Debt of Bones.

OK, well, yeah. Now that I have read this particular short novel, I’m quite happy never to read any other Goodkind again.

I’m sure if I hadn’t read the story with a slightly jaundiced eye, I’d have just called it really really meh. Our main character, the wizard Zedd, is a godlike Marty Stu. And Goodkind did introduce the Mord-Sith, not because they actually helped the story at all, but because, dude, chicks in leather!

Abby, our protagonist, I actually sympathized with. Her character was developed well, and I understood her motivations. But she had to put up with Zedd, and failed utterly to slap him upside the head, which is probably what I would have done.

Heh, the next story in the collection is one of Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker stories. I will probably find reasons to dislike this one, too, because Card is a homophobic bigot.