The feeling that I come away from this book with is one of frustration. I feel like somewhere deep inside it, there was a good story, and yet the final result was pretty dismal. Just about everything that could be wrong was. The plot was extremely heavy-handed. Nicci is quite possibly the worst character ever invented, with a ridiculously bad backstory. Supposedly the wizard's rule in this book had something to do with using logic... and yet everyone was doing the opposite. When Kahlen randomly decided to go ueber-bitch on Ann and started spouting absolute trash, I was very confused. And Kahlen's half-sister and brother also seem to have inherited this insanity.

This book gets a lot more into the background of Jagang and the Order, much to their detriment. For all the problems of the previous books, Jagang did seem to be a pretty serious villian... but the little you saw of him in this book merely cheapened that. The order itself - though mustering a giant army the likes of which has never before been seen - is incompetent at so much as making a loaf of bread.

As I said, the plot was extremely heavy-handed. And repetitive. Once again, Richard is captured by a magical woman. There is even a brief conversation where they try to convince us this time is different because he's not collared....right. Once again he can't use his magic. Once again, despite the fact that his very existence is the only thing keeping Jagang from mind-raping everyone he knows and loves, Richard does nothing to protect his life and can't comprehend why He is the one who has to do anything. And of course, the people that Richard meets are all brain-washed spineless idiots until they've had 5 minutes of conversation with Richard, which changes their lives forever! The ending was obvious from a mile, and relied way too heavily on perfect timing - a sign of a lazy plot. When the only way you can make suspense is by having characters 'happen' to just miss each other by minutes, or come together from across continents with millisecond perfect timing, you're not trying hard enough.

Holy shit, Atlas Shrugged light.

Goodkind really stresses the Objectivist ideals set out by Ayn Rand in many of her books, though he does it in a fantasy setting and in more straightforward (for the most part) terms. Many of the characters that are central to this book can be directly compared to characters in Atlas Shrugged.

John Galt, I mean Richard Rahl, is forced to part from Kahlan in order to be taken to the Old World so he can see what the purpose of the Order truly is. Goodkind does a good job of showing you how people in the Old World are forced to live while also effectively conveying Objectivist Ideals. It can be sort of over the top at times, but that may be just because I have read Atlas Shrugged.

Of course Objectivism manages to overthrow the Imperial Order in one of their major cities and bring Richard and Kahlan back together. I am curious to see if Goodkind will stick with the message presented in this book through the rest of the series.

My favorite book in the Sword of Truth series. The story spoke to my soul in ways I can't recount with words.