Pillars of Creation Book Review
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Pillars of Creation is a deviation of what we have been reading for years at this point in the Sword of Truth series. This book gives us a view of the world from new eyes from some of the children of Darken Rahl himself.
One thing that is really surprising in this book was the lack of Richard and Kahlan at all in the book. We do not hear from them and I remember as I read along in this book wondering when those chapters would begin. About a quarter of the way through the book I was beginning to realize that this book would not have them in it at all.
It was with the lack of those two characters that ended up becoming refreshing to me. It was something that I actually really appreciated. The removal of the Richard monologue was refreshing and something that I am sure will not last. I also liked that I did not have to dredge through paragraphs of Richard and Kahlan drooling over each other for another book. It’s a genuine mystery what percentage of these books is just the two being infatuated with each other and each other every action.
Jennsen Rahl is the main character of the book, rescued by Sebastian from the Imperial order that saves her from some Dharan soldiers. We follow her character as she fears for her life and has the desire to kill the lord Rahl so she no longer has to look over her shoulder to survive.
Another main character is Oba Rahl, a sadistic character that believes himself to be invincible and starts to work to claim the world for himself after he comes to this realization.
These two characters are followed on a journey about around the same time in regards to when they come to each location. Jennsen’s character is the most interesting to me of the two because she is almost a ying to Oba’s yang. Her character lucks her way into things over and over again in the book, but has a compelling enough story to pay attention to.
Oba on the other hand has a horrid introduction where Terry “Goodkind’s” up a scenario, to hilariously unbelievable extents with him and his mother when he attempts to lie to her. I mean hilarious in a very bad way. When I say he “Goodkind’s Up” the scene what I mean is that it goes on, and on, and ON, and ON, and ON, and ONN, and ONNNNN! What the hell!! Why does Terry Goodkind do this to us poor readers? The section where Oba is lying to his mother was harking back to the description of currency to the Mudd people which was to this day the single most try pages upon pages of unnecessary content I had ever seen, and this was arguably worse!! I wanted to take these pages, cut them up like a credit card when you are done using it so no one else can ever read it again.
If there is one good thing to say about this book in an attempt to bring it back to a more positive light, is that the content was much more original than it has ever been in the series. It's much harder to pick out what stuff Terry Goodkind is stealing from other books and I could not be bothered to try harder to find them cause I just don’t care at this point.
At the same time this book STRUGGLES with original content. It does tie together plot points and slowly moves forward, but we also get egregious retreading of locations and story format utilizing the two characters Jennsen and Oba. We revisit the same cities, we revisit the same swamp, Jennsen and Oba fight the same snake, meet the same common thief. This is a good third of the book.
I did appreciate the Raug’Moss integration to the story giving telling one of the Rahl children that Drefan is dead and that the community of healers were not very fond of him to begin with. It help strengthen the idea that there are many Darken Raul children running around the world and they are all related in some way or another.
It seems like if there was a filler novel, this was the case. Pillars of Creation may not be the worst book in the series, that still is firmly in the place with Blood of the Fold, but this book was really lazy. I know I gave the book a ton of crap earlier in the review, but that just shows how much I needed a break from Richard and his “I am Always Right No Matter What” personality. For that I thank you Terry, thank you for giving me a break regardless of the lazy writing.
There is not much to the story in this book, and it is worth skipping. If you do intend to skip this book you only need to know who things. Jennsen is a child of Darken Rahl that has no magical ability whatsoever, and Zedd takes on many of the Imperial Order by himself defending the keep.
So that should really sum up my overall thoughts on this book. It’s really a whole lot of nothing interesting despite the fact that it was told in a different way. I appreciate the idea of what the author was trying to do, but at the same time I get the sinking feeling that Terry himself was just not invented in where this book was going.
We will be moving onto Naked Empire after this book. I realize that we are starting to approach the end of the main series. I am un decided yet if I plan to read past the Sword of Truth Series and into the Richard and Kahlan series that follows it. I also understand that the Nicci Chronicles are currently on going with a release of the latest installation earlier this month.
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!
