I was under-impressed with Wizard's First Rule, so I gave the TV series a miss, figuring that a TV series is unlikely to improve upon a book, and WFR needed lots of improving.
The "Oh My Gods That's So Terrible and Unexpected" plot twist involving who was on whose side was impossible for me not to see coming from about page 50 (out of an approximately 92131346-page book). And the whole part about what happened to the Seeker when he was a prisoner went on. And on. And on. And oooooooonnnnnnnnnnnn.
The book could have been about 1/3 the length and not lost anything of value.
The one thing that Goodkind has over Martin is that Goodkind is easy to follow (perhaps too easy, actually, since you can follow Goodkind to places he's going before he ever gets there). I got 2/3 of the way through Martin's A Game of Thrones before I realized that in order to have any idea of why certain things were going on, I needed to remember that So-and-so was Such-and-such's ex-sister-in-law's-cousin's-friend's-former-roommate, who had mortally offended Such-and-such's sense of aesthetics by doing something insignificant that was mentioned briefly in passing on page 2. I don't want to have to take notes in order to follow a novel. I never bothered to finish it. Life's too short.
-BP
