Product Description

“How much of this blood is his?”

“Most of it, I’m afraid,” a second woman said as they both rushed along beside him.

As Richard fought to focus his mind on his need to remain conscious, the breathless voices sounded to him as if they were coming from some great dim distance. He wasn’t sure who they were. He knew that he knew them, but right then it just didn’t seem to matter.

The crushing pain in the left side of his chest and his need for air had him at the ragged edge of panic. It was all he could do to try to pull each crucial breath.

Even so, he had a bigger worry.

Richard struggled to put voice to his burning concern, but he couldn’t form the words, couldn’t get out any more than a gasping moan. He clutched the arm of the woman beside him, desperate to get them to stop, to get them to listen. She misunderstood and instead urged the men carrying him to hurry, even though they already panted with the effort of bearing him over the rocky ground in the deep shade among the towering pines. They tried to be as gentle as possible, but they never dared to slow.

Not far off, a rooster crowed in the still air, as if this were an ordinary morning like any other.

Richard observed the storm of activity swirling around him with an odd sense of detachment. Only the pain seemed real. He remembered hearing it once said that when you died, no matter how many people were with you, you died alone. That's how he felt now - alone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #653522 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-04
• Released on: 2005-01-04
• Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: MP3 CD

From Publishers Weekly
A weak, repetitive plot mars the ninth novel in bestseller Goodkind's Sword of Truth fantasy series (after 2003's Naked Empire). The story opens promisingly enough. Richard, Lord Rahl, ruler of D'Hara, seeker and bearer of the Sword of Truth, is sorely wounded in battle. Healed by the sorceress Nicci, he regains consciousness only to discover his wife, Kahlan, is missing-and no one believes she exists. Meanwhile, the armies of Emperor Jagang, leader of the brutal Imperial Order, threaten D'Hara. Distracted by Kahlan's disappearance, Richard refuses to lead troops against Jagang's forces, insisting his people must stand up for themselves. Bargaining with the witch woman Shota, he trades the Sword of Truth for information on Kahlan and learns of "chainfire," hidden in "the place of the bones in the Deep Nothing." Journeying there, Richard discovers chainfire is a spell capable of unraveling existence. Meanwhile, the Sisters of the Dark have stolen two of the three boxes of Orden, seeking to call the Keeper of the Dead to life. Even fans will be disappointed by the minimal action and lengthy speeches that slow this juggernaut of a novel to a tedious crawl. Hopefully, Goodkind has positioned all his pieces and the pace will pick up in the next installment.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
This installment of the Sword of Truth series finds Richard Cypher in the strange position of being the only person who remembers that his wife, Kahlan, ever lived. While those around him think he has lost his mind, he perseveres in trying to find her, knowing that her fate is tied to his and to the fates of those who believe he is their only hope. Jim Bond returns to familiar characters, presenting them distinctly and clearly. Bond's somewhat understated style and relaxed, steady pace keep the story moving and help listeners sustain interest from start to finish. The characters' secrets and political maneuverings are in good hands with Bond. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
One of the most popular writers of fantasy today, Terry Goodkind divides his time between Maine and Nevada.

Customer Reviews

Surprise, surprise. This one's not bad
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series used to be one of the best out there. It was a fascinating gnostic struggle between absolute good and absolute evil with some amusing bondage scenes thrown in for spice, not to mention Richard's serial rapist half-brother, his red leather-clad dominatrix Mord-Sith amazons (including a pair of lesbians), epic battles involving millions of soldiers and the magical Palace of the Prophets in which young wizards lived for centuries and were encouraged to sleep with as many beautiful women as possible in order to breed more gifted people. Then it all went down hill.

The 5th and 6th volumes were somewhat mediocre while 7 and 8 were terrible. Richard left off fighting evil in order to take on spineless socialist weenies. Supporting characters were turned into drooling morons whose main purpose was to ask leading questions so that Goodkind (through Richard's mouth) could rant for pages about the evils of moral relativism and the joys of Libertarianism. In response the villainous Jagang was remade to be sort of a quasi-educated Leninist, no doubt because he needed intellectual balance to make up for all his genocide, looting and raping. The low point was perhaps the end of Naked Empire in which Richard and his band of libertarian converts slaughtered a bunch of unarmed pinko meatbags and Richard arrived at the stunning philosophical realization that he himself was so absolutely right that he was perfectly entitled -nay, required- to dispose of anyone who disagreed with him. There was also that damned goat.

People who were dissatisfied should take heart. Goodkind redeems himself somewhat with Chainfire. There is very little preaching involved and Goodkind returns to the elements that made his earlier books so good, such as the metaphysical complexities of prophecy and the free people's struggle against the all-consuming evil of the Keeper. True, Goodkind's prose and dialogue are as awkward as ever but he deftly maintains the required urgency and fascination with violence that made his earlier works so readable. The storyline involves Richard and Kahlan being separated yet again and Richard racing against time to reverse a magic spell which has removed Kahlan from everyone's memories and is, also as usual, going to destroy the world. The main strength of these books is the inexorable triumph of good. It's always satisfying to see unmitigated evil get what's coming to it. Here once again Richard is less a philosopher and more an elemental force for good, making this book a deal better than the last few.

There's a fair bit of ludicrousness as usual, especially the scenes in which the blue-collar schmoes whom Richard liberated in Faith of the Fallen send Jagang's hardened professional soldiers fleeing in terror. There's also a slightly lame blood beast hunting Richard and the ridiculousness of how Jagang manages to maintain gazillion-strong armies for years at a time in hostile, denuded foreign territory. Why in the name of the Creator don't the D'Harans hit his hugely extended supply lines? Why are they waiting for him to come and pin them down in the People's Palace? I guess Libertarian strategists know something that I don't.

If you're a Sword of Truth fan, Chainfire is definitely worth picking up. It's a significant improvement over books 5-8 and bodes well for the concluding two volumes of this series.

Goodkind's Usual Excellent grasp of reality/surreal mesh.
As usual Terry Goodkind has intertwined the real with the surreal, giving a believable mesh of fantastic storytelling.

Not horrible
The idea behind this continuation of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series was interesting, but the more I read the more I too began to forget who Kahlan was. And by the end I didn't really care, somehow I don't think that was Goodkind's intent. I'm sure he wanted to showcase just how important Richard Rahl's wife was to the whole story, but really I felt in the end that she was very insignificant, and their love story was tiresome. In fact I thought that he had "killed her off" or something, and I wasn't sad. But anyway I don't want to ruin anything, I'll just end saying that the narration was fascinating and the book was a definite page-turner but the character developement was boring and same old same old.