spreading the misery
The co-worker and I were taking bets on just how bad Terry Goodkind's new novel would be. After all, it was being touted as a thriller, not fantasy. We started off betting on whether the main character would be a businessman (to go along with Goodkind's Randroid-esque philosophies) or an ex-cop (for the blindingly cliche angle).

The main character's an artist, so we were both a little off-base. So we started taking bets on whether or not Goodkind would obviously tie this novel into his other novels--or whether he'd just write the same thing over again.

Turns out we were both right.

Gigantic sensitive-souled thick-haired fighter-type guy, last name Rahl, rescues a mysterious and beautiful and "obviously" intelligent stone cold bitch woman from out-of-control bad guys. She has a mysterious mission for him, and people want to kill him because of his name. Sound familiar?

Sorry, shikomekidomi--I don't know I can make it far enough in to find if another character has as bad a name as Penis Panis. But if you can make it past the first chapter, maybe you can let me know. To me, though, this just looks like Sword of Truth fanfic written by a teenager.

(For the record, I don't know if the dozens of typos are to be blamed on Borders, or a faulty c&p'd ARC. Some look like page breaks were missed, but some are repeated a few times. But even fixing them wouldn't fix the writing itself. That'd take a miracle.)