Shroud of Eternity: Sister of Darkness

The Nicci Chronicles, Book 2

By: Terry Goodkind

Narrated by: Christina Traister

Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

Shroud of Eternity picks up where Terry Goodkind's New York Times bestseller Death's Mistress left off, promising a thrilling brew of bloodshed, sex, deception, and sorcery.

The formidable sorceress Nicci and her companions - the newly powerless Nathan and the youthful Bannon - set out on another quest after driving ruthless Norukai slavers out of Renda Bay. Their mission: restore Nathan's magic and, for Nicci, save the world.

Guided by the witch-woman Red's mysterious prophecy, the trio makes their way south of Kol Adair towards a wondrous city shrouded behind time, Ildakar. But the grotesque omens on their path to Nathan's salvation - severed Norukai heads on pikes, a genetically modified monster, and a petrified army of half a million - are just a taste of the unimaginable horrors that await within the Shroud of Eternity.

©2017 Terry Goodkind (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Frustrated due to narration

The narrator ruined this book. She overly enunciates and her inflection is just all over the place. It’s like she knows how to read but has no idea what the words mean so she says everything up and down OR she went through and removed all the words she didn’t know how to pronounce then read everything 3-4 words at a time and then after asking someone to pronounce the other words she added them back.
The way she narrates makes it impossible to get attached or even like the characters which is unfortunate because the story is good.
I will never listen to anything the woman narrates again.

please no more christina...

The story is great, as usual, but the narrator ruins it. She makes it sound like a cheap, over acted tv series. :( Most of the previous books were Game of Thrones quality. Her narrations are like the Sword of Ttuth TV series.

Confused and Disappointed (With Spolier Alerts)

These comments will probably not make me popular with die-hard fans, but as I consider myself one of the first fans I am not going to let that bother me. I will start by saying that I question the wisdom of audio production directors who would allow a narrator that constantly mispronounces words, has absolutely no grasp of the characters she is attempting to emulate by representing each character in a frustrating deadpan monotone speech pattern, and her reading in various chapters of the book just sounds like one long constant drone which is only broken when her current character suddenly sounds like a whining, screeching teenager. As for the story,(SPOILER ALERT), where is the powerful, decisive sorceress we have come to know and love. Instead we are faced with a character who is constantly lamenting over how much she is going to have to cut to save the patient, Ildakar, and only finally attempting to take action when her bonded panther is threatened. Terry Goodkind's depiction of Nicci's character, as with other character's in the SOT series, has the unnecessary drone of constantly dwelling on the same repetitive thoughts throughout the book to the frustrations of it's readers. As with Nicci, Nathan's character is a lot less than we expect of him. He comes off as somewhat hopeful but also beaten and defeated, having to rely on others to solve his problems. As I am writing a review and not a book I will summarize my review by saying that Terry's publisher should not have been afraid to tell him that 80 chapters for this book was an overly ambitious attempt at massively and unnecessarily increasing the word count of the story, and that if he had written this one as he had done the original SOT series, he could have productively written this book in less than half the chapters and totally blown away his fans.

Christina Traister sucks

She makes the story sound dry and hard to follow. Bring back Sam Tsouchavas for all seeker books

*Spoiler Alert*: Yet another barrier has come down

If you’re optimistically hoping that this isn’t another one of Goodkind’s cliche “a barrier/veil/wall of some sort has went down and now we have to deal with what’s beyond it.” books then you’re going to be disappointed.

I think this makes 8-9 times this ‘hook’ has been used by my count. Let’s see... The original Barrier between lands, veil to the underworld, another barrier between lands, entrance to the temple of the winds, another barrier to the lands of pristinely ungifted, barrier to the third kingdom, veil to the city/keep in Nicci’s first book, and now this book.

Also, early on in Ch 22 the author misnames something from a previous book (the name of the statue Richard crafted that was so moving it set off a revolt). I mean come on - the man isn’t even truly trying.

On the other hand - Nicci’s books aren’t near as preachy as Richard’s. Every conversation isn’t quite the dragged out reputation of the same concept over and over with intelligent characters suddenly acting dense to give Richard the chance to keep explaining.

Performance wise, the reader has a tendency to be a bit monotone (and with the rakish Nathan’s voice of all people), there are also a lot of mid sentence awkward pauses that I guess you’re supposed to pretend didn’t happen.

Goodkind

I love the Sword of Truth series. This story, seemed to return to the subsequent Richard and Kahlan novels in which Goodkind thinks his audience is an idiot and has to repeat things he thinks we’ve forgotten.

Additionally, I don’t think I realized it before (and maybe it’s just the performer) but Bannon seems to be such a flat, dimwitted character that I cannot figure out what his role is.

I will continue to listen to these books because I love the universe that Goodkind has created. I am hopeful that Goodkind will return to the epic writing style that was the Sword of Truth series.

Dry, dry, dry

Both the story and performance are very dry. I have tried a number of times to listen to this but can’t last more than 5 minutes before I have to turn it off.

Terry’s earlier books were some much better, it almost seems like a different author.

Very disappointed

Could do with a better narrator

Love Terry Goodkind's stories. I didn't care for the narrator. Very choppy cadence. She has a really weird up-turn in the middle of sentences.

It's even better than the last one!

This book gets better and better as it goes. There's plenty of action and much more magic than in his other books. The deviant nature of evil is explored in shocking ways that I never would have expected--something Goodkind always excels at. I enjoyed this book more than the first Nicci book, but I can't figure out how to explain why, without major spoilers. The ending is exciting and satisfying, while still leaving me hooked, craving the next book in that delicious way that only a great series can. I loved it!

Not horrible but a lot of plot holes

I am hopeful that at some point the author will stop repeating the same story across multiple characters. Also it would be a well deserved break for all his readers to not hear that Nicci loves Richard yet again. Bannon finally has some character development towards the end of this book but how is he in the middle of total chaos standing around watching a fight. I have read or listened to all the books in the sword of truth series but they are almost getting to a point of unlistenable. I would recommend reading instead because at least you could then skim over the parts that he is rehashing for the thousandth time. The action scenes have some plot holes whereby the main characters never seem to learn til it’s too late.