Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth

[Andrea]

I dunno, hate mail is fun. It means you were awesome enough to read and actually respond to. :3

In Goodkind's case, I think I gave him a fair chance with SoT. Anything after that is just him trying to milk his way into 'popular genre's', like with Omen which is sold as more steampunk style, whether true is besides the point. Its a marketing ploy that will work with the current reading generation.


*knows too much for her own good at times*

[Manon Eileen]

Just set up a filter that sends everything with "Goodkind" to your spam folder

[Michelle]

To be honest as scared as I am now, if I actually got hate mail I'd probably just laugh and read it out to people. And feel a little important.

[Andrea]

As you should. (kinda directed at you both.. :look)

[Coffeeholick]

If you want some, I'm a pretty good liar.

[Mark Lawrence]

Hi Andrea!

Unfortunately, from what I've read so far this latest book is a bit tedious. Some people will attribute my dislike of the book as dislike of the author but I'm sure I've praised books from authors I wouldn't get along with in the past.

I'm a little worried actually. What if I get hate mail!

I enjoyed the review. I wonder how many of the earlier books you've read? (I've not read any of them). Clearly anyone who willingly reads through 12 books in a series is going to be a big fan of the author's writing and likely to enjoy the 13th (so their review would need to be taken in context). And it seems too tall an order to require a reviewer to read 13 books to review 1... but also tough on a book in a series to be judged in isolation. A quandary?

[Devonin]

It just means that most of the hate mail will say "You didn't read the rest of them, you don't understand what you were reading so I'll just dismiss you"

It's easier for die-hard fans to leap on a flimsy excuse to not -deal- with criticisms than it is to actually deal with them.

[Michelle]

Haha! Good point Mark.

Luckily, as the series was meant to be finished, The Omen Machine is the start of a new (and mostly unrelated) story arc so I found it quite easy to pick up the story. Goodkind also rehashes quite a bit regarding the characters, setting etc.

To be honest, I haven't read the others. I struggled with the first book a while ago and read up on plots of the rest in the series as I didn't intend to read them (apart from little bits I read at work).

Most of the problems I had with this book were to do with writing, dialogue, incomprehensible actions, padding etc which relate to this book in isolation.

As it is possible I would be more forgiving if I already knew and loved the characters so I tried not to focus on characterization as a whole, and more on dialogue and actions.

Personally, I just felt the book was a lazy overly padded mess. I'm not sure how I would have felt about it if I was a fan of the series.

Although the review seems harsh I honestly think I was being as objective as I could. Nevertheless, all reviews are just opinions and opinions differ.

Unfortunately, The Omen Machine was, in my opinion, one of the worst traditionally published books I've ever read (and most self published books I've read have also been better).

Also, much to my dismay I have recieved no hate mail yet. Even when Tor posted the review on facebook (for some unknown reason) all the feedback was positive.