The epic finale to the THE SWORD OF TRUTH series: 16 volumes 20 years in the making, 26 million copies sold.
Soulmates, pawns of prophecy and inheritors of an ancient conflict, Richard and Kahlan’s destinies have been bound together since their first encounter in Wizard’s First Rule. But now Richard lies on a funeral bier – suspended between the worlds of life and death and Kahlan faces her greatest challenge.
She must fight for Richard’s very existence, and Richard, trapped in the underworld, must fight to keep the world of life from ending. Desperate sacrifices are required. This is the final battle in a war three-millennia old, a war that saw the Sword of Truth forged, a war that could mean the end, not only of their lives, but of their world.
Well. I finally did it. I read the last book of the Sword of Truth series. I’ve been reading this series for over a decade off and on, and I’m glad to be finished with it. However, this book was a huge disappointment. It was not “the epic finale” promised by the synopsis at all. Most of the book was spent undoing the ending of the previous one and traveling around from place to place, and I had forgotten how creepy traveling in the slyph really was until I read about it again here. The final battle, if it could even be called that, was incredibly anticlimactic. The book tried to be smart and tie up all the loose ends from this story arc, but it came across as gibberish. I did enjoy getting to see some older characters, albeit briefly, and one of them had a similar reaction as me to the nonsense happening in this book. Verna was confused and thought everything in the story made no sense given the rules already known about this world, and I found myself nodding my head and agreeing with her. The text was once again filled with repetition and insufferable dialogue, as well as the deaths of major characters that left me annoyed and a bit angry. Richard got yet another moniker from prophecy (as if he needed another title, but I guess this book did), and all the retcons used to make sense of the occult magic just left a bad taste in my mouth. Needless to say, I much preferred the original ending to this series from years ago before Terry Goodkind decided to mess around with it more…to everyone’s detriment. My honest opinion is that anyone reading this series should just stop at Confessor. It was a better ending than this mess. Therefore, I rate this book 2 out of 5 stars.
