Richard and Kahlan barely survived their encounter with the Hedge Maid. Before they can be healed, their party is attacked by a cannibal horde. Only Richard and Kahlan are known to have survived the attack. They're rescued by the people of Stroyza and taken to their small village carved high into a cliff face. Samantha, a young sorceress, attempts to heal their wounds, but Death lurks inside. Without a trained sorceress and a containment field to safely remove the stain of Death left from their battle with the Hedge Maid, Richard and Kahlan will die. Richard has no choice but to journey into the Third Kingdom, home of the Hedge Maid, the cannibal horde, and other unspeakable evils if he wants to rescue his friends and save Kahlan. Can he put an end to the evil that has been loosed upon the Dark Lands and save those he loves before his time runs out?

THE THIRD KINGDOM by Terry Goodkind is the sequel to The Omen Machine and it is the fifteenth Richard and Kahlan story. For fans of the series, THE THIRD KINGDOM continues to follow the same formula that has made Terry Goodkind a bestseller. He offers a diverse and tangled world of political power struggles, relentless characters who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, action sequences that push his characters past their limits of endurance, and the struggle of good versus evil with good hanging on. This is an extensive world and if you're new to the series it will be hard to follow. With fifteen books, Mr. Goodkind can't take the time to develop how relationships between all characters began and how they've changed over the course of this series. I do suggest beginning with the first book Wizard's First Rule if you're interested in this series.

Wizard's First Rule was for me an amazing story because it created such a unique world and set up Richard and Kahlan's relationship. The challenges they had to overcome were nearly impossible, but it was the internal struggle to accept their own strength and their own limits that made them empathetic. Fifteen books in, I find the same struggles and self-doubt a bit tedious. I also feel as if the writing standard has been lowered. The first eighty pages of THE THIRD KINGDOM is a near perfect recounting from a young boy of the events that left Richard and Kahlan alone and in danger. While those events are crucial to the story and Richard's decision to act, I question the use of this method to show those events. For the young boy to give such perfect detail of all aspects of the horrific cannibal attack which took place on a dark night stretched my belief to the breaking point. These actions would have been more effective if written as action rather than a retelling of the action when the reader knows the main characters are safe. I found much of the story to be long discussions of events that took place previously which does slow the immediacy of the action down. The story does pick up nearly two-thirds of the way through. Mr. Goodkind's world is vast and there is lots of information that must be given for the story to make sense. His history of this world spans thousands of years. This deeply visualized history is one of the reasons that make him a much loved author. It also tends to overwhelm the current story at times and bring the action to a halt as that history is explained to the reader.

THE THIRD KINGDOM by Terry Goodkind continues to expand the world he first began with Wizard's First Rule. Over the course of fifteen novels, this world truly feels like a vast and complicated world with vying political systems. It's intriguing, culturally diverse, and complex. It can also be overwhelming if you've not read any of his previous novels. There's much to recommend this series, but I would definitely start with the first book so this world can be appreciated and Richard's continuing evolution can be seen. THE THIRD KINGDOM isn't my favorite Terry Goodkind novel, but as always I'll keep reading Richard and Kahlan stories in the hopes that one day, they'll actually get their happily ever after.