Reading is fun.

So, I’ve realised that I don’t write nearly enough about books in this blog as I do about games. Surely, that’s to be expected, since my future (present?) career is in games; however, I do love to read. A lot. I just haven’t been doing enough of it these days.

However, two days ago, I did happen to purchase a copy of Phantom by Terry Goodkind, and yesterday, I happened to finish it. Now, for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Phantom is the second-last book in the Sword of Truth series, which I expected would be just as frustrating as finishing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Fortunately, it wasn’t all THAT bad. But maybe I’ve just become desensitized to cliffhanger endings.

When I was fourteen years old, I discovered Terry Goodkind’s first book in the Sword of Truth series, Wizard’s First Rule. It was the best book I’d ever read at the time, which, I suppose, doesn’t really say all that much. Since then, however, I’ve been following the series. At first it was a matter of admiration, but then, after a) the series turned more and more political in a way that I didn’t agree with, and b) I matured a bit and discovered better fantasy novels, such as George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, it became more a matter of wanting to see how the story ends.

Last year, it was announced that, surprisingly enough, the series WOULD actually come to an end, in the form of the Chainfire trilogy. Phantom is the second book in said ending trilogy, meaning that it is not only Half-Blood Prince, but also Empire Strikes Back in nature. Since I am more happy when I have closure in my stories [1] than when I don’t, I dreaded the inevitable pain and suffering I would receive from being kept in suspense. And yet, I purchased the book on the day it was in stores anyway, because I haven’t bought any books in ages and this seemed like a good excuse to do so.

Then, for the past couple of nights, I tore right through the novel. [2] It was kind of nice to get lost in the story and feel the nostalgia of being fourteen again and staying up till the wee hours of the morning dying to find out what happens to the characters I’d grown to love and care about. Unfortunately, the nostalgia often got interrupted by moments of frustration, ranging from glaring holes in Mr. Goodkind’s personal philosophy [3] to the book’s editor not noticing that the word “throne” had been replaced with the word “thrown” on page 123. At the end of it all, I’d gotten basically everything I’d expected.

What disappointed me the most, however, was that for a book entitled Phantom, there was a major lack of instances of characters randomly belting out renditions of “Music of the Night” or “All I Ask of You”. That really made me sad.