Another one of the weaker Sword of Truth books. I won't talk much about the good aspects, because those are pretty much the same from book to book in this series; the volumes vary more in the extent of annoying aspects. I'll just say that the current baddie of note, Nicholas the Slide, is interesting in a comic-book-villain sort of way; I enjoyed reading about him, but he didn't seem as realistic or fully developed as Darken Rahl or Jagang.

This is another example of Goodkind using a story to advance his political and philosophical agenda. In order to do so, he creates a culture that is a debased caricature of a philosophy he opposes; in this case, pacifism. It's easy to argue against something when you're arguing against a warped, unrealistic version of it that you created yourself--kind of a variety of straw man argument (not that it's never appropriate to use such tactics--I've done something similar in my own fiction--just that it could be handled better and more subtly (for example, see nature vs. industry in the Lord of the Rings).

Another complaint is that, in retrospect, the plot of this book seems relatively unimportant to the overall story, almost like a filler episode. You could say the same about Book 7 and much of Book 5. Have to say, though, I still enjoyed it on the whole.