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Chainfire is the ninth book in Terry Goodkind's grimly inventive
Sword of Truth fantasy saga, which began in 1994 with
Wizard's First Rule.
It's a tradition of long-running drama series that sooner or later, some character will suffer from amnesia. Goodkind gives this a neat paranoid twist when everyone except our hero Lord Richard Rahl forgets the existence of his beloved wife Kahlan. The more he protests that she was real, the more his sorceress and Amazon-warrior friends nervously humour him.
Meanwhile the apocalyptic background story continues, with evil Emperor Jagang's vast, fanatical armies moving to devastate cities and countries liberated by Richard's forces. The Emperor's latest terror weapon is an invincible, unkillable, many-shaped monster whose sole purpose is to find and destroy Richard.
Additionally, something has gone badly wrong with the prophetic books--whole libraries of them--that foretell a Last Battle where only Richard can save the world. Now, with Armageddon imminent, the prophecies have developed a rash of blank pages, as though some vital person has been erased from reality ...
Tough choices confront Richard when he abandons the defence of a key city to seek out a very unreliable authority and ask what's happened to Kahlan. All he's offered is cryptic advice with a high price tag, roughly equivalent to handing over the One Ring to Gollum. And what could "Chainfire" mean?
Of course there are many exciting action set-pieces en route. That nemesis monster strikes again and again, in horrifically random ways. The top sorceress confronts an entire wizard-led Imperial army. Closely guarded boxes of doomsday magic, locked away in Richard's own impregnable palace, come under unexpected threat.
Eventually we learn what happened to Kahlan and why. But there's no final closure in this installment, and Sword of Truth fans must wait in suspense for volume ten. Goodkind continues his mixing of adventure fantasy with dark moral complexity. --David Langford
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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.
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von Terry Goodkind
von Terry Goodkind
von Terry Goodkind
von Terry Goodkind
von Terry Goodkind
