I picked this up as an audio book for a road trip, not realizing from the cover that it's way into a developed series. I will finish it (I am on the last cd), and may even rent the final book, but I won't go backwards and work from the beginning. ( )

*sigh*

...it'll all be over soon... just one more to go... ( )

Book 10 in the Sword of Truth series was one of the better books in the series in my mind. It begins to tie up the pieces of the puzzle and draws alot of the other books which were less ejoyable at the time together. Some of the seemingly meaningless and frankly boring books in the series now make a bit more sense. I really enjoyed this one and can't wait to read the final book to see how the whole thing wraps up. Good stuff here. ( )

In the preceding book "Chainfire", Richard Rahl is the only person who remembers Kahlan existed. He spent the whole book trying to find proof to convince everyone that he wasn't insane and that something was dreadfully wrong.

Phantom carries on this story. Richard, after having proved that Kahlan is not a figment of his imagination, that she is his wife and also the Mother Confessor, to certain of his friends and family, now has to figure out a way of getting her back. At the same time he has to find a way of dealing with the evil Sisters of the Dark, stopping The Imperial Order from sweeping through the Midlands and destroying civilization, learning how to finally use his magical powers as the only War Wizard to have been born in living memory, and finding a way to replace everyone's lost memories.

I had been waiting for this book after having read all of the previous 9 plus the prequel novella and enjoying them, some more than others. When I began to read I was so disappointed, where was the humour, the fast paced adventure, the wonderful characters that I remembered. The book rambled on with long passages of political invective, magical formulas and spell forms, even algebra was mentioned at one point.

Characters came and went and I found myself wondering why on earth the author had bothered to bring them back if they were not going to be allowed, at the very least, to show their personalities. I can only imagine that the memories lost to the people of the Midlands and D'Hara had also been lost to Mr Goodkind himself.

Then at the end of the book the story still isn't finished. Now we have to look forward to another whole book to finish off the things that quite possibly could have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion in this one.

I was not impressed at all. ( )

Kahlan who? continued. Goodkind’s preachy soliloquy’s are getting annoying. If he could just focus on the action, that would be wonderful. And interesting. ( )