Goodkind XLVI: Behold the BRILLIANCE

[Ecchi-Oni]

Thy think it was brillliant especially Cain they seem to think that Tairy did a brilliant "parody"

Parody of what?

[From that One Book]

Parody of what?

Of a good book?

[Ecchi-Oni]

Of a good book?

But Tairy only reads Ayn Rand how can he write a parody if he doesn't have any source material.

[TimelessChain]

But Tairy only reads Ayn Rand how can he write a parody if he doesn't have any source material.

I remember him stating that he read Dean Koontz novels somewhere...

[Lord O' Bones]

I remember him stating that he read Dean Koontz novels somewhere...

It all makes sense now! Law of Nines was Terry Goodkind trying to write Sword of Truth as if it were a Dean Koontz novel!

[Robb of the South]

I don't know what's more disappointing: The fact that TG's latest magnum opus could only generate MAYBE one half of a TG thread or Tairy himself...

Aren't we all just at a loss for words?

[Silverstar]

What do faithful Tairittes say about it? Maybe that will provide some entertainment? (Not advocating trolling, just info gathering)

From what I can tell, most of them were very surprised at the connections with the Sword of Truth series (which is a little bizarre considering people here had predicted practically the entire plot of Lo9 before it was released), at least partly because Goodkind and/or his website admins had told everyone that there would be no connections and that it was entirely standalone. They view the connections as 'easter eggs' that Goodkind just dropped in as little nods to his faithful readers, and believe that the book entirely stands on its own merits and that someone who knew nothing about SoT would just find it to be a rollicking good thriller.

Having read none of the books myself, I couldn't comment on the accuracy of that statement.

[Robb of the South]

They view the connections as 'easter eggs' that Goodkind just dropped in as little nods to his faithful readers, and believe that the book entirely stands on its own merits and that someone who knew nothing about SoT would just find it to be a rollicking good thriller.

I lol'd..

[Piper]

Anyone wonder if the branding as "not a SoT book" hurt Terry's sales with this one? Wikipedia notes that of his last three SoT books: "Chainfire, debuted at #3; in January 2005, Phantom at #1 in August 2006; and Confessor at #2 in November 2007 on the NYT Best Sellers List," while LoN debuted at 10 (still higher than I would have imagined).

[Maester Joergensen]

They view the connections as 'easter eggs' that Goodkind just dropped in as little nods to his faithful readers, and believe that the book entirely stands on its own merits and that someone who knew nothing about SoT would just find it to be a rollicking good thriller.

Having read none of the books myself, I couldn't comment on the accuracy of that statement.

A find this to be real fucking funny. Easter Eggs!?!

More like fucking Easteratomboms. Hard to not notice that the protagonist is named Rahl, and they actually have a portal that leads to tairy-land right?

As to the plot. I guess saving beautiful women in need is one of those important human themes Tairy goes on about. An therefore is a theme you can spend book after bok after book exploring.

Which I weirdly kind of agrees with. It is kind of important to always save beautiful women in need.

[Gabriele]

Which I weirdly kind of agrees with. It is kind of important to always save beautiful women in need.

And the ugly ones get overrun by pirate plumber trucks with no shining knight to care?

Well, probably better than getting stuck with a Rahl. :D

[Jaxom 1974]

From what I can tell, most of them were very surprised at the connections with the Sword of Truth series (which is a little bizarre considering people here had predicted practically the entire plot of Lo9 before it was released), at least partly because Goodkind and/or his website admins had told everyone that there would be no connections and that it was entirely standalone. They view the connections as 'easter eggs' that Goodkind just dropped in as little nods to his faithful readers, and believe that the book entirely stands on its own merits and that someone who knew nothing about SoT would just find it to be a rollicking good thriller.

Having read none of the books myself, I couldn't comment on the accuracy of that statement.

I refer you all again to my award winning rant that wasn't a rant because it couldn't be posted where it should go:

Seriously? Seriously, people? LoNs is that much greater for all of the "Easter Eggs" Terry has laid for all his SoT fans? Are you all that obtuse?

The main protagonists carry the last names of "Rahl" and "Amnell" (or however you spell Kahlan's last name, I'm too incensed at the moment to worry about it). That's not an Easter Egg. The reveal that Jax's last name is the same as Kahlan's isn't an Easter Egg. The fact that Jax comes from what is apparently the world of SoT isn't an Easter Egg. There are no "Easter Eggs" for the fans here. There is simply the repetition of what has come before packaged as a "thriller" when it has nothing to do with being a "thriller". People, a book labeled as a thrilled fits into a genre where the main character faces a mystery of human proportion. Of Earthly proportions. Of proportions that are actually set on Earth. "Thrillers" do not, I repeat do not, involve people from other worlds, worlds where magic is a way of life. The genre of fiction categorized as "Thriller" generally revolve around hard boiled, yet broken down cops/private investigators, reporters or young lawyers who get in over their heads. The simple fact that people are actually buying this load of junk only lends credence to the idea that Terry might have been right with his first rule: People are stupid. Good gods and suffering nambles! Easter Eggs? You're all delusional. And you're reading the same damn story you've already read. Even Hitler knows that. I know he does. I've seen the video.

Now that's choosing Life.

[TimelessChain]

I refer you all again to my award winning rant that wasn't a rant because it couldn't be posted where it should go:

Seriously? Seriously, people? LoNs is that much greater for all of the "Easter Eggs" Terry has laid for all his SoT fans? Are you all that obtuse?

The main protagonists carry the last names of "Rahl" and "Amnell" (or however you spell Kahlan's last name, I'm too incensed at the moment to worry about it). That's not an Easter Egg. The reveal that Jax's last name is the same as Kahlan's isn't an Easter Egg. The fact that Jax comes from what is apparently the world of SoT isn't an Easter Egg. There are no "Easter Eggs" for the fans here. There is simply the repetition of what has come before packaged as a "thriller" when it has nothing to do with being a "thriller". People, a book labeled as a thrilled fits into a genre where the main character faces a mystery of human proportion. Of Earthly proportions. Of proportions that are actually set on Earth. "Thrillers" do not, I repeat do not, involve people from other worlds, worlds where magic is a way of life. The genre of fiction categorized as "Thriller" generally revolve around hard boiled, yet broken down cops/private investigators, reporters or young lawyers who get in over their heads. The simple fact that people are actually buying this load of junk only lends credence to the idea that Terry might have been right with his first rule: People are stupid. Good gods and suffering nambles! Easter Eggs? You're all delusional. And you're reading the same damn story you've already read. Even Hitler knows that. I know he does. I've seen the video.

Now that's choosing Life.

Not to choose life or anything, but I think the essay could using brushing up. Most likely the Yeardites would question why isn't the easter egg an easter egg, and what would thrillers have to do with investigators, and the objectivists would certainly question that your view is flawed (and perhaps make a snide remark that your an irrational thinker).

Easter Eggs as the good ol wiki says "intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game." So from a certain narrow (Yeardite) point of view, the things in the story are easter eggs, but with this kind of logic, this mean that any sequels of anything whether it be movie, books or music, and stand alone books set in the same universe, are nothing but big easter eggs of the previous installment. The problem it seems is that that they don't understand that it isn't an easter egg if the "easter egg" in question has to do with a in-joke of the similar continuity. If there is things to "Get" from books that have come prior, whether or not the book in question is stand alone, is actually a wink, a continuity nod, a nudge, a running gag, a reminder, but isn't an easter egg unless the group who is supposed to recognize it is a small circle of friends, a hidden message, or a feature, of alternate or detached continuity and is relatively minimal (no easter eggs everywhere, because then it isn't a easter hunt is it? It's more like ripping off from another source and being entirely unoriginal). Since I haven't read the book, but wanna go out on a limb, I just say that if "Dickworld" wasn't thrusted into the story, and if Badkind just cut down on the "easter eggs", his easter eggs would probably be genuine (and perhaps distastful) eggs.

Thrillers is fast paced action. Depending on the director, or the authors skillz, the thriller could be cool and clever and well paced, or mindless-blow-everyone-up-spectacularly. They sometimes involve cops or investigators, but any extra-ordinary elements can be allowable depending on the sub genre, and pacing. Judging by the amount of mindless killing from Tormund's statements, the description of the hero and villain, and what they all do, I would guess that it is a thriller, just one of the lowest order: Mindless Action Thriller. In such genres, anything is alright as long as there is lots of explosions, paper thin plots, people dying, and a weak villain for the hero to take down and beat up. Tairy is within his right to call it a "thriller", but if he said it is anything more than a "thriller" (ie. about the nobility of the human spirit, mystery, suspenseful), then that would be the line where he crossed into bullshit territory.

but that's just me I guess :dunno:

[Jaxom 1974]

Not to choose life or anything, but I think the essay could using brushing up. Most likely the Yeardites would question why isn't the easter egg an easter egg, and what would thrillers have to do with investigators, and the objectivists would certainly question that your view is flawed (and perhaps make a snide remark that your an irrational thinker).

You're totally banished from these threads. I have spoken! So let it be done. Questioning me? Huh.

[The Real Will]

Not to choose life or anything, but I think the essay could using brushing up. Most likely the Yeardites would question why isn't the easter egg an easter egg, and what would thrillers have to do with investigators, and the objectivists would certainly question that your view is flawed (and perhaps make a snide remark that your an irrational thinker).

Easter Eggs as the good ol wiki says "intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game."

I'm pretty certain the word you (or the hypothetical Yeardite) is missing here is "hidden" -- and that applies to nudges, winks, sidelong glances, shifty-eyed leers, and all manner of other furtive behaviour. Lo9 is a second series, following on from the first series. When a book is following another book it doesn't gain easter egg points if it contains references to the first book. Richard Rahl appearing in Stone of Tears is not an easter egg for those who read Wizards First Rule. If Lo9 had been a completely stand alone book without magical portals back to Dickland and the story had been about a weird breed of pirate plumbers sailing the highways of New England and doing second rate plumbing work, and in that story there had been a character with same last name as Richard's sister's boyfriend (whatever his name was) and perhaps some suggestion that the characters family had a long and important history that would be an easter egg telling the attentive reader that the evil communists faired ok in their new world and that, in fact, we're all descended from the bastards. A bit of subtlety is required.

On another note, I've just finished playing Bioshock and it's nice to see that objectivist nonsense can be put to some good use. I was slightly hesitant to try this game, knowing that it was going to be full of objectivist hijinks, but I was pleasantly surprised by the treatment.

Things I learned from Bioshock:

1. Unregulated freemarket capitalism leads, inevitably, to zombies. Genetically modified, super-zombies. This is an incontrovertible law of nature and should be taken into account whenever economic planning is done at a national level. The next time you meet a hardcore capitalist, just ask them if they are pro-zombie and see what they have to say for them self.

2. An Objectivist would rather have the blood sucked from their still warm corpse by a creepy little girl with a massive needle, than submit to taxation.

[Silverstar]

I always thought Easter Eggs = little in-jokes or nods that didn't really have anything to do with the plot and would only be picked up on by careful viewers/readers/gamers who were in on the joke.

From Tormund's descriptions of the Lo9, what Goodkind fans are calling Easter Eggs is apparently The Plot. If you remove them from the book, you're left with no plot.

Ergo, not Easter Eggs.

[MinDonner]

An Easter Egg that is not an Easter Egg but is plot* incarnate. I hear ya.

*presuming the definition of "plot" can be stretched to include "guy and chick run away from things for no particular reason, for several chapters"

[Exa Inova]

I guess we are all too young to understand and appreciate Badwrite's writing.

The man has obviously a very nihilistic world view since in both his books (series and Lo9) all the action took and people killed by the main characters are in vain.

The bad guys would have been most successfully stopped had the main character just done nothing.

Thats the real egg of his books.

[MinDonner]

Came across this link in my Google Reader today, which I think has some interesting points that could be applied just as well to Dick/Alex or any other of Tairy's "heroes":

What we have in these novels is a massive body of evidence that the authors simply don't understand what makes most people like or dislike another person. Again and again we see Buck and Rayford behave in ways that range from the merely unappealing to the outright appalling, and in nearly every such instance the authors seem to have intended this behavior to persuade readers to be fond of these two jackasses.

I tried for a while to account for this bizarre characterization as some kind of attempt to present them as anti-heroes, or flawed heroes, or even just as rough-edged but lovable cads (like, say, Jimmy McNulty on The Wire). But such readings weren't supportable or sustainable. That's not what we have here.

What we have here is a compendium of reasons large and small for readers to detest Buck and Rayford, all set before us by wide-eyed authors who point to this very behavior and, grinning, say, "Aren't they the coolest?"

No. No they're not.

Edit: tag FAIL

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

From Tormund's descriptions of the Lo9, what Goodkind fans are calling Easter Eggs is apparently The Plot. If you remove them from the book, you're left with no plot.

Precisely. Alex being descended from Dick is not an easter egg. If Alex was not descended from Dick there would have been no reason for him to be in the story. He must be a descendant for the plot (such as it is) to work. Similarly, it is not an easter egg for the "other world" to be Dickland, as it needs to be Dickland to work. If it was Westeros, or the Dark Tower, it wouldn't make any sense.