Beginning with Wizard's First Rule and continuing with six subsequent fantasy masterpieces, Terry Goodkind has thrilled and awed millions of readers worldwide. Now Goodkind returns with a broad-canvas adventure of epic intrigue, violent conflict, and terrifying peril for the beautiful Kahlan Amnell and her husband, the heroic Richard Rahl, the Sword of Truth.
Richard Rahl has been poisoned. Saving an empire from annihilation is the price of the antidote. With the shadow of death looming near, the empire crumbling before the invading hordes, and time running out, Richard is offered not only his own life but the salvation of a people, in exchange for delivering his wife, Kahlan, into bondage to the enemy.
Naked Empire (2003) 725 pages by Terry Goodkind.
This is the eighth book in The Sword of Truth series. Each book has picked up where the previous book left off. We are now two and a half years from when Richard met Kahlan at the beginning of Wizards First Rule. Pillars of Creation (SoT 7) had Jennsen and Oba as the main characters. These two were pristinely ungifted children of Darken Rahl. Having no spark at all of the gift [of magic], these two were unaffected by magic, and couldn't perceive magic either.
In Naked Empire Goodkind introduces a whole empire, that's in the title, of these pristinely ungifted people. Descendants of Lord Rahl of 3000 years ago. Bandakar has been sealed off almost since they were banished from D'hara, but the barrier to them fell much as the boundaries between Westland, the Midlands, D'hara, and the Old World have also fallen. With the boundary down, the Order had invaded Bandakar.
Bandakar has been isolated for 3000 years and has kept a belief system of nonviolence. Goodkind spends time explaining to us, through the characters and the action, what these people are, and their belief system. On the other hand we have Richard explaining freedom is, and that if you don't fight for freedom, you let evil win.
Most of the story is set in the Old World, from the Richad, Kahlan, Jennsen, and Tom leaving the Pillars of Creation and ending up in Bandakar, with a few snippets of Zedd and Adie in the area of the Wizards Keep, and a couple of Verna and the D'Haran forces guarding the Midlands-D'Hara border.
I think the Bandakaran behavior was contrived in order to move the plot in the direction that Goodkind wanted it to go. The book was well paced, if flowed well, I didn't get stuck. One more thing, the characters that are off camera seem to move around a lot faster that the ones that we can see.
The main point is about freedom. The Order is one society that has enslaved its people, which was detailed in Faith of the Fallen (SoT 6). Goodkind is showing us another society which is stunting its people, curtailing the freedom of the people. The scene with Richard and the Wise One, could be called preachy. It did not overwhelm the story.
If you enjoyed the other books, this one will still be enjoyable, and worth reading.
