The Sword of Truth

Beginning in 1994 with Wizard's First Rule, American writer Terry Goodkind’s bestselling fantasy series, The Sword of Truth, follows a group of heroes who fight an Imperial Order of villains desiring to wreak havoc on the world by wielding an ancient evil. The books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

The world of the books is divided into two main regions: the New World and the Old World. Most of the action takes place in the New World from which most of the major characters hail. The New World is divided into three main regions: Westland, D'Hara, and the Midlands. Westland, the region most like our own, in many ways represents ideas of the West. There, reason and technology reign supreme as opposed to magic, and the region is led by a chosen group of representatives as opposed to magical beings. Meanwhile, the Eastern region of D'Hara is ruled by a magician belonging to the family Rahl. Finally, the Midlands are ruled by a group of magically endowed women called the Confessors and their leader, the Mother Confessor. The Confessors possess the ability to use magic to place anyone under their influence, though, generally, they are said to use this power, not for greed or power, but for the noble task of seeking the truth.

The first book, Wizard's First Rule, introduces Richard Cypher who lives a relatively normal life in Westland until discovering that he belongs to a long line of magical, truth-seeking heroes not unlike the Confessors. Many of Richard's personal conflicts revolve around his refusal to submit to the arcane rules of the wizarding community, preferring to live his life as a free man. When the story begins, it has been twenty years since boundaries were placed in the New World to separate Westland from the magical kingdoms of D'Hara and the Midlands. A global conflict breaks out when Darken Rahl, the villainous leader of D'Hara, invades the Midlands with a mind to conquer it.



Richard enters the story after Kahlan Amnell, a Confessor from the Midlands, arrives in Westland in search of a prophesied hero: The First Wizard living in Westland. She believes Richard may be this hero after he is chosen to be the Seeker of Truth in charge of handling the Sword of Truth, the namesake of the series. The Sword of Truth is semi-sentient and can kill anyone it perceives as an enemy. At the end of the first book, Richard uses the Sword of Truth to cut down the villainous Darken Rahl.

In the second book, Stone of Tears, it is revealed that before Richard killed Darken Rahl, Darken Rahl had opened the legendary Boxes of Orden as part of his plan for world domination. When the last Box of Orden was opened, the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead was torn down, causing a predictable amount of chaos for the dwellers in the New World. Meanwhile, a group of magical would-be conquerors from the Old World arises. Calling themselves the Imperial Order, they threaten to destroy the New World's way of life. Richard finds himself aligned with the Sisters of the Light who, hailing from the Old World, are tasked with training non-magical humans to become wizards. Richard and Kahlan fall in love; Kahlan barely escapes death at the hands of the Imperial Order but is saved at the last moment by a mysterious ally named Zedd.

Following five more books, the series ends with a trilogy known as The Chainfire Trilogy. These books are separately called Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor. In them, Richard battles the villainous Sisters of the Dark who cast a spell erasing Kahlan's memory and everyone else's memory of Kahlan. The spell doesn't work on Richard because he protects himself with a counter-spell of his own. Kahlan is kidnapped by the Sisters of the Dark who are allied with Jagang, the villainous leader of the invasion into the New World by the Old World's Imperial Order. Richard, eventually, defeats his adversaries, but the only way for him to restore Kahlan's memory is to use the dangerous Boxes of Orden which had been used earlier by Darken Rahl to lift the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead. Doing so creates a shadow world identical to the one the heroes inhabit. Richard banishes his remaining adversaries and their allies to this shadow world where magic doesn't exist.



Unfortunately, the individuals with non-magical blood must also be banished to this world, otherwise magic would die out due to breeding with these non-magical people. It is suggested that the shadow world Richard creates is our own: non-magical and full of evil people.
Spanning eleven novels as well as various prequel and sequel series, The Sword of Truth is a modern fantasy of epic proportions.