Terry Goodkind in the Modern Age

They will NEVER go away!

Most of what I've talked about by this point is over a decade old. That Terry Goodkind is an asshole who thinks too highly of himself isn't really a secret. It's kind of how he's come to be defined. And that clearly irks him to some degree.

So now let's talk about what the latter half of Goodkind's career has brought us.

As I've already said, Goodkind frequently spoke about how he wasn't a fantasy author, and considered himself too important to be slapped with that label, including accusing TOR of hurting his career somehow by insisting they market his books as fantasy, despite everyone who ever read them who wasn't Terry Goodkind knowing they were fantasy as soon as they read the first page. Again, while his followers often repeated the myth that they weren't fantasy, they didn't start talking this way until Goodkind told them to.

In the last post I talked about Goodkind's personal Goebbels, Ron "Mystar" Wilson, and how Mystar's disinformation campaign is probably responsible for a good chunk of Goodkind's reputation, both in how his fans behavior was perceived and in how Goodkind apparently would not listen to a word of criticism, regardless of whether it was constructive, and kept people like Mystar around mainly to keep his own ego nice and inflated.

Phew, that was quite the run-on sentence, wasn't it?

But I also mentioned that it doesn't appear that Mystar is hanging around Goodkind much these days, or at least, not in a professional capacity, and that it has been some time since he's shown up online defending Goodkind to the end and lying about his sales record and standing within the industry. He's also never said anything about his declaration that HBO passed on George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, probably because there's no defense for what he said.

I want to take a moment and deliver an aside; there are people who believe that Ice and Fire wasn't doing well until Game of Thrones premiered. This has been repeated by Goodkind followers (and Mystar) and has been used by Goodkind thralls to "prove" that Goodkind is the better, and more popular, author. The problem is, it was never true. Goodkind didn't start placing on the New York Times best-seller list until his third outing. By then, A Game of Thrones had been released to great critical acclaim, but while it wasn't on the best-seller list, its follow-up, A Clash of Kings, debuted at number 13 on the list. This is a better showing than Goodkind made, and it happened just three years after Goodkind's first placement on the list. This is not enough time for Goodkind to be the sort of game-changer that allows him to take credit for how well A Clash of Kings did.

So, to recap, Terry Goodkind did not make the New York Times' best-seller list until his third book, Blood of the Fold, in 1996. I'm not sure where it placed, as historical records don't seem to go past the top 15 of each year, but this means that whatever number he placed, it was below 15. While each subsequent volume placed somewhere on the list, only two, Chainfire and Phantom, made it to the top five.

Meanwhile, in 1999, George RR Martin's A Clash of Kings, volume 2 in its series, debuted at number 13. His third volume, A Storm of Swords, debuted at number 12 and his (so far) final two volumes debuted at number 1. Goodkind has only topped the list once, with Phantom. His output in the epic fantasy genre is also much higher, so really, despite what you may have heard, Goodkind might have been doing better in terms of sheer sales volume (due to having started earlier) but Martin actually achieved more, and in a quicker time frame, than Goodkind did.

Anyway, moving on from that.

So what's Goodkind been up to in the last ten years or so?

Well, among other things, lying about his product, ruining lives and ripping off his fans.

For starters, there's Goodkind's "general fiction debut", The Law of Nines. If memory serves, Goodkind was quite jubilant that he was finished with The Sword of Truth and could now start writing general fiction and get away from the stigma of being a fantasy author. So, in 2009, we got his first non-fantasy effort, The Law of Nines, which...sigh...turned out to be fantasy after all. Not just fantasy, but a continuation of the Sword of Truth novels. Of course, that was obvious the moment we learned his protagonist's name was Alex Rahl.

Have a look at the book's Wikipedia page for more on its ties to Sword of Truth. But the bottom line is, Goodkind told us this was his first non-fantasy novel and he lied to us. I don't see how more people didn't call him out on this, though you'd better believe the general fantasy readership did. Both Werthead and Pat from Fantasy Hotlist had a lot to say about it, and so, for that matter, did a lot of more professional fantasy review sites.

This sort of lie goes beyond insisting that his fantasy novels weren't fantasy, because at least there he didn't deny that he used some fantasy elements to deliver his message. He just insisted that the presence of fantasy elements wasn't a fundamental element of the series. Here he was literally telling us it was a non-fantasy thriller, and he lied. Why he felt the need to do that is beyond me, especially since he wanted nothing more than to be taken seriously as a non-genre writer, and specifically did all he could to market this to the general fiction readership. It was even published by a non-fantasy press, Putnam Adult.

In short order, Goodkind returned to the world of Richard and Kahlan, despite insisting that Confessor was the last book in that series. Considering that The Omen Machine, Goodkind's return novel, was published a mere four years after Confessor, it seems like Goodkind's insistence was never serious. I'm guessing he was lured back to TOR and writing about Richard and Kahlan by the promise of more money a chance to write about important human themes that are so universal they can only be told in a fantasy setting.

But then he did something kind of odd. He went the self-published route. Shortly after The Omen Machine's publication, Goodkind announced that he was working on a prequel novel that he would be publishing himself, without TOR's involvement, as an ebook. However, for $300 dollars, fans could purchase a special limited edition print version of The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus that would be leather-bound, and would come with other exclusive merch that would not be sold in stores. Additionally, this was reputed to be the only print copy that would ever be available to anyone.

Well, they sold out within minutes. As soon as pre-orders went live, fans couldn't wait to get their hands on this exclusive product. Too bad that as far as I can tell, they never did.

I can't seem to find anything online about how this was resolved, but I do know that Goodkind kept fans waiting for their product for well over a year, delivering promise after promise and breaking all of them. Eventually, TOR did publish The First Confessor under its own imprint. I see it every time I go to the fantasy section of any local book store. Again, I haven't been able to find out if fans got their money back (some $90,000) or if they ever got their product. I can confirm that such product exists and some fans must have gotten it because one of them is offering up their copy on picclick.com.

But the controversy with this book wasn't over. An online pirate managed to get ahold of the e-version and distributed it as pirates do. Goodkind's response? Put the man in fear for his life.

I'm not kidding. Now, I don't support online piracy, but the proper method of handling situations like this is to go to the police and let the law take care of it. Goodkind published the name and address of his hacker online, and encouraged fans to go after him with both barrels. In the end, he had to go underground. Sure, he was a pirate and deserved some sort of punishment, but did he deserve to literally receive death threats? Hardly. And this time it was actively encouraged by the author himself!

Now, the revenue lost by Goodkind thanks to this hacker's activity was likely negligible. I'm quite certain that Goodkind didn't have to mortgage his home or sell his car thanks to this hacker. In fact, I'd say his bank account didn't even notice it. And the richness of this activity coming from an author who had just ripped off his fans is unending. It's okay for Goodkind to literally take money from fans and deliver nothing (over-promising and under-delivering is kind of a microcosm of Goodkind's career anyway) but for a guy to distribute e-copies of a book that sold well anyway is worthy of sending a rabid army of fans after him to threaten his life? That's just plain nasty, and totally beneath the dignity of a multi-million best-selling author. You think Goodkind's the only author who's had this happen to him? More like one of thousands, and yet he's the only one who thought it was acceptable to open this guy up to all sorts of unhinged loonies that populate the internet. It may very well be the worst thing Goodkind has ever done. A close second would be ripping off his fans.

But the regular old douchey behavior didn't end, either. For one thing, take a look at the books Goodkind has chosen to review on Goodreads. I mean...my god. For comparison, here's Brandon Sanderson's list of reviews.

In case you didn't click the links, or even if you did, I'll spell it out for you. Goodkind has only reviewed his own books, rating each of them five stars. Now, I won't suggest there aren't other authors out there proud of their own work. That's just fine. Even Joe Abercrombie, one of my favorite authors, recently tweeted about re-reading one of his own books and finding it better than he remembered. But this takes being proud of your accomplishments a step further. Goodkind literally has no book on his review list that he didn't write. It's like he's saying the only books he knows of worth reading are his own. And in case you wonder if he can take criticism any better now, don't worry. He can't.

One of the reviews of The First Confessor comes from a fan, Jasmine, who was less than impressed:

a big disappointment, I wish I never read it

with this book Terry managed to destroy everything he built in the SOT series, right now I'm seriously wondering why did I ever like this series, or if it was as good as I remember it...
well I read every book he wrote, and currently reading the first confessor...

as for the Omen Machine I admit I was disappointed by it, it's the first in a new series, and if I'm not mistaken ...as long as SOT series, too long, too much waiting... and I loved the premise of the first series more...

the first confessor is suffering from the fact that I'm reading and LOVING the wheel of time series by Robert Jordan, I just can't bring myself to care for it...and the fact that I know all the major characters and what will happen to them doesn't help at all( I did some rereading of the parts that spoke of the great war and the first confessor in anticipation for this one)...it's not fun to know how the book ends before you red it, though I'm hoping there will be some kind of surprise for me in the end.... 

I don't know, I just hated it... I couldn't agree to anything the characters did, none of their actions made sense to me, it was very different from what I expected after reading the original series, things weren't the same, I can come up with at least a dozen contradictions from what was said before... and that's without rereading the books...finally the book had a serious need of an editor-I suspect he had none-if it was a paper book I could've teared off many pages without damaging anything but the binding :(

Goodkind couldn't let that stand, no sir!

Jasmine, Of course there was an editor. The very same that has collaborated with me on all of my SWORD OF TRUTH series books. It would be difficult to imagine spending 9+ months working on something only to not bother involving an editor (and a proofreader, etc).

I have no idea what contradictions you are expressing and I am utterly confused as to how you would suggest this book manages to 'destroy everything' I built. Explain please? 

Now, in all fairness, Jasmine got off light compared to that poor fan from 2004 who got ripped from stem to stern for daring to suggest (correctly) that Goodkind was inserting his views to the point where it was a detriment to the story. But still, calling out a fan for daring to have "the wrong" opinion? What kind of assholishness is that? For what it's worth, Jasmine did "explain" but Goodkind either didn't care for her explanation or couldn't be bothered to continue to the conversation, because as you'll see in that link, he never replied. Others did, both to tell Jasmine she was wrong and how dare she have a different opinion (Goodkind's followers are nothing if not persistent), and also to agree with her that the book was a letdown.

I have seen authors respond to fan complaints before, but usually they leave them alone, and when they do, it's usually to say "I'm sorry you felt that way" rather than a snippy "explain please?" Michael J. Sullivan, author of a truly enjoyable series of books collectively called Ryria, once had to tell a reader who accused him of ripping off A Song of Ice and Fire that he had yet to read those books and thus couldn't have ripped them off, but he didn't tell her she was wrong for not liking his book.

And this leads me to Goodkind's attempt to defend himself from his more asinine statements.

Michael J. Sullivan is actually the man who renewed the discussion, back in 2013, in a Reddit thread in which he sort of marvels at how a best-selling author chose to talk about himself and his work.

Goodkind found the thread, and to put it mildly wasn't happy about being called out, accusing Sullivan of having the ulterior motive of hoping to boost his own sales by tearing another author down, as if that's how it works. Now, I haven't met Sullivan in person, but I have had, and witnessed, several online interactions with him, and I can tell you now that the man is an utter gentleman, and a very good writer as well. He's pretty much Goodkind's polar opposite; he loves his fans and continually thanks them for their support, plus he talks about his own books as if he's grateful that anyone at all has read them. I compared him to the greats like Martin and Tolkien, and he said it was an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence with them. As for his books, they are unpretentious high fantasy stories that manage to become more than the sum of their parts mainly by not pretending they're anything else. Goodkind brags continuously on how he's breaking down barriers and doing stuff never done before when in fact his books are very standard examples of fantasy. Sullivan says "here are my standard fantasy books" but you end up becoming very attached to the characters and engaged in the story quite quickly.

Anyway, Sullivan wasn't impressed by two of Terry Goodkind's more incendiary quotes, and I don't blame him. We've talked about both of them, and if you're curious about what they are, feel free to click the link. But eventually Goodkind himself responded. Curiously, he didn't respond, at first, with the sort of accusations and vehemence we're used to. In fact, he seemed almost, dare I say it...humble. He acknowledged for the first time ever that he is a fantasy writer, and seemed to be suggesting that his earlier behavior was due to frustration over how fantasy was perceived.

Unfortunately, the more one reads his initial response, especially the ones that follow after, one realizes that the same old Goodkind hasn't gone away. A few years ago, I wrote a different blog post calling him out on his back-handed non-apology. I won't re-hash the same post again, but I will call your attention to several telling phrases from his response:

“Occasionally, this quote even gets rehashed by other authors that like taking public stabs at their peers (presumably to feel a little bigger).”

That's rich coming from a guy who spent over a decade trashing not just other fantasy authors, but fantasy as a genre, all in the pursuit of making himself feel bigger.

“Here is the net of it; I fumbled with my words and the message I had intended to be clear was not.”

This is Goodkind essentially saying that he never intended to trash the entire genre, or suggest he was the only good writer within it. He goes on to explain:

I want people to read my books as stories about the human spirit. I want people to approach my books as human stories that exceed the general conception of what most fantasy novels represent (particularly what most fantasy novels represented at the time when I gave that quote).

So...essentially it's exactly what he was already saying. The only change is that he's acknowledging that fantasy has come to exceed genre expectations since then. He still doesn't acknowledge, in fact does not do so throughout his response, that it already did exceed genre cliche at the time.

I don't want someone to walk into a store, pick up one of my books, read the classification ('Fantasy') and then immediately assume dragons, orcs, elves, wizards, and so on.

So..why did you write a series that has dragons, wizards and non-human sentient races? Essentially, this quote is saying "I wanted people to think my book is something it isn't. I didn't want them to think it's exactly what it is."

So far, he didn't fumble the intended message at all. He wanted us to think his fantasy novels were something other than fantasy novels.

"Keep in mind the context of when this quote was offered."

...which was 2003, a time when JK Rowling and George RR Martin had already topped the NYT list and were doing as good, if not better, than was Terry Goodkind. And for that matter, on a critical level, China Mieville, Steven Erikson and Paul Kearney had made their debuts and were already receiving comments on how they were changing fantasy's reputation.

"There had only been a few successful fantasy movies, almost nothing on TV, very few major stars were willing to take on title roles, fantasy scripts were some of the lowest selling commodities in Hollywood, publishers would routinely reject fantasy on receipt, etc."

This is just odd. He starts talking about movies and TV series, as if that's what he produced, and then talks about how publishers would reject fantasy just for being fantasy. What the hell is he talking about? Hollywood movie and TV studios are a totally different animal from the publishing world, even if authors often work with both, and does he seriously think that publishing houses that exist to publish fantasy would reject a novel because it's fantasy? Huh?

"It was before the nerds -- us -- took over the world."

I'm including this to show how after over a decade of saying he was not, Goodkind is now trying to suggest he's "one of us".

He continues to labor under the delusion that his sales were so extraordinary that there had to be something readers were seeing in his works that they weren't getting elsewhere. I again wonder what he thinks readers saw in authors like JK Rowling. He can suggest that she wrote for children and therefore doesn't count, but in truth, adults enjoy her stuff as well, and in fact, while I can't find direct proof of this, there have been reports that more adults read Harry Potter than kids do, to the point where it was re-printed with more adult-oriented covers and stocked in the main fantasy section.

After once again trashing the genre while trying to suggest he shouldn't have back in the day, he says this:

"I concede my quote appears to take a step backwards and step on the toes of my beloved genre; but I also hope most people would recognize I have written now 16 books based in a fantasy world. In fact, I have only written fantasy stories to this point. You can safely assume the guy that has written more than 4.25 million words in the genre, probably has a deeply rooted love for it, however awkwardly I may stumble when trying to explain it."

Fuuuuuuck you, Terry "Ego That Walks Like a Man" Goodkind. There's a short pier somewhere waiting for you to talk a long walk off of it. Please, go back to the "Where Goodkind Goes Bad" post and compare what he says about being a fantasy author there to what he says here. It's one thing to say "Yeah, I guess I am a fantasy writer" and quite another to deny you ever claimed you weren't.

"It is outrageous to think that I am somehow a 'fantasy-hater'. Incredibly I have been called that and more, even a few times in this thread. Pause and think. Could that possibly ring true?"

In a word; absolutely. Again, read what he said in 2003 and especially in 2004. Seriously, this guy.

"Again, context. WIZARD'S FIRST RULE shattered records."

No, it fucking did not.

"At the time (possibly even still today) it was the largest purchase of a fantasy work by an unknown author. It had one of the largest first edition print runs in fantasy history and it shattered expectations on every level of publishing."

Note the weasel words again. "Of an unknown author". Okay, I'll give you that one. But no, it's not still true even today. JK Rowling and Christopher Paolini have destroyed your records, and both were first-time authors. And no, it didn't shatter expectations on every level of publishing, because, as I have pointed out numerous times, Goodkind never at any point in his career out-sold Tolkien, Jordan or Pratchett, among others.

I am willing to accept that some of the names that are now out-selling Goodkind were not doing so at the time, or hadn't debuted yet. But there is no question that Tolkien, Jordan and Pratchett already were. He's still convinced that fantasy as a whole never saw sales like his, and that just isn't true, then or now.

He then launches into an explanation that what he meant by saying he "changed the face of fantasy" was that he, among others, proved that fantasy could sell, thus opening the doors for some very creative fantasy writers to finally break through and get published. But again, compare what he said at the time: "What you are seeing with my novels is something unique. They are not like all the other fantasy novels." "The one author who is different." "A tired, empty genre." Does this sound like he was suggesting that his sales changed publishing practices, and that he was one of a handful of authors that paved the way for this to happen, or does that sound like he's trashing everyone who isn't him on a pure quality level, and suggesting that his sales prove his higher quality?

"It is absolutely true, then and now, agents and editors are still screaming for work like that."

No, no it is not. There is simply no way a standard-issue fantasy story like Wizard's First Rule is still in demand by publishers today. In fact, if you read through what publishers and agents are asking for now, mostly they seem to care that you're breaking the mold. They want to see more representation of non-white, non-binary characters, and inventive stories that don't rely on decades-old tropes.

I've already said how Wizard's relies heavily on old fantasy tropes, and I know for a fact that the series just got tropier right up to Soul of the Fire, and nothing I've heard about the following books makes me think they're any less so, just that they are more blatantly author tracts promoting Objectivism. Some have said that his post-Law of Nines books are more in tune with his earlier work, but that doesn't impress me as I think his earlier work is still bad.

I can tell you right now that anyone trying to break into writing fantasy with yet another 900-page epic about a stalwart hero, his lady love and their wizard mentor going on a quest to save the world from a mad wizard emperor should probably stop and consider what it is they're doing. They're not getting published with that, not today.

But while I'm not going to rehash it all here, go through the thread and see how more and more peevish Goodkind gets that some of the replies are less than fawning praise. My favorite quote is "Looks like you pirated the wrong books" because of course anyone who didn't like his books must have obtained them illegally. The more he replies, the more the Goodkind we know and love to hate comes back.

But it doesn't stop there. In January of 2018, Goodkind took to Facebook to let everyone know how much he hates the cover of his newest novel from the Sword of Truth universe. See, he once again called one of his novels "the conclusion" to that entire series and now he's back with a new series focusing on one of the side characters, Nicci, a former Sister of the Dark turned good. Shroud of Eternity is the newest release and this is its cover:

Cool.

Now, this isn't the most inspired cover I've ever seen, but it's not bad at all. If I didn't already know who Terry Goodkind was, I'd be tempted to pick this up based solely on this cover.

Goodkind is still Goodkind, though, so he did this instead:

Does it get more douchey? Actually, yes, because this is Goodkind we're talking about.

The artist, Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, as you might expect, didn't appreciate this, and I am 100% on his side. What Goodkind did here was about as professional as when my three-year-old tells me she can't go to bed at bedtime because she doesn't want to.

I'm not gonna dredge up the entire back-and-forth these two had, as it's still out there for public consumption, but I will say that, long story short, Goodkind threw the first punch and then acted like it was Lecouffe-Deharme's fault that there was any controversy. In the end he stated that his biggest issue with the cover was that it was "sexist", as Nicci is given heels on her boots.

Okay, I'd believe this more if it didn't come from a guy who has had every heroic female character be threatened with rape or actually raped in his books.

The whole exchange just proved Goodkind hasn't learned anything. He's still a raging douche and always will be. But now he's a raging douche who's actually impacting another person's livelihood. See, it's one thing to rail against TOR the company for the bad covers you get. It's another to attack the artist personally, which Goodkind did.

And when you add that to ripping off fans and causing one pirate to be in fear for his life, if anything, Goodkind's behavior is worse today that it was before.