Chainfire

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

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Awesome! - Rated
I love this book. Anyone wanting a story about heros should give this series by Goodkind some attention. Richard and Kahlan serve admirably as the best sort of heros you can find.

Oh no! not again - Rated
I have read all of Terry Goodkind's books, the first few were amazing, and I have read them and re-read them, but somewhere along the line Terry has fallen into the same hole as Robert Jordan, who has the other epic series going on at the time. Writing for the sake of filling up pages to sell! somewhere along the line Terry went into the full time preaching mode, whereas Jordan went into the nit picking describing details, Jordan takes about 10 pages to describe every button on every woman's dress who happens to be passing the street at the time, Terry has taken to sermonizing and repeating over and over how important Kahlan is to Richard, to the extent that Richard is willing to throw away the world to find Kahlan, whereas I find the idea very romantic and speaking of an eternal love, the logic escapes the hero, that if the world is destroyed, there will be nothing left for Kahlan to come back to!!
Please please Terry go back to what you are good at, writing adventure stories, leave the preaching and preaching, or at least confine it to a few pages at a time.
the story only takes off in the last few chapters, after reading about 3/4 of the book where nothing much happens, apart from Richard pining and trying to convince everyone on each page that there is a Kahlan.
The last 2 or 3 chapters are what the whole book is about, I might as well have read those chapters and saved myself time and anguish

Better plotting, terrible politics - Rated
The Sword of Truth series takes an turn for the better in this book - but given the dire nature and feeble politics of the last few installments of what began as a good bog-standard fantasy this would not be hard.

As Richard chases across a strangely empty world (where has everyone gone) for the woman no-one else can remember he ignores the (apparently) massive armies wandering around looking for something to do or attack. Hopefully they will manage to do this in the next installment.

Just as it looked as though Mr Goodkind might finish a novel without an editorialising sermon on (a) the badness of communism (b) the evils of democracy or (c) the danger of pacifism, in the final few pages we are treated to a nice lesson on how torture is fine. If the good guys do it, obviously. If the bad guys do it, it is wrong.

I put down the book and had to wash my hands, as this left me feeling soiled. I just hope no impressionable youngsters are reading this stuff...

It gets two (rather than one) stars for the pace and the plotting.

Welcome back Terry - Rated
Chainfire is back to what Goodkind does best, exhilirating fantasy. I reasd this book in 5 days, which i didnt feel compelled to do in his last 2 novels. I like the fact that richard seems more human, the way he pines for kahlan he shows his weaker side, and right from the start this novel has you thinking wheres kahlan gone, whats up with richard? After reading this i was dissapointed that i had finished it so quickly. I am already eagerly anticipating Phantom

I jumped in at the deep end and loved it! - Rated
I had never read any of the series before and was given this book as a present. So I started reading this book with no prior knowledge to the series but the author was so good that you could definately survive with out it. I was glued to the book and could not put it down. the story had me transfixed. but to those who are considering buying this book you have got to have calm patience to know what the ending is. Cant wait for the next one in the series to come out!