Your Shatner reference just got me going.
Goodkind easily sounds like one of the worst authors who thinks he's good. I mean, even Dan Brown seems marginally better.
You know, your problems with the book highlight my problem with The Walking Dead (other than the fact that I'm fucking sick of zombie-themed shit): they tried to be scientific and show that it was some sort of bacterium or simple life form that infested the brain stem and cerebellum and caused the dead to become zombies.
But they never explained how the muscles continued to get oxygen to avoid cramping and destruction without a functioning heart, or how the flesh kept from rotting. I mean, after a few good rain storms or a season of snow, all those zombies should have been finished even if their muscles continued to work by some magical means.
And therefore, at the end of the first season, I found myself saying, "This is just too stupid, and it's not really building to anything."
Sorry, but I felt Shatner's take on the Beatles and my inability to suspend disbelief with the Walking Dead (fuck, couldn't they have just made it magic and supernatural? Then at least the answer is "a wizard did it" or something like that) were better topics than Goodkind.
It explains for me why I tend to find zombie stories to be ridiculous; I can't suspend my disbelief at all and accept any of the premises provided, except for the symbolic one of the id overpowering the ego, I suppose.
And yes, virtually everything legal is a better topic than Goodkind, but sometimes I feel the urge to inflict suffering on readers here
Je suis méchant.