This is a review for Terry Goodkind’s latest book in the Sword of Truth series, Phantom. For those of you unfamiliar with the Sword of Truth, it’s one of the better fantasy series out there, centering around Richard Rahl, Seeker of Truth, War Wizard, and Emperor of the D’Haran Empire. By the way, if you haven’t read the series, don’t read the last paragraph, it’s chock full of spoilers. (Though, technically, it’ll only spoil the first book; arguably the best in the series, though.)

Phantom is the second in the concluding trilogy of the series (yes, you read that right, a fantasy series that actually plans to end sometime this millenia.) In the previous book, Chainfire, Richard awoke to discover that the world had forgotten his wife and female lead of the series, Kahlan Amnell. Goodkind did some interesting things in Chainfire, most important was entirely eliminating Kahlan from the narrative, to the point where you actually start to think that maybe, just maybe, Kahlan did, in fact, never exist and Richard had just made her up. But, ultimately, the disappearance was due to the use of the Chainfire spell, a spell originalyl meant to create a kind of undetectable superspy, but which was never unleashed due to its unpredictability. However, a sect of antagonists called the Sisters of the Dark kidnapped Kahlan and set the Chainfire spell loose with her as the target. Now Kahlan is little more than a phantom, a slave to the sister’s dark will, as she is effectively invisible to the world and doesn’t remember her own life.

Phantom deals with Richard’s attempts at dealing with the various problems at hand. On the one hand, there’s the ongoing search for Kahlan and a cure for the Chainfire spell. This is complicated by the fact that the Imperial Order of the Old World – the “evil empire” of the series – is about to descend on D’Hara and crush Richard’s forces. And on the other other hand, Richard has given up the Sword of Truth to the witch Shota in an attempt to find more information on Kahlan, thus giving up his arguably most powerful weapon. Oh yeah, and every time he tries to use magic, he calls upon an ultimate assassin creature that was unleashed by the Order’s troops to kill Richard.

The plots intertwine nicely in Phantom, for as disparate as they are. (Spoilers to follow. Skip paragraph to ignore.) Emperor Jagang is finally revealed to be behind (more or less) the plots of the Sisters of the Dark, searching for the Boxes of Orden to put them into play. We find out that the Boxes of Orden were actually created to counter the Chainfire spell, although I believe only Nicci and the Sisters of the Dark know this at this point, (maybe Zedd.) A new witch named Six (of no relation to the Cylon) surfaces to make trouble, stealing one of the Boxes of Orden and managing to steal Richard’s gift and eventually accidentally delivers him to the Imperial Order. Kahlan is captured by Jagang and we find out that there are people who can see her. This is because the Chainfire spell has been corrupted by the chimes, creatures from an earlier book in the series whose purpose is to drain the world of magic. And, finally, many of the prophesies that we learned about in the earlier books are re-explained.

Overall, the book is… ok. It would be better if Goodkind hadn’t spent the better part of half the book’s chapters simply rehashing and ranting about how evil the Imperial Order is. The Order is basically Communism on Steroids, and in need of a bath. The evils of the Order have been explained in the past. We’ve seen cities under Order occupation. (Although we’d never actually been privy to scenes of a city actually being captured by the Order, we had been exposed to plenty of after-the-occupation scenes to have a good sense of the brutality of the Order.) More importantly, we know that Richard doesn’t like the Order. (Richard’s like the ultimate libertarian – an odd political position for an Emperor, but he’s hardly emperor by choice.) We’ve known this for the past six books.

In other words, there is no good reason for Goodkind to drone on about how evil the Order actually is. We get it, ok? You don’t like Communism. That’s fine. We’re capitalist bastards, we’re right there with you. And, hey, capitalism won! The cold war’s over. Even China’s moving into a capitalist private economy. Let it the fuck go. Lucas didn’t spend 70 minutes in Return of the Jedi dedicated to Mon Mothma giving a speech on how evil the Galactic Empire was. We understood the truth: Tyrants = Bad. It’s staple fantasy. Let it the fuck go.

Whenever he’s not droning on against Communism, Goodkind does tend to do interesting things. He’s amazingly interesting, almost scientifically formulaic, whenever he gets on explaining the way magic works in the world. He writes great action scenes. And his plots are sufficiently complicated that I’m honestly unsure of what’s going to happen next, without getting to the silly point of convolution where things happen for no good reason.

One thing that I kind of disliked about the book – and this goes back to my stance that Wizard’s First Rule was the best book in the series – was that a lot of Wizard’s was retconned. The changes make enough inherent sense given the overall mythology of the series, but they still smell like retcons to me. (IE, I feel like Goodkind wrote himself into a hole, and chose to dig himself out by bringing in old elements instead of new ones. Which I think stylistically it was the right thing to do, but just seems… stretchy to me.)

One last gripe with the book: Richard gets captured far too often for it to be a big deal anymore. The book literally ends with Richard being brought into Jagang’s camp in a cage (though not quite the way that might come off,) and Nicci thinking that the worse thing that could’ve happened is Richard captured by Jagang, without magic, and without the Sword of Truth. Normally, this would’ve been a great way to end a sequel. (Hey, Boba Fett took Han at the end of Empire, and the Hobbits were captured by the end of Fellowship; it’s classic.)

Except this isn’t the first time Richard has been captured by the bad guys.

In fact, it’s not even the first time that Richard has been captured: A) by the Imperial Order, or B) without magic or C) the Sword of Truth. He’s been captured by the antagonists in almost every book of the series. (If not every book, then at least 50% of them.) He’s been captured by the Imperial Order twice for frak’s sakes! Admittedly, he’s never been captured by the Order, without magic, and without the Sword before, but it’s not like the Order has proven to be the smartest adversaries he’s faced before – just the biggest.

At this point, it’s simply ridiculous to presume he won’t find a way to escape. It’s like the old Buffy line: “Dawn’s in trouble – must be Tuesday.” “Richard’s captured – must be Thursday.”

If it weren’t for the above points, the book would be great. As it is, it’s only shaping up to be an otherwise great end to a great series.

Made a wonderful apple desert… thingie. Peel, core and slice a granny smith, melt a pad of butter on a small pan, medium low heat. Toss in the apples, toss in a teaspoon of sugar (I used Splenda.) Heat until apples are soft. Add a small splash of white wine. You basically end up with the filling for an apple pie, without the actual pie, and with that hint of wine taste. It was good. I’m sure if I had cinnamon I could’ve added and it would’ve been better.

I had a massive migraine induced by sleep deprivation and compounded by dehydration yesterday, ergo why I didn’t post anything. I fell asleep on Thursday night around 11:30, and woke up at about 2 in the morning. I stared at the clock for half an hour in the heat. I realized my skin was dry, which was extremely odd given the hot weather, so I went to the kitchen. I keep two liters of water cooling at all times now in the refridgerator. I took one out and gulped it down in one long draw. By the time I made it back to my bed – and those of you who have seen my apartment know that this is a 15 foot walk only because there’s a wall in between – I had a sheen of sweat running all across my body. I know this because I could suddenly feel the moving air from the fan – which at this point was working not unlike a large hair dryer – sending shivers as it made contact with the natural coolant.

Rehydrated, I then proceeded to attempt to fall asleep again, a task which proved impossible. I stared at the clock – almost literally – until about 4 in the morning, when I suddenly loose memory and can only assume I fell asleep. I woke up again at 5:30. I took another drink of water, slower this time, and settled into bed to wait for the alarm to sound. I have an early class on Fridays, so I figured I might as well.

When 6 came around I sat down to check my email and have some breakfast. I started to read the day’s assignment, and got halfway through before the sleep headache came on. I decided to try to get another half hour of shut eye, but was unable to muddle through. So I decided I wasn’t going to class and tried to sleep more. Instead I just stayed up in bed, unable to fall asleep, nursing a dull ache that seemed akin to a hangover without the pleasant before-effects.

Still, I did survive, drinking lots of fluids, and more or less passed the day doing as little as possible. I filled one of the 1 liter bottles with water and set it in the freezer for the day. By the time night came around, the bottle was fully frozen. It took the interval between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm for the ice to have turned to water and to have warmed up to room temperature. To be fair, I was using the ice to keep cool, so my body heat probably did most of the melting work.

The temperature does seem to be cooling off, however. It is noon, and the air that the fan is blowing feels more like a nice breeze. And tonight is supposed to be cooler. So good times.

Today is a good day. Did nothing, as is my right and due on Thursdays. And by “doing nothing”, I of course mean I went to Walgreens to pick up a blood pressure medicine refill, got a haircut, people watched at “the Pru,” bought the latest Goodkind book, got my ass handed to me in Civ4, again, and decided to catch Clerks II. So, I reiterate, it has been a good day. I’m feeling good about feeling good.

What else is new? Almost finished with Einstein’s Dreams. Interesting read. You should pick up if you’re into vignettes or scene studies. Or just like the idea of crazy ideas. The author (I don’t have the book in front of me otherwise I could name drop, but who cares, right?) paints pictures of what different worlds would be if the laws of time worked differently. So you have a world without time, a world where time flows erratically, giving people glances of the future, a world where time slows down the closer you get to a particular vertex. Etc. It’s an interesting book, beautifully written. No plot or substance outside of what’s painted in the vignettes. But those are well written.

Have also been reading “Programming the Universe”, by Seth Lloyd. This is a purely science book, of the kind I like to read every once in a while. I know just enough quantum mechanics the concepts don’t go over my head. The basic idea is that the universe is one giant logic state machine, and we can use the quantum states of atoms, electrons, etc., to build a big quantum computer. Or, well, more precisely, that the quantum stuff of the universe already comprises a giant quantum computer, built to compute… well, itself.

42 anyone?

Also an interesting read. If you’re into science and physics books, specifically quantum mechanics or computer, then hey! Quantum computers are the future. Imagine having a processor as fast and large as you need it, for the physical dimension of a quarter. Good stuff.

Clerks II was also a good movie. Definitely a 3.5 out of 5. If you’re vacilating between not seeing it and seeing it: go see it. Go on, it won’t hurt. Might even brighten up your day a little. It’s a very upbeat movie. It’s as much Kevin Smith’s lovechild as it is an homage to every John Hughes film ever made. Or, at least, the 80s teeny-bopper John Hughes films. (Ironic, given that it’s a movie about 30-somethings seeking direction in life.) I’ve either grown a very thick skin or Smith is just getting older, but the movie seemed tamer in comparison to Smith’s earlier works. It’s very much a movie about growing up, though, but not necessarily about putting childish things aside.

I liked it. Good job.

And that…. is that for me today. I’m gonna grab a beer and see about kicking some ass in Civ4. Polish off the rust that’s gathering in the old knuckles.

Quarter’s over in just three weeks. I get two weeks off then, during which both my parents and Amanda/Nick will be visiting. I’ll have a whole week off after everyone leaves. I can use a rest.