Severed Souls

The further adventures of Richard and Kahlan. In this latest installment, the are still trying to make their way out of the Dark Lands and back to D'Hara. Meanwhile, Bishop Hannis Arc continues to try and take over all of D'Hara. This is pretty standard Goodkind, nothing really new here, but good sword and sorcery action. Along the way, Goodkind seems to adopt the philosophy of G. R. R. Martin and starts killing off characters, some major. This is a big departure for him and I'm not sure it made the book better.

A typical Goodkind work.

I find myself enthralled for the first 100-150 pages, waiting to see how Kahlan and Richard and all of their friends will manage to survive another inescapable battle with death.

The next 200-300 pages of the book, tend to drag. Goodkind reiterates his message that the battle between good and evil will last indefinitely, but Truth will win out.

The last 100 pages or so is when Goodkind really gets creative though. He finally puts Richard and Kahlan into their NEXT battle against evil, and we are almost always left wondering "WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT!?!?"

It does get tiresome to see this same pattern again and again with Goodkind (though I admit, some of his books have deviated off the path, but only a little), but show more at the same time, I keep coming back for more of his work. His characters are irresistible, and I can't get enough of them.

So, here I sit, once again, wondering what will happen next. show less

I did not enjoy "The Third Kingdom" at all so when this started off with more of the same I was considering just giving up on the Author but the last three quarters of the book were much better. In Severed Souls the focus is on Ludwig Dreier as the protagonist which I found a lot more interesting. Along with the Mord-Sith there are some new and familiar dangers that are thrown in the path of Richard and Kahlan as they travel in search of a containment field to remove the poison that is killing them and cutting themselves off from their powers. This novel turns out to be a real good edition with some serious surprises and twists. To those who may be feeling like me and thinking of throwing in the towel on this author I would recommend show more giving this one a try. I think it will remind you of why you used enjoy these characters. Not perfect but very good. show less

Dit laatste deel uit de Richard en Kahlan trilogy was eigenlijk niets meer dan een herhaling van plots uit eerdere delen, zonder dat de personages hun kennis uit die eerdere delen behielden. De zorgvuldig opgebouwde wereld van additieve en subtractieve magie is terzijde geschoven, omdat alles in dit boek valt onder de occulte krachten.

Vond het soms wel heel erg lang doorgaan op bepaalde dingen. Geloof dat er minstens 3x in dit boek verteld werd over hoe Richard en Kahlan elkaar ontmoette.
Terwijl de vijand (halfmensen, gereanimeerde doden) op meters afstand stonden werd er rustig gediscussieerd over hoe hen aan te pakken.

Over het algemeen een aardig boek, dat wat mij betreft zeker de helft dunner had kunnen zijn, of meer actie kunnen show more brengen. De rol van Sammie (Samantha) was heel erg summier, en had verder uitgediept kunnen worden show less

I will start by saying that I am a huge fan of Terry Goodkind and the Sword of Truth series of books. With that said, I gave this only 3.5 stars because I believe that there is far too much wandering through the woods and repetition that does little to nothing to push the story forward and just adds to word and page count. The chapters have become far too short and seem to cater more to young adults. It was easy to predict who the spy would be. So it was easy then to figure Samantha would not like what would happen to her mother and go off the rails the way she did.
This is not Game of Thrones - and I can see no reason for killing off two key players. I won't spoil it, but the first perpetrator and the victim ... honestly made me shake show more my head. The victim deserved a better, heroic end. Not a murder in the middle of the night. And as for the ending ...
I really hope Mr GoodKind has a plan to fix these plot disasters. Not good, not ok. show less

I am a sucker for any Terry Goodkind books. This one so far has not let me down though the loss of a main character does sadden me. Terry has stayed true to his writing, whereon he manages to keep me up late at night just to read 1 more page!

As many authors do after they are on their 13th or 14th book in a series, Terry is getting a little wordy when describing ideas. Some whole chapters that could have been left on the cutting floor in my opinion. The book's pace was slow and the distance traveled was a match. The ending was fairly predictable. Hoping for something a little faster paced next time like they used to be.