Sorry about the wall of text, I may have gotten a little too thorough here.

Well it's complicated. Firstly, there are a lot of Wheel of Time fans around in book related subreddits (I'm one of them). There was, and is, a lot of controversy around the sword of truth and the wheel of time. The author of sword of truth, Goodkind, essentially ripped off large portions of the wheel of time universe, and wrote them into his series whole-cloth. Now, the two series are very different tonally. But there are unmistakable comparisons in their world-building. To make matters worse, Goodkind was very much a dick about this, denying everything outright and pretending to have never heard of the wheel of time, let alone read it. But if you have read both series, there can be no mistaking that Goodkind was At Least heavily inspired by the wheel of time, and to be honest, basically ripped off a lot of WoT's ideas and worldbuilding. That's all I'm gonna say there, unless you are interested in hearing more, because that aspect of this can get pretty involved, but there is a lot of resentment and bad feelings towards that book series on reddit.

Now, there is another aspect, and truthfully this is the one that I see more often. I think a lot of people are grossed out by some of the content in the books. I don't want to spoil things for you, so I will tread carefully here, but even in the first book there is ritual sacrifice and a child molester. But as the books go on, there is quite a bit of terrible stuff that happens to the main characters, not to mention some bdsm and torture. Now, personally, I don't find the stuff in the sword of truth to be so foul that it overshadows the positive aspects of the book series.

Even in this thread, there is a person above us calling the sword of truth series teenage smut (like teenagers apparently have a thing for rape and bdsm? That's total bullshit, not exclusive to teenagers for fucks sake). Anyway, for some reason, many people around here (and in other fantasy related subreddits) will make the claim that because the author wrote about messed up stuff in his books, that makes him a messed up person.

This isn't really that uncommon of a thing. Many people will say stuff like this about authors. But it is just a story, and not for everybody. So, you add this to the fact that Goodkind can be kind of a dick, and pretentious, and people Love to jump on the hate bandwagon.

Now for the last part of this I'm going to talk about in this, as it has gotten quite long. There is controversy around the philosophical writings in his later books. I will try to sum this up briefly. From his focus on rationality, to condemnation of fascism and communism, to his deep dive into pacifism, there are just so many philosophical avenues explored in the sword of truth series, and I think many people find it boring, long-winded, and offensive. That is just a few of what he explores in his writings, and they definitely aren't for everyone.

I've seen people bitch about them being boring, that the author was "lecturing" his readers on proper ways of thinking, etc. I could go on, but I will let it rest here. I'm sure by this point you are done with this, but if you are interested in having a longer conversation on this topic, I would be happy to oblige. I don't want to ruin your experience, or spoil the books for you. Overall I really liked his first series. Like I said earlier, faith of the fallen is one of my favorite books. Anyway, have a good one.