Ugh, so fantastic. Mr. Goodkind provides enough description to his world without boring you will every nook and cranny, leaving you to your imagination as to how it looks truly. The characters are so perfectly defined that I felt I was having a conversation with them when I was reading. If I was forced to give anything even remotely negative for this novel. It would be: I found myself rather bored with the long trangents some characters (mostly Zedd) fell into. And sometimes skimmed through the dialogue.But would more than happily read the rest of the series when time permits.