Quote:This book is long winded and dull. To make things worse, it's difficult to follow at times. Goodkind must know this, as several pages after a major event a truncated description is offered for certain scenes. A case in point is the initial confrontation between Richard, Kahlan and the quad in chapter 2. On the same topic, I literally rolled my eyes when the villains were described as having "blonde hair and blue eyes." Great. This is obviously going to be a retelling of World War 2. There are a few mildly interesting philosophical dissertations thrown in, and I did find Richard and Kahlan to be fairly interesting. They were given adequate pages for exposition. Unfortunately, these are not constants; some philosophical conclusions are less than what one could expect in an introductory college course. "Power is neither good nor evil, it's the user who determines it." Well, duh. The writing is so dull at times as Goodkind spells everything out in minute detail for the reader. Dozens of pages are wasted on explaining what anyone with a primary school education could figure out. The "betrayal" is so obvious that anyone who hasn't fallen asleep during the first quarter of this book would have seen it coming about 500 pages ahead of time. The "big" reveal about Kahlan's true nature is a prime example. At least the final revelations were wrapped up fairly quickly.

An extremely gruesome and gratuitously brutal scene of child sacrifice takes up close to a dozen pages (of microscopic font). Not only is this a terrible use of prose and a run-on chapter, but it is likely to turn away even the most ardent BDSM practitioner. Scenes of such brutality are the author's right to wax poetic about, certainly, but to do so in such detail adds nothing to the plot, throws the pace of the novel into a quagmire and will likely nauseate most readers. I had to skim ahead to spare myself the grotesque horror of this scene.

Unfortunately, the wise old wizard and evil villain are more one-dimensional than Emperor Palpatine. There's no reason to care about their motives or goals. The plot is hardly better, essentially ripped from The Lord of the Rings in whole cloth. The villain seeks three boxes of power, one of which will extinguish all life, one of which will claim his life, and one of which will grant him eternal power over life and death. The heroes must stop him, but not before 400 pages or so of wandering around while we are introduced to the various peoples of the world. None of these are very interesting. The Mud People are a tribe of hunter-gatherers, stuck in their ways and unwilling to embrace modernity because of one particularly stubborn elder who wields an incommensurate degree of power. And there's even a clone of Gollum to boot.

Queen Milena and her daughter Violet are the evil stepmother and stepsister of the book. They enjoy tormenting people (innocent orphan Rachel among them) while serving as an example of the evils and horrors of communism (I guess Goodkind was fond of Ann Rand, too). The protagonist gets tortured for about 100 pages and gratuitous violence is thrown in, for what purpose I have no idea, but it didn't make reading this wall of text any easier or more fun.

There are a few elements that are thrown in toward the end, such as the terror of ancient prophecies. I honestly cannot see them as anything other than gimmicks for readers to continue reading the tale, but after 800 pages of microscopic text, I would rather tear my fingernails out than subject myself to this experience again.

Quote:I started to identify with all the men who had ever pressured, cajoled and in a few sad instances, even begged me to come on, just for a minute, but baby it hurts. Dignity flies out the window when you're desparate to get down.

Quote:Masturbation is good for you – from keeping estrogen flowing to aiding in self-discovery to being a simple expression of autonomy over a woman’s own body, its benefits are unquestionable. But for me, limiting sexual intimacy to a shared experience was the kickstart my relationship needed.