Goldstein was well established as a major literary
fantasist whose work could not be loosely fit into a
predefined category or easily described, but the
complexity and originality of her work may have
discouraged more casual readers. Strange Devices of
the Sun and Moon(1993) moved closer to main-
stream fantasy, using a historical setting with a
magical overlay. During the reign of Elizabeth I,
the queen of the fairies and her entourage travel to
London in search of her missing son.
The god of summer becomes so fond of living
in the world of humanity in Summer King, Winter
Fool(1994) that he refuses to return to the sky to
change the seasons, plunging the world into an
eternal winter. Walking the Labyrinth(1995) follows
the adventures of a woman whose investigation of
certain fantastic events rumored to have happened
to family members leads to her pursuit by a myste-
rious organization. The best of her recent novels is
Dark Cities Underground(1999), in which an inves-
tigation into the life of a fantasy writer reveals that
many of the incidents he related actually occurred.
Her most recent novel, The Alchemist’s Door
(2002), is also excellent, a historical fantasy in
which John Dee travels to Prague and becomes in-
volved in the construction of the fabulous golem.
Goldstein has produced a small but steady
stream of excellent short stories along with her
novels, including “Daily Voices” (1986), “Bread-
crumbs and Stones” (1993), and “Finding Beauty”
(2004). The majority of these have been collected
in Daily Voices (1989) and Travelers in Magic
(1994). Goldstein generally avoids the traditional
settings and plots of fantasy and uses magic and
other fantastic elements as a way to reexamine as-
pects of human behavior that exist independently
of time or place. She has also written some science
fiction that deals with very similar themes.
Goodkind, Terry(1948– )
By the middle of the 1990s, publishers were sud-
denly realizing that traditional fantasy adventures
were drawing very large audiences, and a host of
brand new writers were introduced who had no
previous experience writing fiction but who could
turn out one large epic adventure after another,
usually grouped in trilogies or even longer series. A
case in point is Terry Goodkind, whose first pub-
lished work was Wizard’s First Rule(1994) and who
has not left that setting for any of his next eight
novels. His only short work, a novella, is actually a
prequel to his main series. The title refers to a se-
ries of “rules” that are actually witticisms and not
rules at all.
The opening novel introduces Richard Rahl,
who believes himself to be a humble villager but
who finds out otherwise when the magical barrier
protecting his people from an unspecified evil
menace begins to fail. The author had apparently
not thought out his background very thoroughly,
because it is often inconsistent. No one in the vil-
lage has any recollection of what lies on the other
side, for example, even though the barrier was
erected in living memory. Rahl rescues the beauti-
ful Kahlan Amnell from a band of assassins and
discovers that she is the last of her order, a kind of
magically powered police force from beyond the
barrier, and that her kind has been nearly extermi-
nated by the minions of a powerful evil wizard,
who turns out to be Richard’s father. A wise but
cranky hermit friend is later revealed to be
Richard’s grandfather and protector as well as the
most powerful wizard who ever lived, maybe.
The Sword of Truth series continues with
Stone of Tears(1995). Although the evil wizard is
dead and Richard rules in his place, death does not
necessarily preclude the villain from meddling in
the affairs of the living. Blood of the Fold(1996) in-
troduces a new villain, an emperor who can exert
power through people’s dreams and whose follow-
ers are fanatically loyal and apparently exist in un-
countable numbers. Goodkind routinely expands
and reinvents his world for each new book, regard-
less of how well it meshes with what he has previ-
ously established. Temple of the Winds (1997)
continues in the same vein, with a storehouse of
magical artifacts caught between the forces of good
and those of evil.
Soul of the Fire(1999) and Faith of the Fallen
(2000) continue the bedevilment of the two lover
protagonists, who are separated once again as an-
other megalomaniac seeks to rule the world. Debt
of Bones(2001) is a novella that describes the final
battles in the war that ended with the erection of
the magical barrier. There is an endless winter and138 Goodkind, Terry