Average Rating: 
Rating: - Naked Empire
I'm happy with "naked empire" since it didn't continue in the horrible path of "pillars of creation". There are a lot of good parts in this book where Mr. Goodkind creates new ways for Richard and Kahlan to suffer. Of course they come out all right because hey we can't lose the main characters right? If you are an avid fan of the sword of truth series then you will love this book for continuing in those footsteps. However if you had any trouble reading "faith of the fallen" or thought it went on and on about the morality of everything... you won't like this book. With all of the cruddy fantasy authors out there Terry Goodkind offers hope for the genre.
Rating: - Excellent (as expected from Goodkind)
Excellent book. Deals with current issues (such as the tough choices between "necessary violence" and pacifism). Brings back some old beloved characters from earlier books. Very good stuff.
Rating:  - Same old, same old...(spoilers)
Well, to start off on a good note, at least this was better than Pillars of Creation. Of course, if TG would never have written POC, he wouldn't have had to write this. He could have just moved the actual plot of the series forward as it looks like he will do in the next book.While NE did provide some entertaining moments, which is why it got 2 stars instead of 1, there was entirely too much time devoted on back-filling in the story for those people who hadn't read the other books in the series. Come on - this is book 8 - if they start here, they should just read the other books if they want to know what happened before. This book had many repetitive elements from previous books. Once again, there is a new threat that previously didn't exist, and that we'd never heard of. Once again Richard is taken captive. Once again, every word Richard says looks like there was an entire team of speechwriters who gave him a script and he read directly from it. Once again, the main villian who is supposed to be supremely intelligent, appears to have made a breakthrough only to stupidly relinquish his advantage yet again. The overall plot of the series - the conflict with the Imperial Order - is more or less in exactly the same place it was after book 6. Books 7 and 8 were completely side plots, and it seems clear the book 7 was written so he could write book 8. It is clear we could do without either of them, and not miss a beat in the overall plot. The end was extremely predictable, and it is really starting to get old seeing Richard's gift, which he doesn't know how to use, but ultimately uses based on his 'need', do absolutely anything he could possibly need it to in order to get himself out of the jam at the end. Not very creative writing there. All in all, if it hadn't been for the previous book which was so monumentally bad, this book would have been the worst of the series along with Soul of the Fire, which also had a few moments of good stuff. There doesn't appear to be any obvious new threat leading into the next book, so let's hope we finally start moving toward an overall conclusion to the major plotline in the next one.
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