Terry Goodkind

Biography

Goodkind was born in 1948, and his home town was Omaha, Nebraska. Because he has dyslexia, he found little interest in school, and therefore has no formal education. In 1983, Goodkind moved with his wife Jeri to a house he built in Maine and later made his residence on the coast of Lake Las Vegas, Nevada his primary home.

Goodkind has dyslexia, which initially dissuaded him from any interest in writing. Before starting his career as a writer, Goodkind built cabinets and violins, and was a marine and wildlife artist, selling his paintings in galleries. In 1993, during the construction of his and Jeri's home on the forested Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, he began to write his first novel, Wizard's First Rule, and his writing career was launched with its publication in 1994.

Goodkind has competed in various forms of amateur and semi-professional auto racing, and currently drives a Radical SR8 SM-500 race car for his own Rahl Racing team.

Career

Goodkind's first book, Wizard's First Rule, was auctioned to a group of three publishers in 1994 and sold for a record price of $275,000. He has subsequently published 16 other novels and one novella. All of his books, with the exceptions of Stone of Tears and Wizard's First Rule, have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. Of his recent novels, Chainfire debuted at #3, in January 2005; Phantom at #1, in August 2006; and Confessor at #2, in November, 2007.

Goodkind's 12 books in The Sword of Truth series have sold 25 million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages.

Genre and influences

While he acknowledges writing in the fantasy genre, Goodkind perceives his novels to be more than just traditional fantasy because of their focus on philosophical and human themes. Goodkind believes that using the fantasy genre allows him to better tell his stories and better convey the human themes and emotions he desires to share with readers.

Goodkind has been strongly influenced by the books of Ayn Rand, and is a strong supporter of her works and her philosophical approach known as Objectivism. Writing about the series in The Atlas Society newsletter, Willam Perry states that Goodkind's "characters, plots, and themes...are clearly and directly influenced by Rand’s work, and the book’s heroes occasionally invoke Objectivist principles" with Goodkind using the novels to illustrate these themes. Perry notes the Objectivist themes become most obvious in Faith of the Fallen, which made the novel controversial among Goodkind's fan base; moreover, the novel contains several scenes that echo the plots of Rand's books The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

Reception

Some of Goodkind's political views have provoked controversy, notably the dedication to his novel The Pillars of Creation (2001):

To the people in the United States Intelligence Community, who, for decades, have valiantly fought to preserve life and liberty, while being ridiculed, condemned, demonized, and shackled by the jackals of evil.

Don D'Ammassa described Goodkind as part of a "host of brand new writers [with] no previous experience writing fiction but who could turn out one large epic adventure after another", taking advantage of publishers' realization in the mid-1990s that traditional fantasy literature was a highly lucrative market. D'Ammassa described the series as having an inconsistent background that was reinvented and expanded in each new book, "regardless of how well it meshes with what he has previously established." D'Ammassa stated that Goodkind possessed "undeniable storytelling skills and a talent for inventing detailed and interesting societies", but described his characters as lacking depth, with a confusing morality that has "heroes performing acts every bit as heinous as those of the villains, sometimes with no apparent justification", and he ascribed much of the popularity of the series to its "perverse sexual undertones" and sadomasochistic scenes described in "excruciating detail". D'Ammassa also stated that the "rules" found in the books are actually witticisms and concluded Goodkind's books to date were unlikely to produce anything of interest beyond their present popularity.

Robert Eaglestone described the books as a "depressing read" due to the series' overarching cynicism, with a weakness being the heroic characters are only likable in comparison with utterly murderous villains. Eaglestone notes that Goodkind brings "a sense of evil that is genuinely disturbing, deriving from twentieth-century monsters like Hitler and Jim Jones" to the post-Tolkien epic, also noting that Goodkind's use of sadomasochistic imagery was interesting, generating a genuine sense of perversity.

Published works

#1 - Wizard's First Rule (1994)

#2 - Stone of Tears (1995)

The Sword of Truth Series: Story Arc #2 - Imperial Order

#3 - Blood of the Fold (1996)

#4 - Temple of the Winds (1997)

#4.5 - Debt of Bones (1998) (Prequel novella)

#5 - Soul of the Fire (1999)

#6 - Faith of the Fallen (2000)

The Sword of Truth Series: Story Arc #3 - Pristinely Ungifted

#7 - The Pillars of Creation (2002)

#8 - Naked Empire (2003)

The Sword of Truth Series: Story Arc #4 - Chainfire

#9 - Chainfire (2005)

#10 - Phantom (2006)

#11 - Confessor (2007)

The Sword of Truth Series: Modern Standalone

#12 - The Law of Nines (2009)

The Sword of Truth Series: Story Arc #5 - The Darklands

#13 - The Omen Machine (2011)

#14 - The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus (2012) (necessary prequel novel)

#15 - The Third Kingdom (2013)

#16 - Severed Souls (2014)

#17 - Warheart (2015)

Additional works

Goodkind wrote a novella titled Debt of Bones for the anthology Legends (1998), which was edited by Robert Silverberg. It is set in The Sword of Truth universe, a few decades before the events in the main series. In 2001, the story was published as a stand-alone book.

The last book in the last story arc, titled Confessor, was released on November 13, 2007.

In June 2008, Goodkind signed a contract to publish three mainstream novels with G.P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Books. The first of these novels, titled The Law of Nines, was released August 18, 2009.

In April 2010, Goodkind signed a contract to publish three more novels with Tor Books, the first of which revisited the world and characters of the Sword of Truth series. Tor Books published the first new novel, The Omen Machine, on August 16, 2011. Goodkind self-published the second new novel, The First Confessor: the Legend of Magda Searus, on July 2, 2012; the book was ranked #28 on the Kindle bestseller list by the next morning. Tor Books released the sequel to the Omen Machine, The Third Kingdom, on August 20, 2013, and the third novel, Severed Souls, which continues where The Third Kingdom ended, on August 5, 2014.

In January 2017, Goodkind's newest novel in the Sword of Truth Series was released, titled "Death's Mistress".

At some unknown time between September of 2016 and April of 2017, Terry Goodkind's official website was scrubbed of all references to the Sword of Truth series, and his Facebook page was made private or removed, potentially signalling that Goodkind may be moving on from his most well-known work.

In other media

On July 24, 2006, it was originally announced that the Sword of Truth book series would be produced as a television mini-series produced by Sam Raimi and Joshua Dohen. The series was ultimately dubbed Legend of the Seeker, in order to differentiate it from the novels and allow an episodic format of self-contained stories that moved beyond the first book. Raimi, Robert Tapert, Ken Biller, and Ned Nalle served as executive producers for the series, distributed by ABC Studios. The first episode aired in syndication on November 1, 2008, and the show lasted for two seasons until its cancellation in May 2010.

Severed Souls

An announcement video of the project was released on Vimeo, presenting it as a manuscript. On August 10, 2014, Severed Souls was made public and is now available in local libraries and bookstores.