Why Am I Doing This?

My mother always told me that if I can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all.

Meet the exception.

The first photo that actually smells like a douchebag!

Terry Goodkind is an American author, primarily of fantasy, who has been publishing since 1994. He is a New York Times Best Selling Author with legions of fans. He has sold over 25 million books and his works have been translated into more than twenty different languages. Kirkus Reviews calls him "wonderfully creative". His books have been adapted into a television series.

And I'm here to rip him to shreds.

I should probably start off by saying I don't do this. I don't create entire blogs dedicated to tearing anyone down. Why would I waste my energy talking endlessly about someone I hate instead of devoting my time to something I love instead?

To answer that, I need to give you some background, both for myself, and for the man himself.

I've been reading fantasy since before I could read. As I've grown, my tastes have changed, and I spent a majority of the 90's not reading fantasy at all because I was having a hard time finding fantasy that didn't seem derivative of Tolkien or wasn't based on an RPG scenario (or both). And maybe I was a bit of an arrogant young person who thought I was "above" it all, or something.

I spent my early twenties reading other genres and generally ignoring fantasy. And then one day, I saw a coworker had a copy of a book that I thought looked interesting. It was called Wizard's First Rule.

Something in me was awakened from a long slumber. The more he talked the book up, the more I realized I missed fantasy. I'd grown up with Tolkien, Lewis, Alexander, MacDonald, L'Engle and others. I recalled how I felt reading those books; how they were so much more to me than just "stories", just "books", and how I felt transported to their respective worlds (admittedly some more than others). I wanted that feeling back. I missed fantasy. I had been convinced, probably mostly by my father, that nothing worthwhile was being written in the genre since the days of the old masters, and due to the number of times I'd seen recommendations for books like the Dragonlance Chronicles or The Crystal Shard or other stuff that turned me off just due to how shallow it all felt, I decided I wanted to read this book.

The cover took me to "that place". It didn't look shallow or derivative, and it didn't make me think "rip-off". It had that transporting effect that I wanted. To be fair, this is the cover that I saw:

It's still beautiful, even if it lies.

I do wonder what would have been my reaction to the first printing's cover:

Hey, kids! It's every fantasy novel ever!

I went out and bought a copy myself. I was about halfway through the book when I decided to buy the rest of the series, or at least the ones that had been released at that point.

A familiar thing you'll hear from many former Goodkind readers is that they genuinely liked his books at first. I still see readers suggesting that Goodkind's early books are very good, even great. We'll be discussing later whether or not that's true, but for now I'll just say that I honestly was enjoying myself when I read this thing.

Or maybe I only convinced myself that I was. The more I read, the more I had to sorta mentally white out some parts that left a bad taste in my mouth and I discouraged myself from thinking too hard about them. I had at least one "wait, what?" reaction per chapter. And the whole thing just felt a little...off. I couldn't put my finger on why at the time. I excused most of it for the following reasons: one is that I was just so happy to be reading fantasy again. The second is that I hadn't read fantasy in about a decade and I wondered if maybe the rules were different now and maybe fantasy readers were okay with stuff that readers of more general, real-world fair would not accept. The third reason is that I knew it was Goodkind's first novel and for whatever reason I assumed he was a young man when he wrote it.

This was the photo in the back of the book:

"Please, take me seriously."

I didn't know if it was a recent photo or older, and in that shot he could be anywhere from 30 to 50. I had no idea that he was 45 when he started writing the book.

Most authors are published younger than that. This isn't a strike against Goodkind; a lot of very good authors didn't get their start until they were past 40. However, I recall thinking how impressive a debut this was primarily because I was picturing a young man in his twenties writing this massive tome. Knowing he was older than my dad changed my outlook on his writing skills considerably.

I didn't actually learn how old he was until much later, after I'd already read three of his books and realized that each book was getting harder to read. Now that the honeymoon was over, I was starting to see some glaring flaws that made it a chore to keep on trying to slog through. We'll detail these in due course. I finally gave up halfway through Soul of the Fire, the fifth book in the series. I just couldn't take it anymore.

But I was happy to be reading fantasy again. I decided to make up for lost time and read some series that I'd heard of but never read. I think I still intended to go back at some point and give Goodkind a fair shake again, finishing at least the volumes I'd already paid for.

But then I uncovered a 2003 interview with USA Today. Again, we'll get to that in good time, that and more, but it's an infamous moment in this guy's career. It was this interview that convinced me that I never wanted to read another word he wrote. I sold my copies of his books to a local used book store, and since then I've become a vocal critic of his. He has become the one author I actively warn people away from. The one author who is literally offensive to me.

See, I love fantasy, and I love it for a variety of reasons, and I know that the genre has a lot of very good authors, and a lot of very poor authors. Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of everything is crap, and it holds true of any genre of fiction. Bad books get published all the time, and no matter what kind of story you like to read, there are likely to be millions more hacks producing execrable material than there are great or even good authors. What sells depends on what's driving the market at the time, and can be either very good or very bad (or just bland), but that doesn't mean the bad ones should define their respective genres just because there's more of them. If that's the case, all genres are garbage.

According to Terry Goodkind, however, fantasy as a genre is mostly a waste of time. You shouldn't bother reading anyone in that genre besides his own books, and even then, that doesn't really count because Terry Goodkind does not write fantasy, no sir. He writes books that are deep, books that focus on human themes of universal applicability. You want silly, inconsequential stuff? Read fantasy. You want serious literature that will challenge you and just happens to use fantasy trappings in order to illustrate its points? Read Terry Goodkind. And only Terry Goodkind. Otherwise, don't waste your time with fantasy at all.

Or at least, that's what he's been saying for a majority of his career. And this is why it offends me that he is able to make his living writing fantasy. He has spent the last 24 years writing in the genre I love and making millions off of it, becoming a best seller and earning himself a place in history as one of the most noteworthy fantasy authors of all time. And he has done it all while taking a massive dump on everything and nearly everyone that got him there.

What I find fascinating about other authors, even many who sell as much as Goodkind, if not more, is that, in general, every one of them seem to be down-to-earth people who understand how fortunate it is that they've managed to get where they are, and are thankful to the fans that got them there. Now, this isn't 100% true all the time, because all authors are capable of saying something stupid now and then, but mostly you'll find that they understand that they've been very fortunate, and even suggest that they're not sure how it happened to them. Frequently they'll say things like "I'm still just humbled that so many people seem to like my books" or "I have no idea why my books took off like they did, but I'm so thankful for my fans, and I couldn't have done it without them" or words to that effect.

They even engage in this sorta self-deprecating humor:

What is it with fantasy and the name "Terry?"

That's the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, and if you can't read his shirt, it says, in increasingly small font, "Tolkien's Dead. JK Rowling said no. Phillip Pullman couldn't make it. Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett."

What makes that shirt funny is that Terry Pratchett is, and always will be, one of the biggest sellers in fantasy of all time. Critics all refer to him as one of the greats. He's been compared to Mark Twain. And here he is, wearing a shirt that says he was only invited to this convention after the first, second and third choices weren't available. For the record, it wasn't true; it was just his way of poking a bit of fun at himself.

Which is another thing; most fantasy authors build each other up. They understand they're writing in a niche market and that no matter what, they're all in it together. Are there a few differences in personality that have caused clashes here and there? Sure. But for the most part, fantasy authors are there to support each other.

Goodkind, though? He spent most of his best years behaving as if the money and accolades he was receiving were merely his just due. Appreciating his fans? Hardly. Instead, he acted like it was they who owed him something. Supporting other authors? No way. They're all hacks who can't hold a candle to him.

In the course of this blog, we're gonna lay it all out. I've often said that one could write a book on the myriad ways Terry Goodkind doesn't deserve to be read by anyone ever again, and I've decided to take the plunge and actually write that.

But allow me to reiterate; I'm not doing this just because I don't like Terry Goodkind. I'm doing this because it's almost a crime that he's allowed to make money writing fantasy. He has a lot to answer for, and so few are willing to do all that's necessary to take him to task. So that's my job.

And I'm gonna enjoy it.