Koil's Korner

I don't know if you have ever heard of a man named Terry Goodkind or a set of books he began in the 1990's with his frist entry: Wizard's First Rule

I was 14 when I read WFR for the first time. I was intrigued by the entire book and especially by the quote from Zedd, “People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.” Like most books, yes even fantasy, Goodkind had a philisophical message that he teased at many times during the series. He was a huge Ayn Rand fan. He devoured Atlas Shrugged and despised collectivism in all forms. I will leave the philosophy to Mr. Goodkind to explain or defend. However, I was quite a fan of everything else in his books. Between Wise & Hickman, Salvatore, Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time) and of course Goodkind and many others. My teenage and young adult years were filled with magic, mayhem and wonder!

I remember the first time the protagonist Richard Cypher (As he was known then) was tortured by a woman who wielded such an alien weapon to him. How it made me cringe to think of all this imaginary person was going through. It was the first time in my life that I picked up a book and couldn't put it down. I had to get to the end and then when I did. Wait Two years for the next book to be released. Each time the next book in the series was released I was at Waldenbooks or Barnes & Noble with my preorder. Waiting to pick up the hardcover. Back then you had to wait 9 months for paperback on popular books. There was no Nook or Ipad or even Smartphone to download the book to. Not in the beginning anyway. It taught me patience to wait for those books. It also taught me to explore the genre and find other authors like I mentioned earlier. SOT was my gateway to fantasy and ultimately Roleplaying. For that, I will always be grateful to Mr. Goodkind for creating Richard and Kahlan and even Darken Rahl.

As the series started coming to an end there were a few plot points and situations that irked me but who doesn't have them with any series that is over 6k pages long. Then once the series ended the talk of movies & TV shows started. Sam Raimi of Spiderman and Army of Darkness fame was attached to the project. Unfortunately, what did we get? A Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess clone that only had 1 season. How I wish that SOT received the GOT (Game of Thrones) treatment and was treated like the adult, brutal, fantastical and serious series that I thought it could be.

So, Terry, has moved on to drama/thriller titles, (that I don't read) and the once #1 Best Selling Series is all but forgotten. I do have hope though. In this age of reboots and recycles of everything from Hawaii Five-O to MacGyver and if The Vampire Diaries (Which I don't hate BTW) can have TWO spin-offs. There may be hope for this old series about War Wizards, Confessors, Mord-Sith, Dream Walkers, Additive and Subtractive Magic. So with my regret over what was, maybe I can have hope for what might be. If you are looking for a deep fantasy series about war, conquest, love, sacrifice, motivation, intrigue, political drama and much more. I would suggest picking up Wizard's First Rule and meeting Richard and his crazy grandfather and the mysterious woman from the veil, Kahlan. I think it will be well worth your time. Hell, maybe one day there will be a TTRPG for it. (I may or may not be working on it.) Once again, thanks for listening to the musings of a semi-addled soul-stealing warlock.

Happy Gaming!

Skillkoil aka Dallas