The Sword of Truth series- Have I read this before
Sword of Truth/WoT
Have I read this before?
This is a discussion that makes a lot of SoT fans sweat. They know Sword of Truth "borrowed" parts of the Wheel of Time, very heavily at times. They usually try to defend this with the completely and utterly LAME excuse that "Goodkind doesn't read any other fantasy, so how could he steal ideas?" or "Well, some ideas are all part of the human experience so it finds its way into all stories", Both explanations have been uttered by Goodkind before. If you don't read fantasy my good friend, why is a blurb of yours on the inside of "Lord of the Isles", praising the book as a work of "rousing action"? oh, I see, they made you read it, eh? Uhm hmm.
You should know I am not a WoT fan. I loathe the WoT...I despise the WoT. The Wheel of Time is the biggest hack job of the nineties, and Robert Jordan is one of the most overrated writers of our time, overshadowed only by Goodkind. But if there is anything worse than a hack, it is a plagarizing hack. Terry Goodkind should be ashamed, but he's too busy scribbling other people's ideas into his "notebook". Let's begin.
1. Aes Sedai/Sisters of the Light.
I encountered the Sisters of the Light in Book 2 of the SoT and had flashbacks to the horror that was WoT. A bunch of arrogant, spoiled magic-using women grouped together for the good of the world...I couldn't believe it, and the bad thing was, the group in SoT was even more annoying than the bunch in WoT. To get specific...both books have an older Prelate/Amyrilyn Seat that is driven from her position, to be replaced by a relatively inexperienced succsessor. WoT had Egwene and SoT had Sister Verna, a relatively lame character I have the feeling TG fleshed out to compete with her mirror character in WoT. Both societies treat men as inferior, both societies have little splinter groups. Both groups have a secret, dark, evil sub-group that no one knows who is in. Both use magic-controlling collars to heel people. Both splinter apart as the respective series' progress, and we are expected to care. I wasn't impressed with Jordan's group, and Terry Goodkind embarrassed himself trying to copy his idol's plotting.
2. The Blood of the Fold/Children of the Light
Jordan's Children of the Light are a society dedicated to finding darkfriends and advancing the casue of the creator. Goodkind's completely pathetic "children of the light" find magic users and sniff them out. Both have similar acting leaders and motivations. Both hide behind their mantles of righteousness to further questionable causes. TG is a f**king xerox machine here.
3. Rand'al Thor/ Richard Cypher
Both chaps start out humble nobodies, both turn out to be saviors of the world. Both fight to control the power of the magic within them, to the point of death and insanity. Both can't get a grip on their magical abilites. Both turn out to be really good swordsmen, far better than their training would indicate. Anyone want to tell me how much sword training Richard had before he started throwing the sword of truth around like Conan the Barbarian? I guess Goodkind thinks using is sword is just like playing drums: Hell it looks so easy, you don't need any training or practice to do it! At least Rand got some training. I felt embarrassed for Goodkind as Richard suddenly became "da bomb" swordsman, when in reality someone should have made a pincushion out of his arse early into the books.
Other similarities include:
Mord-Sith/Aiel. Both groups fanactically loyal the main hero
Darkfriends/Dark Friends. Those sworn to the Dark One.
Richard's Han excercise/ Rand's "the void"
As readers of fantasy, we have all run into many books with the similar plots and ideas. But is it too much to ask that authors respect our intelligence a little bit and not copy so blatantly? If you're that starved for ideas, that you feel the need to copy another person's work so readily, you need to find another profession, and that's the truth.
this section will grow as I refresh myself to the many other "similarites"....feel free to drop me a line and refresh my memory.
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