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Goodkind takes Rand's Objectivism and totally embodies it into someone who is perfect in almost all that he does, even over-shadowing the First Wizard in magical theory (while Richard has had no previous experience). Essentially, Chainfire boils down to Atlas Shrugged with magic. Sure, if you are a bibliophile like myself, having the collection works out. So was the 2nd. Cheaper, and it culls Goodkind from getting more money to drag on a series. That's pretty much the sum of the final book.
But if you are an avid reader, just go to the library and get it. I will agree with a majority of my fellow reviewers here: the first book in this series was phenomenal. But then Goodkind evokes Zeno's paradox and the books slowly start becoming half as good, until we come to this. Was the book worth the money.
Having watched the TV show, I find it interesting that the concept of stabbing the box of Orden to use it was introduced in this book. A wonderful ending to a wonderful series. There were some long winded passages, true, but I found it useful that they finally explained how Ja La is played.
The book arrived in almost perfect wrapping and condition. I'm totally satisfied with the purchase, and it only took about 1 1/2 week for the book to arrive safely to my doorstep, here in Malaysia.
The earlier books in the series were still very good. I would rate it average, verging on bad.Probably the most important things to know about this book are:1) The rants continue. Richard seems to have completely lost his ability to see shades of gray (not that he was very good at that to begin with) and everyone is still either US or THEM. Now having read it, I would say Confessor is not the worst book in the series, but neither is it among the best.
There is some purpose in doing so - it's all finally over and we never have suffer through another installment again. Why can't they just see how awesome Richard is and bow down and worship him.2)Richard continues to become more and more godlike. So so evil. The books in this series have been very variable. In my opinion the first one was the best, and very much a stand alone book. So it was hard to know which category this one would fit into. Whilst not as bad as those in the rant-also-known-as-the-Naked-Empire they still form waaay too large a proportion of the book.
The ending is pretty much a copout by Goodkind and could be summed up as 'and then Richard became God and all the bad things and problems magically went away'.3)If you've stuck with the series so far you're probably still going to read this book. I viewed the final book in this series with a certain amount of trepidation. Then there were some ups and downs in book quality, some good, some bad, some average. Evil them.
Maybe I was waiting for something of a glimer from the first six books. Maybe I just didn't want to believe that the author of Wizard's First Rule (such an excellent book) had gone completely off the deep end.
What a joke of an ending. You'll be forewarned about the endless amount of useless pages and the outright horrible monologues by just about everyone in the book, but the only thing you really need to know is that this book just plain sucks.
If you read the other negative reviews you'll hear about Goodkind's sermons and the cardboard characters. And that "Final Battle between Good and Evil".
How big of an idiot am I that it took me until the eleventh book to realize Goodkind doesn't know what he's doing anymore. Maybe I simply read through the series to fast and never stopped to think.
I am just utterly distraught over how much I hate this book.
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