Wizard's First Rule

WIZARD’S FIRST RULE : Terry Goodkind : TOR : Fantasy : 836 pages

In this epic fantasy a handful of characters struggle to defeat Darken Rahl. Rahl is an evil ruler who has invoked a powerful magic—the “three boxes of orden”—to become supreme rule over everyone and everything. However, Rahl only has two of the boxes and is seeking the third to complete the set.

Rahl is on a rigorous timetable. He has set the boxes “in play” to invoke some of their power without having all three boxes and without knowing precisely how they function. He must locate the third box and a set of instructions for them known as the “Book of Counted Shadows” by the first day of Winter or he will die.

In this fantasy world there are three contiguous lands separated from one another by magical barriers set in place to keep the three lands separate. However, these barriers won’t last forver. Already the barrier between Darken Rahl’s D’hara and the Midlands has fallen and the barrier separating the Midlands from the Westlands is weakening.

Kahlan, a woman with certain magical powers, has crossed the barrier into the Westlands (at a great cost to her people) in hopes of locating the old wizard that defeated Panis Rahl decades earlier. The wizard disappeared years earlier, after defeating Panis Rahl, when the people of the Midlands began to disregard the wizard's warnings. As Kahlan arrives in the Westlands he is befriended by Richard Cypher, a woods guide, who is attracted to her and has decided to do what he can to help her.

To defeat Rahl, Richard and Kahlan enter the Midlands and locate the third box of Orden and keep it from Rahl until the first day of Winter. Unknown to Richard she is the last of a group of women known as Confessors Since she and Richard have become friends she has been reluctant to inform him that she is a “Confessor”, feeling that once she does, their friendship will be at an end.

The novel deals with trust and deception, love and anger. Richard and Kahlan encounter the “Mud people”, a beautiful witch, a giant red, and the Mord Sith (women trained from their childhood in the techniques of torture and pain). Most important is the characters of “the Seeker”—a young man who wields the “Sword of Truth” in this first installment of Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series.

SML