except that it's still too far away to make it in time. With Richard back in the world of the living, it is found that the touch of death inside of him is still there, and it will still kill him unless he can have it removed at the people's palace. Seriously, Richard shows more emotion over Cara's death than he ever did over Zedd's. And while her death was treated with somewhat more reverence than Zedd's, the character, and the fans deserved better than that. Oh no, she just shows up and dies on Richard's corpse so that he can come back to life. No explanation of where she's been, what she's been doing, how she knew to come, what she needed to do, or how she got a weapon that works on the zombies. Cara shows up out of nowhere with weapons that kill zombies. And this is where the book started going steeply downhill. Nicci has to draw on her past as a Sister of the Dark and enter the underworld to find Richard's soul and bring it back to his body, but once his soul is freed of the demons holding it captive, a life must be sacrificed to show him the way back. Meaning, already, right from the very first page, I was already more emotionally invested in what was happening than in any of the previous three books. So I both wanted Richard back, and I wanted to see how it was going to be accomplished. He was an awesome hero before Goodkind turned him into an angry, hypocritical douchebag. But here, right from the beginning, I had a stake in what was happening in the story. It didn't help that the things that WERE happening to them were either stupid, badly thought out and written, or just plain made no sense. They were different somehow, and so I wasn't really invested in what was happening to them. These weren't the characters I knew and loved. One of the biggest problems with everything from The Omen Machine onward for me has been that I simply didn't care about what was happening. Now, before I continue, I need to bring up one thing. Richard is dead, and Kahlan wants him back so she goes to see the Witch Woman Red to find out how it might be possible. It seemed like he was actually trying with this one, which is more than I can say for a lot of the crap he's published recently. When I say this book is "decent" in this review, you can translate it to mean "This book is decent, but only when you compare it to The Law of Nines, The Omen Machine, The First Confessor, The Third Kingdom, and Severed Souls." It's still not a great book, but it's a better book than any Goodkind has published in a good decade or so. Now, that statement comes with a disclaimer. So, the point being, I went into this book with such a case of lowered expectations that when it turned out to be merely mediocre rather than terrible, it seemed as though light was shining out of the heavens, Ode to Joy being sung by an angelic choir led by Beethoven himself, and little naked cherubs were flying around me. I mean, look at Wizard's First Rule, the parts of the story that are meant to be scary are genuinely scary, then look at Severed Souls, where Goodkind flat out says they're scary and doesn't do anything other than that to build it up. Gone is the good writing, the good storytelling, and pretty much any hint that Goodkind has any clue what he's been doing as an author. Gone is the well crafted, and often witty banter between them. Gone are the entertaining, distinctive, and, for the most part, well written characters. But, as a whole, pretty much every book Goodkind has published since The Sword of Truth proper ended has been garbage. That opinion has not aged well, as I think back upon that book with more and more disgust and loathing as time goes by. I superficially enjoyed The First Confessor, even though it is probably the absolute worst written book I have ever read that was actually published by an established author with more than ten published works under his belt, and at the time that I read it, I felt that The Third Kingdom was decent. It's no secret that I thought pretty much every book that Terry Goodkind has published since Confessor was crap. There's a bit too much to spoiler tag this time around. This review contains spoilers, both for Warheart and for Severed Souls. I superficially enjoyed The First Confessor, even though it is probably the absolute worst written book I have ever read that was actually published by an established author with more than ten publis An Opinionated Look At: An Opinionated Look At: Terry Goodkind's Warheart By Eric Allen This review contains spoilers, both for Warheart and for Severed Souls.