Chainfire (Sword of Truth) - Softcover

Goodkind, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765344319 ISBN 13: 9780765344311

Publisher: Tor Fantasy, 2005

Synopsis

With Wizard's First Rule and seven subsequent masterpieces, Terry Goodkind has thrilled readers worldwide with the unique sweep of his storytelling. Now, in Chainfire, Goodkind returns with a new novel of Richard and Kahlan, the beginning of a sequence of three novels that will bring their epic story to its culmination.

After being gravely injured in battle, Richard awakes to discover Kahlan missing. To his disbelief, no one remembers the woman he is frantically trying to find. Worse, no one believes that she really exists, or that he was ever married. Alone as never before, he must find the woman he loves more than life itself....if she is even still alive. If she was ever even real.

About this title

Review

Chainfire is the ninth book in Terry Goodkind's grimly inventive Sword of Truth fantasy saga, which began in 1994 with Wizard's First Rule.

It's a tradition of long-running drama series that sooner or later, some character will suffer from amnesia. Goodkind gives this a neat paranoid twist when everyone except our hero Lord Richard Rahl forgets the existence of his beloved wife Kahlan. The more he protests that she was real, the more his sorceress and Amazon-warrior friends nervously humour him.

Meanwhile the apocalyptic background story continues, with evil Emperor Jagang's vast, fanatical armies moving to devastate cities and countries liberated by Richard's forces. The Emperor's latest terror weapon is an invincible, unkillable, many-shaped monster whose sole purpose is to find and destroy Richard.

Additionally, something has gone badly wrong with the prophetic books--whole libraries of them--that foretell a Last Battle where only Richard can save the world. Now, with Armageddon imminent, the prophecies have developed a rash of blank pages, as though some vital person has been erased from reality ...

Tough choices confront Richard when he abandons the defence of a key city to seek out a very unreliable authority and ask what's happened to Kahlan. All he's offered is cryptic advice with a high price tag, roughly equivalent to handing over the One Ring to Gollum. And what could "Chainfire" mean?

Of course there are many exciting action set-pieces en route. That nemesis monster strikes again and again, in horrifically random ways. The top sorceress confronts an entire wizard-led Imperial army. Closely guarded boxes of doomsday magic, locked away in Richard's own impregnable palace, come under unexpected threat.

Eventually we learn what happened to Kahlan and why. But there's no final closure in this installment, and Sword of Truth fans must wait in suspense for volume ten. Goodkind continues his mixing of adventure fantasy with dark moral complexity. --David Langford

Review

"Wonderfully creative, seamless, and stirring." --Kirkus on Wizard's First Rule

"Wonderful." --Kliatt on Stone of Tears

"Each volume of the Sword of Truth . . . proves more difficult to review than the last. There are only so many ways of heaping praise on a series that gets better and better." --SFX on Blood of the Fold

". . . outstanding work . . . adrenaline and characters who actually behave like adults. Highly recommended." --San Diego Union Tribune on Temple of the Winds

"...thoroughly enjoyable." --VOYA on Soul of the Fire

"Mr. Goodkind's compelling prose weaves a magic spell over readers." --Romantic Times on Faith of the Fallen

"Near-perfect pacing, well-realized settings, and superior descriptive narrative." --VOYA on The Pillars of Creation

"Everything one could ask for in an epic fantasy." --Publishers Weekly on Stone of Tears

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Fantasy
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0765344319
• ISBN 13: 9780765344311
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 768