I broke down and did some research. Without reading any of Goodkind's stories, the tale I see is this:
Goodkind's first book was entertaining, but very derivative. He denies that his books are derivative (or fantasy) because of his obsession with Objectivism. He believes that all fantasy is super-derivative of Tolkien, world or magic centric (Goodkind says that his books are plot-centric), and poorly written. Except for his.
All of his books read similarly, so don't bother with more than one (sounds like a Terry
). Expect his characters to lecture often, do stupid things (remember, plot is the focus, not character), and conform to stereotypes.
My take is that he (as he claims) doesn't read fantasy, and so is unaware of the developments that the genre has been making. He truly thinks that what he's writing is original, but he is too lazy to see if his ideas have been done before. Goodkind is what you get when you lock someone in a room for twenty years with nothing but food, drink, writing tools, and literature from Rand and Tolkien. They may insist that their work, despite any similarities it holds to their contemporaries, is completely original because the process used was different. Which is obviously rather silly. If you make your lemonade by throwing lemons at the wall above a pitcher full of water, it's still lemonade. It might be a little bitter, but it's still lemonade.
What I'm saying is that maybe Goodkind threw
Fellowship of the Ring against the wall above a pitcher full of shredded
Atlas Shrugged enough times that all of the words mixed together into a passable novel. It sold, so if the system ain't broke, don't fix it! *throws
RotK against the wall above a pitcher full of
The Fountainhead*
Poll