Too bad. In book 6, he really stands the whole genre on its head.

Well, he might be operating under his own definition, but so what? That's his prerogative. I can see his point, which is that what he considers to be fantasy fiction uses magic in certain ways. David Eddings pulled a lot of the same stuff in his books through the voice of the characters. His arrogance practically oozes off the page but he doesn't have the balls to come right out and say so directly. Maybe Goodkind's wrong about how what he considers fantasy differs from his own writing, but your definition is no more right than his. And I can see his point about the issues of magic. Plainly he sees his magic as having a coherent set of rules and function in his universe, as opposed to other books where it just shows up and does whatever fits the author's needs, without rhyme or reason. Again, he might be wrong about the other authors' use of magic and so forth, but his definition of fantasy fiction as being about the magical elements or fantasy world is actually very close to one that I was given by a literature professor in a college course. And having read the whole series, I can also see where he gets off with his claims that it's about human beings and all the rest. Maybe he renders this poorly onto the page, but plainly he has done some thinking on the topic. If you want to fall back on the simplistic definition of fantasy as "anything with magic in it" that's your issue.


Yeah, that's a bit funny. On the other hand, he got two seasons of a TV show before anyone bothered adapting Martin, much less Jordan or any other fantasy writer, so maybe he's got a better grasp on his popularity than you and the other internet trolls do. My sister-in-law's mother stumbled over the series and was raving about it to me last year, and she's an English teacher. I would never have recommended the series to anyone with her literature credentials, but what do I know? Lots of people read it. Lots of people like it.

Those alleged comparisons are either so general or in the case of the Seanchan one, so ridiculous it undermines the intelligence and reading comprehension skills of the questioner. There is nothing remotely like the Seanchan and the Imperial Order, much less the role they play in their respective series, except they are both powerful empires invading the region in which most of the books take place. That "similarity" along with the other ones asked about, are so general and widely occurring that inquiring as to the specifics of the similarity to one series in particular speaks more to the questioner's general inexperience and ignorance in the genre.

He's not wrong. Those comparisons are simplistic enough to assume a callow reader.

The "former friend/ally/fan" argument is also a common one. Lots of people seem to think it gives them credibility to claim they were once among the fans or numbers of what they now claim to hate. Plainly Goodkind has put a lot of his personal beliefs and values into his books, and agree with them or not, you can't deny his apparent sincerity in promulgating those ideas. While I would also say it is plausible for people to keep reading a series that has taken a sharp turn and whose direction they now hate, or for people to have expected escapist fantasy fiction from the first couple of books (if you didn't get what he was getting into by book 3 or 4, you weren't paying attention) and then realized they'd stumbled into this objectivist propaganda nightmare and make the complaint mentioned above, his answer also has some plausibility, that their objections are to the values and ideas that make up the central themes and ideas of the books, rather than the quality of the story or writing suddenly going downhill. The quality of the writing, I felt, remained fairly consistent throughout the series, as did the story (what that precise level of quality was, is a different issue altogether) but he does have a point in his claim that their complaints are specious in this regard. The series did not change around book four or five. It was more or less what it always was. A lot of slower fans might have suddenly started waking up to what that series actually was around that point however.

Goodkind might be a bit lacking in false modesty, but a little open-mindedness helps to find the sincerity in his responses and see where he is coming from. If he perhaps does not express himself in the best manner possible to put himself in a better light, well, his writing hardly suggests the man is a master communicator or glib persuader who can always portray himself or his point in the best possible light.