Soul of the Fire Book Review
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Enter the political war between the empire of D’hara and the lands of andoryth. Magic threatens to go extinct with the existence of the chimes. Do Richard and Kahlan have what it takes to bring the world back to order?
Soul of the Fire is the 5th book in the Sword of Truth series. This book is yet another hat I didn't care too much for in the Sword of Truth series. Truthfully, it’s at this point in the series that I am getting really disheartened and starting to lose interest in continuing onward. There are many features to this book that just simply didn’t work for me and we are going to get into those really quick here so let’s dive in.
So the start of the book is after Richard and Kahlan get married and are supposed to be spending nights together. However, Richard notices something strange. This all takes place in the Mudd People village by the way which to this day is such a boring area of the world Terry Goodkind is trying to piece together. Richard notices chickens that are acting evil and attacking people. The head of the tribe, the Bird Man notices that these are not chickens at all. We later find out that these are Chimes.
The Chimes are one of the two main points of the story in that they take away the ability of magic in the world. Throughout the latest installment though, there does not feel to be the massive threat of these being a big deal in the world like it was with the keeper threat back in Stone of Tears or even the disease ridden population in Winds of Time.
The other main plot point is with the country of Andorith. This is a country that is not really going for the idea of joining the new order with Richard at the helm. Instead they attempt to play both sides with the rule of D’hara and the Old Worlds Empire lead by the dreamwalker Jegang.
Since this has been loosely the story for the last few books, it feels like this series takes the main stage for the book. That being said, this part of the story is also not interesting to me and that leads me to the main problem with this book. It’s just NOT interesting to me at all.
Terry Goodkind has many more books in this series and I am afraid of what the rest of the catalog has to offer. Especially since the reviews being to drop off several books ago in this series.
I do not think that the reviews on this site are trying to be overly harsh either. I am doing everything I can to give this series a fair shot by going through the entire series, despite its shortcomings. This is because most long running series have this issue somewhere in the course of the series run.
The Chimes storyline just didn’t do it for me. The idea that it was a big problem just did not hold the weight for me to believe that was actually the case. The political actions were also nothing special. The only good thing I can say about it, is that in the end, something unique finally happens with this series that I will not spoil here.
If I had to say what the best part of the book was, it would be at the tail end of the entire thing. The new characters introduced get their time in the spotlight and it feels that the views of both Dahara as well as the Empire are clearly expressed. I also thing that Richard and Kahlen, but mostly Richard are copping out here at the end.
Terry Goodkind’s writing has not improved in any way. I get the feeling that he was just pushing books out to meet a deadline or something as they are just really lacking something interesting at all for me. His writing style is really unchanged despite now being 5 books into a series that he started.
If I was to place this book anywhere in the ranking of the first 5 books it would be down at 4. I just did not care for this book so much. Temple of the Winds was more interesting and coherent to me, Wizard's First Rule and Stone of Tears are much better than this novel. But it beats out the Blood of the Fold and the absolute useless drab that book attempted to give us.
This is a shorter review because I just do not have much to say about this book and I hope that the next book performs better than this one did. I could even argue that this is a book that you could skip entirely in the series now that I am several chapters into the following book Faith of the Fallen.
I plan to have the next review out for this series much sooner than the time between this release and the last release. So if you have stuck around this far for the review series of Sword of Truth, thank you so much! Please let me know what you think of the series so far as well as this book in the series release. I will see you all next time for Faith of the Fallen!
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!
