I mean, I really liked the first 90 pages or so. Goodkind clearly can write well. He'd occasionally forget himself and start doing some real character work or the characters would sit and talk a bit and do some world building. But then he's realize he needed to move the story along and he clearly doesn't know how to do that so he'd have a wizard pop out of the bushes (literally at least once) and just say "hey, we got to move this story along. Let's go do this thing now." He can write, but he doesn't know how to tell a story. Don't even get me started with how he shoehorns in the call to action for the hero in the first book. It's like papers I'd write in college where I had a bunch of good parts but it's no cohesive so I'd half-ass some connecting bits to frankenstein it together. It's technically passable, but not a good overall work.

And I've heard the Gentlemen Bastards series mentioned a few times recently so I'll need to put it on my list. I'm working my way through Raymond E. Feist right now. The first series just feels so much like a DnD campaign (because it literally is) and I love it.

Awesome, thanks for the recommendation. I know what I'm getting myself for Christmas now 🌝