Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First off, I am (was?) a huge SoT fan and like most everyone else, enjoyed the earlier books and tolerated the last few. I just finished The Omen Machine and quite frankly, I think I'm done with Richard and Kahlan (and TG as well). Don't get me wrong, I loved these characters early on, but with every installment, they get weaker and more one dimensional. But even so, this one surprised me. A couple of the reviews already posted hit it on the head. ALL the characters are mere shadows of what they used to be. The dialogue is very weak, stunted and repetitive, and absolutely nothing exciting happens in the whole book. Seriously, not one thing. What happened to the awesome power of Richard Rahl, when in a rage looses his power to blast through massive doors, blowing them from the hinges and reducing them to splinters skittering across the floor? What happened to 'calling the target' and 'dancing with death'? Now Richard just steps aside, "raking his fingers through his hair", wondering what to do. In this book, Richard's power and presence as a War Wizard and The Seeker of Truth is gone, and he comes off as just a guy with a cool sword. The rest of the characters come across the same. Bewildered and ineffectual. It's a shame because there used to be so much depth to these individuals, but in this book they are just taking up space. They're just not the awesome characters we've come to love from 'Stone of Tears', 'Blood of The Fold' and 'Faith of the Fallen'. Those books are among the best Richard and Kahlan novels. I'm afraid this one falls far short.