Good God! A TV Show…

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read the last book (at the moment) in Sword of Truth (SoT) series. It was the 7^th or even 8^th, I think.

My feelings about the book were mixed. I loved me some fantasy back then. And it appeared to push all the right buttons. Behold:

1. Cute guy living in a forest who is destined to get the sword out of the stone and become a king for great things — check.
2. A seemingly harmless old man who is a mighty wizard in disguise — check.
3. A magic sword that is meant only for one person (guess who?) — check.
4. A pure evil that is a major peril to the kittens, dolphins and vicunas along with democracy and human rights all living things — check.
5. A pretty girl whose fate is intertwined with our hero’s and a miserable fate it is — check.
6. Dragons — what, only #6? How could I forget the dragons? — check.
7. Many other traditional things such as witches, trip to the underworld, evil kings and queens (or duchesses, I don’t remember exactly), curses, other magical artifacts, etc. — check.

But: the more I was into reading it the closer resemblance it seemed to bear to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (WoT). WoT got to me first so, I thought, maybe I was just being prejudiced.

The story and origins of the main character, the bipolar system of magic, the manipulative Sisters of Light (and Dark Sisters among them), discrimination of male wizardry, the avoidance of naming the evil god — these are the points I remember now but back then I had a whole table of similarities between those two.

Among other things these books have in common are huge armies of fans and the ability to capture and hold reader’s attention. But while WoT feels like a clean version, Sot is more like a wicked dream.

Some scenes are full of vividly described violence but the hardest things are only hinted at and the moment you think of them is the moment you start hating yourself for what you can come up with.

There is a whole army of Mord’ Sith, women who were taken from their parents at very young age, abused and tortured to become the torture masters themselves (also immune to magic). They are dominatrixes clad in skin tight red leather who can reduce even the strongest person into begging and weeping. Does not it count as porn already?

The magic sword (see cl.3 above) is a broken toy too: it only works if the sword bearer truly believes that his opponent is guilty, otherwise it’s useless.

The girl (cl.5) is a holy figure, Mother Confessor, with a power to perform non-surgical lobotomy on people to learn The Truth. The person is a vegetable afterwards though. Side effects of Truth are unpleasant.

With each story arc our hero gets a new enemy that wipes the floor with him in the beginning of the arc and is wiped in the end. No matter what wild powers the protagonist got in the process, the next arch-enemy will overthrow him easily.

I know that there are a few more books but I have no desire to indulge in this guilty pleasure.

Ah, the books also had some strong allusions to Soviet Union as the Empire of Evil. And the main character (who somehow turned sculptor) defeated it by carving a sculpture that by description was a dead ringer for the famous ‘Worker and Kolkhoz Woman‘ only naked.

So, what was that all about? Ah, yes. It was decided to be made into a TV show, Legend of the Seeker. And it’s Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi. It might be cheesy but I’m sold.

Links:

• official TV show site;
• imdb page;
• Terry Goodkind official site.