The Worst Book Ever

It takes a very special artist to create something monumental.

The act of etching one's own creative energy into a piece of art is something magical and, arguably, an essential part of being human. Those who are religious might say that the creative act is a step toward emulating God's own creation — those who are not might say that it's the defining action that sets us apart from the apes and the anteaters.

Therefore, it is an amazing person who can reach out with his or her mind and create something that is the perfect embodiment of an abstract ideal.

Author Terry Goodkind is an amazing person. His most recent book, "Faith of the Fallen," is the most staggeringly pungent piece of waste ever crapped out between two covers and sold to the gullible public under the guise of being a book. And after perching itself near the top of the New York Times bestseller list for hardcovers — and being released in a leather-bound edition — it's not a book that will politely go away and die. This is a book that has clearly reached out to troubled people, and made them get worse.

In its jacket text, "Faith of the Fallen" purports to be "A novel of the nobility of the human spirit. A novel of ideas."

FACT: "Faith of the Fallen" is a novel.
FACT: "Faith of the Fallen" is a novel of ideas, albeit highly specious ones.
FACT: "Faith of the Fallen" is a powerful reflection on the capacity of the human spirit, although it trends in a negative, rather than positive direction.

"Faith of the Fallen" follows, in excruciatingly lengthy detail, the adventures of Richard Cypher, a magic wizard king off to save the generic-brand fantasy kingdom of the Midlands. It opens with a tableau of strained, dull dialogue and cookie-cutter characterization that is commonplace amongst the teeming multitudes of J.R.R. Tolkien knock-offs that have glutted the fantasy/sci-fi marketplace for decades. The dialogue chugs along like a slow-witted hog searching for truffles in the desert, and that's fine. It's par for the course, with the occasional hubristic howler thrown in for spice:

Standing there, erect, masculine, masterful in his black war wizard outfit, he looked as if he could be posing for a statue of who he was: the Seeker of Truth, rightfully named by Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, the First Wizard himself — and Richard's grandfather. It had nearly broken Zedd's heart to do so, because Seekers so often died young and violently.

If only "Faith of the Fallen" would have as much good sense and grace. But it continues for a good 500+ pages before finally keeling over. And so the largely sluggish grayish-gray words of the book's opening chapters are soporific, but not particularly terrible, or particularly distinguished. But it's a trick.

The mind of Terry Goodkind has so much more to offer.

The first broadside comes when the reader grasps that Goodkind is trying, on top of his fuzzy, Levittown version of a fantasy novel, to squeeze out a subtle political parable. It consists of the following: Goodkind has read "The Fountainhead," and he uses a Three Stoogesesque fantasy rendering of it to re-capitulate Ayn Rand's basic Objectivist philosophy.

For fantasy/sci-fi this may sound like a promising beginning, but, alas, it's just the set-up for some buffoonish passages like the following, in which one of the characters is lectured by her evil, ultra-liberal mom on why the impoverished man who just brutally sexually assaulted and robbed her isn't really to blame:

"You don't know what made him do it. Perhaps he has sick children at home, and he needs money to buy medicine. Here he sees some spoiled rich child, and he finally breaks, knowing his own child has been cheated in life by the likes of you and all your fine things."

With brilliant consistency, Goodkind manages to make his arguments in terms so broadly and poorly rendered that they make Ayn Rand's painfully didactic writing style seem like a perfect ribbon of pure silken logic by comparison.

So, like the doddering hack sculptor who created the embarrassingly hokey sculpture of pure reason and faith that dominates the book's cover, Goodkind adds another layer. But his masterwork is not complete. To give it the final, perfect touch, he adds...

Brutal sexual violence!

Yes, explicitly and bloodily depicted, there's nothing like the almost completely unnecessary and occasionally graphic sexual violation of a female character to turn a book that was merely pompous, ill-informed and overstuffed with hubris into, arguably, the worst piece of literature ever created by a living human being.

It's like pouring vinegar into a pitcher of cream.

There can be no doubt that there have been published authors with less talent — much less talent — than Terry Goodkind. He's a serviceable wordsmith, easily capable of forging a perfectly diverting fantasy romp.

But, hobbled with a crazed, expansive imagination, hilariously hamfisted idealogy and a burning desire to be Really Important, Goodkind takes a minor gift, and stretches it until it explodes with the fabulous, life-altering poop of a literary Demigod from the Abyss.

Fans of literature should, under no circumstances, go into this book unprepared. But as an object lesson in the capacity of human creativity, "Faith of the Fallen" is supreme.

To those who would understand art, and its limits: Drink it in. Taste the badness. Wonder at the simple, perfect structure of the Greek tragedy, played out by the author, instead of the story: hubris, hamartia, and then... destruction.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)