I was looking forward to Legend of the Seeker for quite some time. The idea of the first novel in the Sword of Truth series being made into a mini-series made me deliriously happy. Wizard’s First Rule is a wonderful book and I thought it would be perfect for a mini-series because the plots in any book in the series are intricate enough to lend to a long, over-arching story line.
Unfortunately, Legend of the Seeker was even more loosely based on Wizard’s First Rule than the Eragon movie was based on Paolini’s book. For those of you who didn’t get to compare the movie Eragon to the book Eragon, let’s just say that the only thing they really got from the book was a boy named Eragon, and a blue dragon.
The thing that bothers me the most is that they didn’t just leave out plot points (like in, say, Harry Potter movies) but that they changed them dramatically. The relationships between people in the book were totally perverted and didn’t resemble the book at all.
Now, here’s where I ruin the plot points!
In Legend of the Seeker, Zed is this strange wizard that saved Richard because of a prophecy that the Seeker would kill Darken Rahl. First of all, in the books Zed is Richard’s grandfather! He and Richard are friends, not strangers. Also, they talk about the boundary having been in place for centuries. Centuries! In the books, Zed is the one who MADE the boundaries! Since Zed’s still alive, I think it’s safe to say that the boundaries haven’t been there for centuries. Then, a guard who dies in the the book magically survives a fall off a cliff and goes on to murder George Cypher, when in the book he was killed by Darken Rahl, who used his entrails to search for Richard. In the series, I guess they just disemboweled him for the fun of it. Next, Kahlan actually walks up to Zed and is like, “Hey, wizard, show me to the Seeker.” Now, I could be fuzzy on this, but if I’m not Kahlan only knew she was looking for a wizard, but she didn’t realize it was Zed until later. Lastly, the show has this “ceremony” where Richard is named the Seeker that really, really pisses me off. In the book they were like, “Yeah, so, the sword is yours. Take it.” And that’s it!
End of Spoilers
All in all, Legend of the Seeker makes me want to go cry into my pillow like a little girl. I can’t believe Terry Goodkind let them do this to his story. I may still watch the series in the vain hope that the Sword of Truth Universe will suddenly right itself, but if you remain unsullied by Legend of the Seeker then just stick to the books and avoid the show like the plague.

***UPDATE***
Thank you all for your comments. If you’d like to read more (including takes on Stephenie Meyer, Twilight the book, other TV-from-book-shows like Dresden Files, Blood Ties, and The Color of Magic), please visit some of our other links:

• Favorite Visualization of a beloved book.
• Midnight Sun and Copyright Law
• Stephen King: “Stephenie Meyer can’t write”
• The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• Twilight guest review
• Blood Ties the books v. Blood Ties the TV show
• About Book v. TV in general…
• Blood Ties the books v. Blood Ties the TV show, round 2
• The Dresden files books: Turn Coat, Deat beat, Stormfront
• Also a late, great, TV show (external link)

Moving Pictures is one of the funniest books in the Discworld series. It was a little unexpected to me, because a lot of it is straight parody rather than the more inventive, fresh material I’ve grown accustomed to, but that makes it no less interesting to read. This book made me laugh out loud, and that earned my some very strange looks when I was reading in public. Unfortunately, the jokes were, as usual a little too complicated to explain in a few words. The best option would be to just hand someone the book. There is, however, something hilarious in the way Pratchett depicts Holy Wood, the birthplace and moving pictures.
I can’t wait to get the next book in the series.