Temple of the Winds

Sword of Truth, Book 4

By: Terry Goodkind

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 28 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Book Four of The Sword of Truth, the series first begun in Wizard's First Rule, returns listeners to the world of Richard Cypher, a simple woods guide who never dreamed he would be named the Seeker of Truth and become caught up in magic, war, and dangers so extraordinary that the fate of his entire world would hang on his actions and decisions.

The dangerous, fanatical Imperial Order, under the leadership of the power-mad Emperor Jagang and his multitude of demonic underlings, unleashes a deadly plague. To find a cure, Richard Cypher and his beloved Kahlan Amnell must seek out the legendary Temple of the Winds, a fortress of evil sealed away for 3,000 years. But the path of the Seeker of Truth is never an easy one - even if he can reach the Temple at all, there is no guarantee he'll ever return.

Epic edge: listen to more in the Sword of Truth series.

©1997 Terry Goodkind (P)1997 Brilliance Audio

Almost perfect...

The narration for this book was almost perfect. The only problem was that he pronounced "Kahlin" like "Collin". He'd say "Collin" and I wouldn't know who he was taking about for half a second.

Great story, near perfect narration

I love this epic story and have reread it many times. Everyone already knows that Terry Goodkind is a phenomenal author, so buy his books. The narrator was great as well insofar that his tone, tempo, and characterizations were awesome. My only complaint is in how he pronounced Kahlan’s name. I know that proper nouns can be subjectivity pronounced, but every time he said it, I heard “Collin”, which is my little step brothers name. It’s kinda hard to picture the image of a beautiful woman head when every time that name is pronounced, the image of a short, bald, middle aged Jewish attorney immediately comes to mind. It was hilarious the first few times, then it got distracting. It would’ve been nice to have made some kind of attempt to feminize the name, perhaps by placing the emphasis on the last syllable, to make some kind of distinction that would make the name sound less mundane and masculine. He even mentioned a Sergeant Collins in one chapter and began the next sentence with her name, and the only difference was the “s” at the end. With that being my only gripe, it was an otherwise flawless performance.

Great story, wrong names.

It was so hard listening to this guy mispronounce Kahlen's name. Why wasn't he required to use the same pronunciation of names aa in the rest of the books?

Great read!

Best book in the series this far. Much better narrator than the last two books. Satisfyingly addresses many unfinished story lines in the previous two books.

Best read than listened to

This is unfortunate to say because of my love for audiobooks but more research should have been done by the narrator or the producer should have stepped in to introduce character name pronunciations. It took several chapters to discover that "Collin" was actually Kahlan which continues to the end. Fortunately Adie was a minor character in this volume.

Dick Hill is a very talented narrator. The voices he gives to each character and his story telling skills are above average. Unfortunately for this series the mispronunciations where impossible to overlook for such an iconic story line that Terry Goodkind has developed.

learn the names

how can you just make up names and get away with it Collen? for 32 hours? really

narator issue

narator miss-pronounced the names of significant characters and that was a distraction, otherwise really liked

Everything but that

I love this book I looked the narrator other than the pronouncement one of the main protagonists names. it took me out of the story almost everything he uttered it. Everything but that was great.

Lacked Consistency

The performances lack consistency in proper names. however, it was still amazing! thank you

Mispronunciations drove me crazy

Overall it was good and the story was excellent as expected with the same rich characters becoming deeper and the addition of new characters with the same signature complexity I have come to expect from TSoT series. I loved this story so much. The narrator didn’t do a terrible job all in all. His range of voices and ability to remember and stick to using the same voices for the same characters was very good. However, I really wish he would have at least listened to the previous book just for consistency sake for the readers of the series as his new pronunciations for key characters was very jarring and painful to listen to throughout the book. I will say that at least it was only a few and not every single one. He is a good narrator, but just a little research would have made this an excellent reading.