Goodkind XIX: Making spaghetti bounce since 1994!

[WLU]

Normally I don't like to pick on spelling and grammar if the post is coherent, but you asked for it (cackles like a chicken, and thus evilly).

I think I'm being ever so slightly meligned maligned here. I was actually trying to say that Goodlkind writes Aes Sedai-bashing fanfic, not that anyone should. I basically agree with you, and I think my attempts at humour gat got in the way. Goodkind gives into whatever urges happen to stike him while writing. Most people read the Aes Sedai and are maybe frustrated, Goodkind reads them (or not) and then has their order torn apart and most of them raped. I'm not endorsing this. He does it with everything. In fact the Aes Sedai are the least example. Your example of Damin Ness Demmin Nass is a better one. Goodkind charicatures the things he dislikes until they are terrible beyond baring bearing, and then does horrible things to them and he believes his readers will be satisfied. Many of them are. Do you hate annoying children, or whiny protesters? Well watch what I can do to them. That's what I was trying to say. That being said, I agree with both your posts in their entirity entirety.

Actually, I acknowledge that it really shouldn't happen in literature either. The whole, badly worded, thrust of my argument was that Goodkind's work is basically a self-righteous revenge fetish fetishism at its worst. The reason I mentioned that I also detested the Aes Sedai on occasion was by way of acknowledging that all of us sometimes feel the frustrations and disappointments and rages that I'm sure Goodkind wallows in endlessly. I think his loathing for the things he sees as the deprevations depravities of this world probably form a visible black cloud which constantly hovers about a foot and half above him and occasionly disperses dispenses random bolts of lightning to vaporise small furbearing animals (probably lemmings). I imagine that when he writes, he makes no sound, but stares directly into the monitor, typing furiously. He doesn't blink, but he occasionally rasises one fist about five inches above the keyboard and clenches it, a small sign of victory, the only celebration he will allow himself as another evil is vanquished from the world. And in his head the mantra: "IamthebringerofdeaththebringerofdeaththebringerofdeathIamthebringerofdeatht

ebringerofdeaththebringerofdeath"

Of course if he is really a hunter and pecker the image falls apart just a little.

My corrections in now way reduce the validity (and humour) of your argument. And that last line is awesome

Would someone invite Samantha over to the ASOIAF forum for a discussion we can all engage in? She looks civil and smart enough to actually have on, and I think it'd give us a nice change of pace. Of course, I'm guessing it'll end up like the MBotF discussion on which book is the best - everyone says which one they like, then kind of stares at each other, realizing that it's a matter of taste and no-one can say much to convince the other to change their mind. I think she could do a very good job of keeping us honest 'cause right now the thread is pretty intellectually incestuous. Plus, the thread always livens up when we've got outside input.

I will say it appears to me that the definitions of 'show, don't tell' used by MinDonner and Samantha are different. The Tolkien comparison is a matter of taste.

The arrogance thing I could take apart/critique in a civil fashion, as well as the Violet thing. Do please invite her, though it'd be nice to have a neutral mod to keep an eye on things. We do have a (deserved) reputation for being pretty unkind to Fans of the Yeard. Of course, most of them are douchebags, though she does not appear to be.

[The Real Will]

My corrections in now way reduce the validity (and humour) of your argument. And that last line is awesome

I actually meant that you should do it subtly so that anyone reading you quoting me would be able to marvel at the glory of my spelling. Seriously, I shouldn't be allowed near a textbox unless it has a spell-checker attached.

Just two objections. I think that "a revenge fetish" is perfectly grammatically correct and suggesting that Goodkind himself was a revenge fetish incarnate was entirely intentional. Also I actually meant "disburses" not "dispenses" though if you feel the second is better I will bow to your judgement.

Would someone invite Samantha over to the ASOIAF forum for a discussion we can all engage in?

While I think it would be a great idea to have some genuine debate, I feel it is probably Min's place to issue any invitation should she wish to follow that route. I would also have liked to have answered some of Samantha's points, but I can't figure out how facebook actually works.

[MinDonner]

Well, I've invited Samantha over, but Mystar's painted a fairly nasty picture of us so I'm not sure if we'll get any response. Remember, be nice to the Yeardlings (unless they start chucking insults about) and we may even get to keep one...

[WLU]

Well, I've invited Samantha over, but Mystar's painted a fairly nasty picture of us so I'm not sure if we'll get any response. Remember, be nice to the Yeardlings (unless they start chucking insults about) and we may even get to keep one...

I've always wanted a yeardling of my very own. And let's be fair, we aren't exactly kind to the yeardlings that come over here ('cause usually they're idiots, but whatever). So I second (third?) the 'be kind to Samantha', otherwise we're the ones painting the world in black and white. And liking Tairy just because you like Tairy is perfectly valid. I'm having a really hard time not putting in mean jokes, perhaps this isn't such a good idea. So everyone remember, this is our chance to prove that we're better than most of our competition. If we screw this up, we have no more moral superiority (though we get to keep our moral celery).

'Just two objections. I think that "a revenge fetish" is perfectly grammatically correct and suggesting that Goodkind himself was a revenge fetish incarnate was entirely intentional. Also I actually meant "disburses" not "dispenses" though if you feel the second is better I will bow to your judgement.

I see your point regards Goodkind being an incarnated fetish, the error was mine and I am guilty of being too thick to see the finely sculpted piece of prose that it was. I'm a bad lemming and should be whipped! (that's me on the left)

Re: disperses, I wasn't sure about which word you were going for, but I was pretty sure disperses wasn't it. I agree that disburses would definitely be perfectly adequate within the context, though my personal choice would have been dispenses - I've only seen disburses within the context of financial transactions. I'm a bad, bad lemming and should be spanked. Oh I'm so very ashamed... Everyone's judgements and preferences are their own. e.e. cummings didn't even use punctuation.

Say, that could be the Thread's First Rule - Everyone has their own opinion and it often comes down to an individual's aesthetic preference over which they are sovereign. Damn I love making up rules.

[PhelanArcetus]

Going to try and make some of my points in response.

My apologies, I didn't want to stand on anyone's toes, but I guess sharing the reply isn't hurting anybody.

So, Samantha writes:

"Out of order, but:

"- It's a matter of opinion, but I frankly couldn't disagree more with your description of him doing the opposite of show, don't tell. This story is the first thing I've read in a long time (and I am an avid reader, I don't restrict myself to scifi/fantasy) that actually painted pictures for me in my head. I have distinct visual images to correlate to the various places and people in the stories and this is rare for me. I do agree with the distances issue; it was one of my main problems with Soul of the Fire. I actually didn't like that book at all the first time I read it, but after rereading it and knowing going in that I wasn't going to see the main characters for a long-ass time in the middle, I enjoyed it a lot more. But regardless, I personally enjoy his direct writing style and I also don't find descriptions to be drawn out. You want to talk about overdrawn descriptions, go read some Tolkien. Goodkind, in my opinion, is very good at giving the reader what s/he needs to know to visualize everything along the way.

Definitely a disagreement in show, don't tell. Tolkien does a hell of a lot of description, the vast majority of it actually extraneous to the plot by far. But then, Tolkien was definitely focused more on the world and the history than on the plot and the individual characters. MinDonner had stated, without giving examples, that Terry tends to give a lot of vague descriptions that seem strange, but I think the show, don't tell is more about when we're told Richard is good at X, rather than shown his proficiency. This is really an opinion/quality of the writing itself thing, and less interesting to me. It is fun to poke at the points where there's awkward grammar, but that's not the stuff that's actually interesting or provides lasting entertainment.

"- Again, difference of opinion because you don't think he's a good writer, but I find his "arrogance" to be quite admirable because he *is* a good writer (in my opinion). The ability to know that you're good at something and feel comfortable telling the world about it is quite admirable in my opinion, because the world doesn't want people to think they're good at things. Society wants the smart kids to keep their heads down in class and the thin girls to keep their mouths shut about body image issues. Stating a fact about yourself should not make you arrogant. I wonder, honestly, which you decided first: that he was arrogant and that you therefore don't like him, or that he's a "bad writer" and he's therefore arrogant...

Here, I think is a bigger difference. For me, at least, the arrogance of Terry has nothing to do with how good a writer he is or says he is. It has to do with comments more like "I am not writing fantasy. I write stories driven by real human values." A lot of comments I recall reading, but am not going to dig up for proper reference without very good reason, that essentially say "Fantasy is garbage written for immature little brats who aren't qualified to read proper stories. It's about the magic and the world, and the characters don't matter. My stories, while clearly fantasy by any normal definition, as they involve a fairly medieval setting, magic, wizards, and so on, are not Fantasy, because Fantasy is junk and my stories are about the characters, which Fantasy never is." Now I'll freely grant that a lot of the fantasy out there is utter garbage. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to read Dragonlance, and R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt stories. But there's garbage in every genre, and there's quality in every genre. (Ok, chances are you can name some genre that has no redeeming qualities other than being good at it's genre; pornographic anything, probably. So it was an over-generalization.)

The fact is that there is plenty of Fantasy that is about more than magic and a prophecy, that is about a philosophy or an important question, that tries to deal with something meaningful, rather than just being entertainment and nothing else. Hell, I'll use Salvatore's Drizzt stories. I'm sick of them, I found that they became very repetitive and overly preachy (and when I read a few other Salvatore stories and found him still exploring the same exact themes, I was even less thrilled), and the combats feel like Salvatore took a transcript of a Forgotten Realms campaign's combat session and a thesaurus. But even with all those complaints I have, and anyone may disagree with me on them, I still found that Salvatore made me think. And this despite the fact that he didn't bring up a question and give some starting points for multiple answers, but rather said "this is the right answer". (Which is something that I quite dislike. I want to make my own decisions, not be given a decision and told it's the right one.) He covered racism to a degree, he spent a significant amount of time on the importance of passion, love, friendship. Different things, but overall, Salvatore was really pushing a philosophy. Pushing the same points of that philosophy for five books straight is one of the things that drove me away. As was finding fantasies that were more mature in their characterizations (though he wasn't by far the worst of those), and with plots and situations that felt far less contrived.

I'm an arrogant bastard (except for the technicality of bastardy, unless my parents have been lying to me all these years, and I doubt it). I admit that. Hell, I'm pretty much proud of it. Now we can agree to disagree about how good a writer Terry is. I didn't find his writing impressive, but nor did I find it notably bad (though when you look with an eye to mocking bad prose, you see more than when you just read). That was never the issue for me.

My issues, the ones that got me to stop after Naked Empire (and I likely would not have read that if I hadn't bought it at the same time as Pillars of Creation), were primarily these:

- I wasn't especially keen on the philosophy, not from having examined it closely, but from gut instinct.

- Neither the story, nor the characters, was gripping me enough to make me want to get to the end. There wasn't a character I wanted to spend more time with, or one I wanted to see win (or lose), or a plot point or thread I wished to see resolved.

- I was getting tired of what felt like the repetition of the same themes and philosophical points. I felt like Faith of the Fallen was the best of the eight books I read. I felt like it made the philosophical points well, whether I agree with them or not. Then I felt like I read two more books which were vehicles for the same points which had already been made.

- I also have to admit that I was wondering why there was so much BDSM showing up. So many instances where rape happened or almost did, a woman was controlled through magic based in ripping off her nipple, and so on. Not so much a problem as something that felt gratuitous or writing a fantasy for himself.

- I was starting to hit my tolerance for various revelations of Richard as the chosen one. Ok, he's the Seeker of Truth, that's nice. Wait, he's also a wizard. Not just a wizard, but a war wizard, which makes him truly unique, and more powerful. Did I mention that his heritage gives him control of the largest and best armed political power in the Midlands? Ooh, by the way, his ancestor someone Rahl was the great champion of the previous war. And the only one to figure out a protection against Jagang's power. Oh, Richard befriended a gar... turns out the gars were created by a Rahl to fight the Mriswith. At least, I think so. And a few other things I forgot. (This was more meaningful when I saw comments by Terry denigrating Fantasy for similar aspects.)

Now, a few years later, having read a good few of the threads on the westeros board, including parodies and many verbatim excerpts from the books, I see other things I dislike. Especially when I also saw some interviews. Comments about not being fantasy, followed later by comments about redefining fantasy and being hated for that... comments where someone asks about the number of similarities between Stone of Tears and various parts of Wheel of Time being brushed off with a comment essentially saying anyone who thinks that is stupid or has an agenda. I saw a lot of similarities when I first read it. A few points made me smack my forehead. And at that time, I had not heard of the westeros board,I had not, as far as I recall, read any Martin, or had any contact with this. I feel comfortable saying I didn't have an agenda. Likewise I feel comfortable saying I didn't, and don't, have a "limited intellect". It's the arrogance in comments like that, or dismissing people who disagree with him, that I find objectionable, not any arrogance in saying he's a good writer.

When I go back to look more closely, I see contradictions, I see illogical decisions, I see strawman arguments, I see many of the things mentioned on the westeros board. And they make me glad I stopped reading. Frankly, I discovered the bashing threads basically skimming the board for something interesting to read while not working at work. I kept reading because it made me laugh. I didn't post at all until very recently.

"- Not everything Richard does is Good. He screws up plenty. But to use the example that you all love to point out (because I DID surf the boards looking for something of substance and all you people do is repeat the same old things like it's your mantra) Princess Violet was *evil*. Yes, she was a child. But she was using an implement of destruction to cause Richard severe amounts of pain. At the risk of sounding like the equivalent of an Objectivist bible thumper (which, I'm not) as soon as she started torturing him, an innocent person *chained to the ceiling* who not only did nothing to harm her but begged Denna to stop her because she was a child and should not be learning these things, she gave up the right to have a say one way or the other in what happened to her. You can hate his philosophy all you want, but pity for the guilty really is treason to the innocent.

First, in terms of the repeating. The westeros Goodking bashing threads are up to #19. Each thread typically goes 20 pages, or 400 posts. With a relatively small group of people posting, over close on 8,000 posts, many things will become running jokes. The jaw-kick is most definitely one of them.

Now actually the Violet kicking is not something I'm that familiar with. It was a long time ago, and unlike some other things, I haven't read an excerpt of it recently. That sort of thing isn't what gets me, though. She was a pretty vicious piece of work, from what I remember, and though I'm not sure I agree with breaking her jaw as the punishment (I'm more interested in rehabilitating people than just punishing them), she deserved something.

But what bothers me more is the fact that Richard does win every argument he has. And while they seem very convincing, when I look closer later on, I see that he's arguing against something set up for him to win the argument against. And then I hit things like "Deserve Victory". As I said, Naked Empire was the last book I read. Earlier, Richard had found that he couldn't eat meat anymore, because he needed to spiritually balance out the killing he did. Then, in Naked Empire, Richard realized that he didn't need to balance out the killing, because all the killing he does is justified. While self-preservation is a good thing, it doesn't necessarily require killing an attacker, and it by authorial fiat says that when Richard kills someone, it's morally justified. Now if he had said "I only need to balance out any deaths I cause which are not morally justified", that would be different. But he as much as said "every time I kill, it's Right."

I also found a recently-read excerpt objectionable. It's from Faith of the Fallen, when Harold explains to Kahlan why Galea is out, and she attempts to convince him otherwise. First, she basically asserts that the queen is still not qualified to take back the crown, and perhaps doesn't have the power to undo something Kahlan did in her name. When she fails to convince him to disregard his chain of command by saying that Cyrilla isn't in the the chain, she tries a different tactic. She says only reason can be allowed to rule you, which is one of the rules. She puts a small amount of effort into convincing Harold that Cyrilla's orders are not logical, and thus, he should disobey her and follow Kahlan's logical orders. (I don't recall a significant attempt to convince him that she was right here.) Seeing this fail, she tries one more tactic. She pulls out her higher authority as Mother Confessor, which he defies. Just doing this is contradictory. If the only thing that should rule him is reason, then the Mother Confessor can't rule him. Kahlan believes that reason trumps authority, and then she tries to use authority to command him, after just telling him not to listen to authority. And following this, by obeying his queen, he's committing treason against a government that he is not actually part of, and he's killed for it.

But I can't even accept the idea that reason must be the only sovereign. It might work if all people applied logic correctly to a complete set of true premises. But that's very much not the case. Many people apply logic incorrectly. Many people use a false premise. Many people are missing basic information. If they're going to disregard and disobey anything that their logic doesn't support, we're going to have pure anarchy. Because people will not all come to the same conclusions, due to flawed logic or flawed information or both. This isn't about refusing a morally objectionable order, it's about refusing any order you think is wrong for any reason. At least, that's how it sounded to me.

Richard, from what I can recall, regularly tells people that they have to make their own decisions, they have to be individuals and choose for themselves. However, it seems that if they choose something that runs counter to what he chooses, well, they're choosing death, or they're not making their own choices but just obeying the collective. And then they get killed.

I'll leave it at this, in part because I need to get back to work.

[The Real Will]

I began here, a short time ago, with story claiming to examine the Sword of Truth from the point of view of some of the lesser characters. I would like to continue this little theme for a moment, if I may, with another bit part, this time from Naked Empire. If you blinked, you probably missed her, but she was there. So, again, this isn't really a a cross-over parody, just an entertaining exercise. I call this one:

What Happens When Pa Wears His Pants

---

The problem was only this: her grandfather was just a little senile and prone to wondering off, not always safely enpantsed or berobed, and an elderly man wandering the town and sharing with the masses things best left unshared was not a way to promote peace, even in a community as sharing as this one. Peace may have been the ideal, but the sight of Pa Winderly’s saggy buttocks wobbling their way down the street tried even the most patient people at the best of times.

Lotty sighed. This was not the best of times. Peace was all very well until war came, and then holding on to your peaceful intentions became something of a trial. But one persevered. And then, when the leaders, in their right honourable honourability declared that if one is peaceful and can’t fight one’s enemies then one ought to bloody well march out and find someone who can, well, one persevered. And when one’s leaders further decide, in their infinite wisdom – because it is sooo wise to set a child up as one’s head of state because they are sooo innocent, as if innocence is what one looks for in a leader and not shear Machiavellian cunning with a façade of selfless public interest – when they decide that they are going to poison their new champion because that will really get him on there side, then one dies a little inside, grits one’s teeth and, basically, perseveres. And finally, when the champion declares that what he need is heads on pikes and an awful lot of them – as well as, for some reason, some bloody antidote – and a separate group of one’s own people become a little squeamish and decide that they don’t want any massacres and start screaming John Lennon songs at the tops of their voices – although that may have been another book as she was a little confused by now – well then one bloody well hides under one’s table, very quietly, and hopes for an equitable resolution.

The problem was, of course, one’s stupid grandfather.

“Pa!†she called, from the door of her house. “Pa, where did you go?â€

She could see someone shuffling down the street, but in the early evening gloom she couldn’t tell who it was. She hurried after the figure. At least, she thought as she ran, he’s wearing his pants. And then she thought, oh dear.

Their little street intersected the main road just ahead, and the intersection was a blaze of orange light. People, only black silhouettes against the torch light, crowded the cross roads, chanting, and the figure – she could see that it was her grandfather now – wandered in among them.

The chanting grew loader as she drew closer. “No war! No war! No war!†they were yelling.

Really, Lotty thought, is that it? Is that the best you could come up with? I mean, granted. a mob is not the best location for intellectual discourse, but surely someone could have come up with something better than, no war.

She reached the crowd and pushed her way among them. She was getting a very strange vibe here. People, as she knew them, really didn’t act this way, the hate on their faces, the screaming, the lockstep marching, the stupid bloody chant. It was almost like they were being controlled for some higher purpose. She grabbed one of the men, a neighbour she recognised, and shook him.

“No war! No w…†He stopped and looked at her, seeming just a little dazed.

“Ferdinand, what are you doing?†she asked him.

“I was… he… going to kill…†He paused. “I’m not quite sure,†he admitted.

“This isn’t right,†she told him. “It’s only going to cause a lot of trouble.â€

He blinked at her and then nodded.

“Try to break it up,†she told.

“Yes,†he said. “Yes, it might be a good idea.â€

“Have you seen my grandfather.â€

“Isn’t that him at the front?†Ferdinand asked.

“Oh crap,†she muttered. “Break it up!†she told him pushing through the crowd.

“Hey,†Ferdinand yelled, and started shaking people, “hey, look. This won’t help!â€

Lotty struggled to the front of the crowd. She reached her grandfather and seized his arm just as a group of new figures appeared at the end of the street. She recognised the front one; he was the poisoned champion who’d been lecturing everyone. Behind him came troop of armed men.

“Get out of the way,†the champion called. He was charging toward them at quite a rate. “Get out of the way! This is your only warning! Get out of the way or die!"

“Stop the hate! Stop the hate!†Somehow, in unison, the crowd had slid into another, even more ridiculous chant.

“Move!†the champion called.

“Stop the hate! No war! Stop the hate! No war!†What was impressive about this one was that half the crowd was chanting one slogan and the half was chanting the other. The two chants had somehow coalesced into a sort of rhythmic heartbeat.

Lotty seized her grandfather’s shoulder and pulled him toward the side of the road. She really was so angry with people.

“Move,†the champion yelled, “or die!†He Lotty turned to find him charging straight at her. She held out her hand.

“No, wait!†she yelled at him. “I’m not sure what you’re angry for. Wait!†But her voice blended with that of the crowd. The champion’s face was a mask of righteous rage. She took a step forward still holding out her hand. “I know they poisoned you. I guess they’re murderers. They’re murderers, but they don’t deserve this.†The man didn’t even seem to hear her, or her voice was again sucked away by the chanting. The man gritted his teeth as he screamed in fury – no mean feat I’m sure you’ll agree. He took a powerful swing and lopped off Lotty’s head and her upraised arm. Gore splattered his face and she sank to the ground.

At least Pa will die with his pants on. It was the last thing she thought.

Ferdinand’s efforts must have been bearing some fruit, because more people were stirring now, seemingly coming back to themselves. At first they looked bemused, but when they saw Lotty cut down they panicked, fleeing for the side streets.

Perhaps in a state of shock, Ferdinand stepped toward the champion. He might have had some thought of taking the man’s weapon. He might have had some thought of telling the man he could pass freely. Whatever his thoughts, he took the full weight of the champion’s charging thrust.

The men behind the champion hit the rows of packed townsfolk with unrestrained violence. People fought, desperately to get out of the way but the press was too tight. Others, armed only with sudden mental clarity, a sudden realisation that there was no escape, turned to face the attackers and fell bloodied, terribly injured and dead. The line of people collapsed beneath the merciless charge. Some of the townsfolk, screaming in fear and desperation, used their fists on the attackers.

They were met with swift and deadly steel.

---

Alright, again, it's a little long, and perhaps not a literary masterpiece, but I hope you all enjoyed it.

[Werthead]

Disturbing. Just found this in SFX's two-starred review of Chainfire from issue 129:

Terry Goodkind looks a bit like Chuck Norris with a ponytail.

[cosnik]

and this happend in empire? glad i forgot. only good part was the slide

[Moosicus]

I thought Nicholas the Slide had some potential. The idea at least wasn't too bad. But Tairy's usual ham-fisted attempt at creating a villain resulted in the same "Snidely Whiplash" type literary abortion he always makes. The only thing missing was the "Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha" after every sentence. Lame.

Edit: I checked out the new discussion over on facebook, I thought it was rather nice of mystar to link some of our threads. As well as Min's blog and the Malazan thread. I do enjoy a bit of fame.

[The Wolf Maid]

Disturbing. Just found this in SFX's two-starred review of Chainfire from issue 129:

Ah, confirmation at last.

Will, that was great. The Life and Times of a SoT Fodder or something.

[WLU]

Edit: I checked out the new discussion over on facebook, I thought it was rather nice of mystar to link some of our threads. As well as Min's blog and the Malazan thread. I do enjoy a bit of fame.

There's no such thing as bad publicity!

[Jaxom 1974]

There's no such thing as bad publicity!

Unless it portrays you in a bad light.

[The Wolf Maid]

True, but that still depends. Look at Kate Moss.

[potsherds]

There's no such thing as bad publicity!

WLU, I have no idea how you'll take this, but someone over on TG.net said something similar ("All press is good press.") when speaking of Ron getting Pat's award for being the most annoying, rude, idiotic, flaming troll ever! Or something like that.

Anyway... Bad publicity is bad publicity, in my opinion. I just choose not to care.

[The Wolf Maid]

Came across a post by Bazzlebane on the Worst Author Thread on an Amazon review for an author named Eng. I modified it a bit for Goodkind (which is in bold letters). X-posted from that thread:

Terry Goodkind is an author for our times, and SoT is a novel for our times. Concerned with heady concepts like the nature of moral clarity, logical convolutions of representational designs involving lethality, and how chickens are not chicken but evil encarnate and goats are noble, Goodkind's book is a tour-de-force of barely-constrained fetishism, and an observant reader can imagine precisely when Goodkind's hands left the keyboard to begin frenetically masturbating over his own furious fantasies of being a mighty jaw-kicking, spine-ripping, travelling pants-wearing warlord and totally slaughtering tons of humans. Basically what you wind up with is a fantasy novel as penned by your average Objectivist user; disjointed, full of ridiculous concepts and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, all wrapped up in a tight bundle of self-righteousness and topped off with a delicious cherry of incoherence.

I've seen heavy metal album covers that had more substance.

Now, my question is, if you were to provide a review for Amazon for SoT, what would it be like?

[Jaxom 1974]

With all of the flak that Jean Auel is taking in the "Bad" threads, it makes me wish I was better at parodies...I might need to re-read some Auel to come up with something...

[Bazzlebane]

Came across a post by Bazzlebane on the Worst Author Thread on an Amazon review for an author named Eng. I modified it a bit for Goodkind (which is in bold letters). X-posted from that thread:

Now, my question is, if you were to provide a review for Amazon for SoT, what would it be like?

It's funny how well it translates! You really only added a few phrases; the original critic's text came pretty close to describing Goodkind to begin with.

[The Wolf Maid]

Yeah. I guess bad authors think alike in some ways and it shows in their writing.

(btw, does anyone know how to strike out text in the posts...I'm a little lost)

[Bazzlebane]

{s} {/s}

but use [ ] brackets instead.

[The Wolf Maid]

YAY!

Thanks.