd recommend them. It'll be interesting to hear what you'd have to say about the Mallorean read back to back with the original series. Much like what MRW had said about The Magic of Recluce, it may be intolerably repetitive when read back to back rather than with a few years to give things some space.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I doubt I'll ever get to the Mallorean given your comments. There's just too much to read and I'm not a fast reader.