Started reading it and thought it was fairly interesting, but once the character's last name was revealed, the story became much more predictable and the book really lost my interest. If you've read any of Terry Goodkind's work before, you'll likely be familiar with some of his themes, and as in many of his other books, he has some characters go off on tangents that sound very "preachy" just to fill in the gaps in the reader's knowledge, which also has the added effect of seeming like the author just cheated the reader by spoon-feeding them information in the form of a soliloquy.
Overall, it was not a terrible book, but I had much higher hopes for this book when I first picked it up in an airport book shop. The back cover blurbs seem to imply that this book is a thriller, which would be a departure for Goodkind from his other titles. But make no mistake, despite the "thriller"-ish blurbs on the back cover and the fact that it was reviewed by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and Midwest Book Review, this book is firmly entrenched in Goodkind's fantasy genre. I don't want to give away more than that with this review, but suffice it to say that if you're looking for the thriller that the first few chapters seem to promise, you'll probably be disappointed once you figure out what's really going on.
Overall, it was not a terrible book, but I had much higher hopes for this book when I first picked it up in an airport book shop. The back cover blurbs seem to imply that this book is a thriller, which would be a departure for Goodkind from his other titles. But make no mistake, despite the "thriller"-ish blurbs on the back cover and the fact that it was reviewed by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and Midwest Book Review, this book is firmly entrenched in Goodkind's fantasy genre. I don't want to give away more than that with this review, but suffice it to say that if you're looking for the thriller that the first few chapters seem to promise, you'll probably be disappointed once you figure out what's really going on.