Faith of the Fallen Book Review
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Faith of the Fallen is the 6th book in the Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind. This book tends to be polarizing in the fanbase for the series. I personally do think that this book is a leg up on many of the previous installments to the franchise so far and we will get into that with this review.
Faith of the Fallen takes a forces storyline of Richard being captured by Nikki, a lady of the dark, that uses a spell to the effect that anything that happens to her, will happen to Kahlen. This forces Richard to have to go with Nikki to the old world as she attempts to show Richard the reason behind the Empire and what it’s trying to achieve.
We get a lot of backstory of Nikki in this book which I feel mirrors the ideals that she grew up with of the Empire. She is selfless and gives to those who are worse off than her, and believes that everyone should be treated equal regardless of the situations. Her father, a merchant and her mother, a member of the ideas that giving everything to those that have nothing create a conflicting backstory for Nikki in which she ends up picking the desires of her mother.
So Richard gets captured by Nikki because he does not want anything to happen to Kahlen. This is after the fact that Kahlen was brutally beaten in the last book and Richard has abandoned his duties leading his country to victory on the front lines so he can nurse his wife back to health.
His own country begins to grow spectacle by his actions as Richard leaves when the country needs him most. I think his actions in the book are handled with an unrealistic positive outlook with simply outrageous war tactics behind it that make no sense.
With Richard captured by Nikki, the majority of this book is Nikki attempting to find the missing thing in her life and Richard to not static in his ways and show the old world that is controlled by the Empire that there is more to live than living as equals and paying dues for everyone. I will stop the story points there and say what I liked and what I didn’t like in this book.
Some of the things that I did like in this book where that Richard grew to make business partners and friends in the old world that felt good and genuine over time. This book does take place over several months and that should not be understated. Richard’s storyline in this book is very good and interesting. But it’s also shallow like this entire series presents.
I can relate the most of this book to following the files of Stone of Tears. Someone that does not believe in Richard takes him away and learns differently based on his actions throughout their time together. We also got a little of that in the initial release of Wizards First Rule. Interesting tidbit here. I don’t think Terry Goodkind and attempt to do this for a 4th time cause it will just be viewed as lazy writing, but time will tell.
Kahels story is much more believable. With Richard gone and out of the equation for some time, Kahlen starts to lead the people of Dahara to battles and they respect her. I liked this portion of the book. It felt more right then Richards reasonings for what we were attempting to do. I would not say that this necessary grows Kahlens character, but gives her something epic to be remembered about which up to this point was starting to run dry.
At the end of the day. This book is better then several in the series so far, but it still fails to live up to the hot start the the series presented the readers. If I was to best describe this series to people, I would say that it’s a rock skipping across a pond, it has enough momentum to keep going, but only when it hits that chapter in the series that is actually compelling. So far the series started out with large skips of interesting content and bad content. But with Temple of the Winds and Soul of the Fire, the time in the air is decreasing and the rock is getting closer to sinking the ship.
This book is worth the read. There are more interesting side story events that are happening throughout the course of the book that shed light on the intentions of Emperor Jegang. We will see what these all lead to in later books in the series, but for now that is all I have for this review.
What were your thoughts? As always comment below and let us know. How does this rank in the series up to this point not counting books still to come? The next review will be out in a few weeks of the Pillars of Creation. A book that I have started that feels like the most drastic change of pace in the series so far so stay tuned for that review.
If you want to see where this book ranks in the original series, you can find our Ranking the Sword of Truth series article here!
