Terry Goodkinds first book, Wizard's First Rule was pretty good. It told an interesting story that was fairly well written and had an almost perfect conclusion. If Terry had added on a few more chapters he could have easily wrapped a few loose ends, like Richard being the son of Darken Rahl, and given the story a good ending that didn't require another 7 books and counting.
But he didn't do this and his second book in the series wandered aimlessly as he tied up those few loose ends he left in Wizard's First Rule and tried to find something to fill the rest of the book and give him cause to right more than any sane person should for one series.
He found his reason to carry on with the Imperial Order, and this is where the true insanity begins. It is pretty obvious that the Imperial Order is an extreme representation of communism. So it seems that Terry is trying to show us the evils of communism and the virtues of capitalism. In his books Terry that the people of the Imperial Order have nothing to live for, they are all miserable, they are oppressed, brutally violent me roam free and do as they please, raping butchering vandalising etc. and thus that the Imperial Order (communism is evil). But communism is not evil, it is in fact the ideal form of government, when it works properly. Unfortunately the examples of communism we have see in history usually become totalitarian dictatorships in which the people suffer and communism then seems evil.
COMMUNISM IS NOT EVIL. IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO RUN COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTS THAT CORRUPT COMMUNISM AND MAKE IT EVIL.
Essentially, Terry took his series, which started off on a good footing and turned it into a political statement about the evils of communism and about how it threatens our way of life to this day. But it doesn't end there, no there is more. You see, it wasn't until Faith of the Fallen that we really find out what the Imperial Order is all about. Before this time it was just an invading horde bent on world domination. But in Faith of the Fallen we learn about the philosophy behind the Order and it becomes very clear that they are communists. He also dedicated the book to "the men and women who tirelessly fight against the forces of evil that threaten us all", or something like that. All of the dedications in books that I have seen are to people who had an influence on the writer, someone who gave some kind of inspiration, a relative, a friend, a wife. I suppose this means that Terry was inspired by law enforcement officials. His latest book Naked Empire was dedicated to his publisher, Tom Doherty. Seems like he's trying to suck up to the boss. Maybe they don't want to publish his books any more, I wouldn't.
For his last few books Terry must have been taking notes from Robert Jordan because I thought Robert was the only one who could write so much and have nothing happen, Faith of the Fallen is just a year of Richards life spent living in Communism. In Naked Empire Our dear beloved main character Richard spends most of his time preaching about the evils of the Imperial Order and choosing life over death. There are at least 3 chapter long speeches where Richard does this and several other spots where he only spends a page or two on the subject.
If you still don't think that Naked Empire sucks I'll give you a few more reasons: Terry doesn't develop the characters enough, especially the featured bad guy. He saves the empire far too quickly and those people, the Bandarkan or whatever it is they are, should have all died in the fighting. He also converts them to his way of thinking far too quickly, when an entire nation of people couldn't do so 3000 years ago. And besides that, what's wrong with being a pacifist? It worked pretty well for Gandhi.
And of course who could forget this master of blades crap. I get how he is a master of the sword because of the memories of past Seekers of the Truth, but that doesn't mean your good with any kind of blade! I have a relative who is an exceptional cabinet maker and he uses many kinds of knives daily, all with an expert hand. Some of these knives include chisels, handsaws and carving knives. This does not make him a master of the sword. Working with wood or stone is a far cry from cleaving a man in two or shish kabobing him with a sword. There is no way that Richard would have been able to carve that statue that he did in Faith of the Fallen.
