This one falls under the "Terribly Written Books" category AND the "Overrated Books With Undeserved Hype". Woah, double kill!

Some people might be wondering why bestselling author Terry Goodkind is missing from the top 25 best fantasy books. This is one of the most "asked" questions emailed to me and left in the comments section on the top list. I've drastically updated this section to more solidly make my case, to all the Goodkind fanboys out there who've been leaving the hate mail in my inbox, about just WHY Sword of Truth is so very bad. I hope this helps show why I feel these books are bad, rather than just stating that they are.

Well gents and ladies, I have been saving a special spot in the Worst Fantasy section for him. Wait, you tell me: He is a best seller. Yea, but then again so is Snooky from Jersey Shore. Let's be clear: popularity does not equal quality.

Even after a full year up here, Goodkind is still staying firmly planted at the number 3 spot, and I don't plan on moving him anytime soon, unless someone manages to top the level of drivel spewing forth from his pen. Though there are some new contenders for worst title, there are no real challengers just yet. Maybe next year (2013) will bring something new to the table.

Tell Me Whyyyyyyy....

So Why is BadKind so Good. Sorry, that came out wrong. Why is NoGoodkind so Good? Opps, sorry, he's so bad I'm getting my words twisted up here. One more time: why is Goodkind so Bad? There we go!

Because, he is just like, major bad dude.

Seriously people, if you think Goodkind is the Second Coming of Christ to the fantasy genre, you haven't read any real fantasy books yet. Don't ask me to add his name to any of the Best Book Lists, because I'm not going to.

Goodkind.Does.Not.Deserve.To.Be.Added.Because.He's.Not.Good.Enough.

I'll admit that Goodkind's first few novels were kind of entertaining in a sick sort of way, but the entertainment soon got lost behind the sheer awfulness of the man's writing. The idea was good, but the problem is that Goodkind lacked the actual writing skills to translate ideas to paper. He broke just about every 'don't do this when you're writing a novel' rule in this book. Heck, he probably even broke a few writing rules that haven't been invented yet!

NoGoodKind's books are a "College English 101: Fiction Class case study" for what not to do when writing a novel. If anything, the man could sell his books as part of a Creative Writing syllabus on "Bad Books NOT to Copy".

Richard Raul is THE MAN

Dude, the hero of The Sword of Truth is THE MAN. He's the Chuck Norris of the fantasy landscape, able to defeat every dark god without breaking a sweat. He's so full of altruistic goodness that he's got a halo, except when you disagree with him and he kills you. Hell, he even goes all Chuck Norris in Book 8 on a bunch of unarmed farmer pacificists because they don't have his vision of moral clarity by not believing in absolute good and evil. So he slaughters these weak cowards and is continually praised for this over the course of the novel by Goodkind. But wait, isn't killing people who disagree with you Fascism? Nooo, that couldn't be the case, since Goodkind is so enlightened.

But wait, there is more badness to come. Oh yea, he's so bad (and by baaad, I mean good) that he rips a man's spinal cord out with his bare freaking hands -- you can practically hear the Mortal Kombat "Finish Him" voiceover in the background. Hell Yea! If that's not manly and badassism, I don't know what is. A few other godlike traits: he's super intelligent on top of being a hunky male model, he's got a princess-lover who's so pure and beautiful that even Jesus would have a hard'on, and he bashes in the skull of a seven-year-old bratty kid.

To delve into more of the hero's badism, let's sum it up a bit (avoid this paragraph if you don't want to read spoilers) the entire series:

Farm boy finds a super sword and becomes the super Seeker of Truth, basically a badass dimwit with the big, big sword who goes around stabbing bad guys or simply any character who actually has the gall to disagree with his -- cough Goodkind's-- philosophy (which is in fact a badly written version of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead). But wait, there's more to big ol' teddy bear Richard. You see, he's really also a hidden prince too, and a pretty damn handsum one at that. No but wait, he's also a Wizard. Did I forget to mention that he's also a War Wizard on top of being a regular wizard which is basically a Wizard 2.0 with even deadlier magic than Wizard 1.0s? Oh, let's not forget about the part where he becomes KING ruler of an entire continent.

Did I miss anything? Oh yes, I forgot: Richard also has a harem of attractive women who want to rip his clothes off, and rape him in a series of bad S&M scenes. Can't forget the other character: Kahland Amnell, Richards love interest princess and Mary Sue extraordinaire. Forgetting anything else? Opps one more: one of the SOT villains is an evil chicken. Yeaaaaa.....

Richard Rauhl is pretty much the fantasy version of Goku from Dragon Ball Z -- always just one step away from powering up to some new super ability to save the day. The only difference: replace the stupid endless posturing of the characters with endless plot-destroying Randism pontificating by Richard. I'd like to say it's a more intelligent series than an anime made for kids, but I dont' think I can even give the series that sort of credit.

Now let's get to the badly written sex and Goodkind's treatment of women in the books.

Goodkind has a disturbing fascination with the domination and rape of women. I mean you have to wonder about the guy when pretty much every page involves some sadistic torture and rape of yet another innocent and lovely woman. Man, we get it guy: lovely women need to be humiliated over and over in as many different ways as possible. Now stop writing about the same damn thing for 10,000 pages! I'm beginning to suspect that John Norman from the Gor series helped ghostwrite the SOT novels or maybe Goodkind gets a kick out of reading Gor. Either way, enough of your boy fantasies please!

Prose, Like, Actually Counts Dude

Now if only the public could be stabbed with that same Sword of Truth that Richard Rhaul carries around, the truth of how bad this series really is would be revealed to the world. The writing itself is absolutely hideous amateurishly written prose that will give you eyebleeds. The interesting world-building hinted at in the first novel was about the only redeeming quality of the entire series but this one small bit of potential soon gets drowned in the badlly written prose, stupid cardboard characters (with some of them bordering on ridiculous), and the dirty S&M rape scenes oh-so-generously sprinkled around every few pages.

Goodkind has really mastered the literary trick of TELLING his reader, not SHOWING them. Did I mention that the writing quality is bad, like atrociously bad with -ly adverbs thrown in before practically every single verb, horrible grammar, and a plot so full of holes that it sinks to the bottom of the quality barrel?

We are not in your ff'in Church, Goodkind

But by far the worst literary crime is Goodkind's penchant for pausing the story while he pontificates and pontificates and pontificates about the nature of good and evil through his characters. I mean, it gets absolutely ridiculous in the later books. The early books actually have the semblance of a plot and characters, but by the 6th book, something starts to go seriously wrong with the story threads, and Goodkind decides he's going to write his own version of The Fountainhead starring Richard, Kahland, and evil Emperor dude who wants to kill the world. The 8th book (The Naked Empire) was by far the worst offender, with a significant portion of the book given to Goodkind's bad philosophizing there were literally pages end on end of bad philosophy spewing from the mouth of Goodkind's hero. At one point I think I skipped something like 30 pages of Richard pontificating and the plot or story didn't miss a single beat.

If you want to read Goodkind, you can save yourself a lot of pain and just skip straight to the source: read Ann Rynd's Fountainhead, the book that inspired the Sword of Truth series.

Now, I wouldn't toss Goodkind on this list only because of A Wizard's First Rule. No, it took a string of absolute trash to land him on the worst fantasy book list. His recent book titles can be used as a euphemism for crap, puke and other less-than-wholesome words.

Goodkind's book quality goes like this:

'first book -- readable with some interesting world-building, but terrible prose

'books 2 - 3 -- less readable

'books 4 - 6 -- even less readable and preachy

'books 7 - 9 -- oh my god, my eyes are bleeding and I'm going deaf from all the bad Fountainhead preaching

'books 10 - 12 -- thank god the series is done. Oh but wait, he's signed up for MORE novels.

'Sword of Truth Tie Ins -- doesn't even qualify as a novel

I now hear that Goodkind has decided to embrace the self-publishing movement and inflict even more books on the public, this time with even less editorial control, since he's now going to be the author, editor, and publisher. God save us from the horror of it all!

I fully expect putting Goodkind in this section will rile up some of his fans (and feel free to express yourself in the comment section), but before posting anything nasty or libeling my character and tastes, please read the top 5 books on my Top 25 Best Fantasy Book list, THEN come and tell me why NoGoodkind should be taken off this list.