“Naked Empire,” by Terry Goodkind

FM's ratings:

          1. Premise 9
          2. Prose 6
          3. Plot 7
          4. Characters 9
          5. Overall 7

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

You may be wondering, with my dislike of really long books, why I would choose to read one that is more than two inches thick (and NOT a Stephen King book!), 667 pages long, in a genre that is not my favorite; Medieval Fantasy.  I have been curious about the author for some time, wondering why his books are all so long, and what the draw is.  Well, the premise is pretty cool, though rather complicated, being part of a series.  The characters are considerably more developed than most books of the genre offer.  The prose?  Not so bad, sentence by sentence, despite the fact that we have characters with extremely limited educational backgrounds using words like “inculcated” and “comprehended.”  The problem with the prose – as in all overly long books – is not quality, but quantity.  Once again, we have a 300 page story being crammed into a 667 page book.  But in this instance, the “padding” glares at us.  It is as if he wrote the book as a 335-pager, and then went back through, paragraph by paragraph, and doubled each one.  There are many instances where a point has been adequately made, only to be adequately made yet again a paragraph or two later with only superficially different wording.  I found myself thinking, “Yeah, we got that the first time, move on.”  Perhaps Mr. Goodkind knows his readership well enough to realize that a large portion of them are “skimmers,” not reading for content so much as for the impressions that can be gleaned from skimming.  He doesn’t want them to miss certain key points, so he feels he has to belabor them.  But there really is content here.  The premise is hidden among the trappings out of necessity.  The story is really a study of several related political philosophy issues including the initiation of the use of force and the morality of doing harm in self-defense; and what fantasy buff wants to read about that?  The hero is dealing with an isolated culture of extreme pacifists who have come to him to rid them of oppressors.  (I seem to remember an old Star Trek episode that dealt with this theme as well.)  The pacifists are the “empire” referred to in the title; vulnerably “naked” to any band of thugs that wants to dominate them.  Much of the hero’s dialog includes an exploration of moral philosophies, including Objectivist and Libertarian fundamentals.  This actually saved the book for me, resulting in a much higher overall rating than I would otherwise have given it.  I wish I could recommend it.  Go for it if you’re a skimmer!