The Sword of Shannara

Executive Summary: I found many parts of this book slow and uninteresting. The good parts were too short and the boring parts were too long. 2.5 stars.Full ReviewFor the past few years, epic fantasy has been my favorite genre. I couldn't get enough of it. Lately though, I've been wanting a change of pace. My plan for this year was to branch back out into other genres because I read far too much fantasy last year. So of course not only did I read this for Sword & Laser but I ended up doing a reread of [b:The Eye of the World 228665 The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time, #1) Robert Jordan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337818095s/228665.jpg 2008238] at the same time. Oops.This book has a lot of negativity around it. When it was announced the thread was full of people who seemed determined to convince the rest of us how bad it was. Most of their argument seemed to revolve around how derivative of Tolkien it was, and that part didn't bother me at all. I also found it not nearly as similar as people were saying. Maybe it were, I might have enjoyed it more.[b:The Eye of the World 228665 The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time, #1) Robert Jordan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337818095s/228665.jpg 2008238] is one of my favorite books, and probably the book that really made me love epic fantasy. So reading it at the same time, didn't really help this book's cause. Then again, I think I would have struggled with it regardless.My main issues are the pacing and the quality of the writing. The story itself was fine, though nothing particularly great. It seems as though this book was all about hurry up and wait. Pages and pages would go by where it felt like nothing was really happening. They were walking somewhere or talking about, well I can't remember what at this point, but it didn't feel important to the plot. Then something interesting would happen and it would be over really quickly. I wish he had spent more time on plot developments and less time moving his characters around.As to the writing, I'm not someone who needs brilliant prose to enjoy a book. Most of my favorite authors will never been awarded for their literary techniques. I'm even pretty forgiving to first time authors. The thing is, if you're writing is lacking, you need to make up for it with entertainment value. And this book just didn't. I found myself paying more attention to the words on the page than the story they were trying to tell. His constant repetition of descriptive phrases like “The Valeman”, “The borderman” and “The Northmen” became a huge annoyance as the book went on.The characters and the world building were nothing special either. I didn't really care about either. I've been mostly enjoying the Shannara TV show, which is apparently based on [b:The Elfstones of Shannara 189783 The Elfstones of Shannara (The Original Shannara Trilogy, #2) Terry Brooks https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1420148388s/189783.jpg 2121201]. The world building there seems more apparent and interesting here. We get maybe one small part where Allanon is info dumping about the past to give you any sense that this a post-apocalyptic version of our world (or one much like it) rather some standard fantasy world based on medieval Europe. What's strange is that Elfstones seems to feature female characters quite a bit, while this one makes them feel like an afterthought. How do people still exist without women? Oh they are there after all? Who knew? We go probably 500 pages before a women is even mentioned, let alone has lines. This is far from the only fantasy book with this issue, but it struck me odd after the show having several.Overall I think if this book had been 200-300 pages shorter and focused more on plot, world building or character development instead of moving characters around I'd have enjoyed it a lot more. I'm not sure if I'll try the next book or not. There is just too much to read, and not enough time and this one hasn't really motivated me to continue.

I enjoyed the story quite a bit, but when describing what characters were thinking or feeling, it just be came too wordy, and often redundant or containing unnecessary recapping of the story. It caused the story to drag a bit at times, and for me to actually think at a few points, “alright, I get it...” Also, the recapping of what happened a couple chapters earlier is as unneeded as it is is on modern TV shows when they do it after every commercial break.

This was a lot better than I remember. I read it when I was 17 or 18, some 30 years ago, and continued through the saga as far as the Talismans of Shannara. I see now there were many others!

So, yeah, it's derivative. I get that. But that doesn't make it bad. I'm reminded of why I enjoy fantasy as a genre, particularly when I'm listening and walking the dogs in the hills and forests of the Scottish Isle of Arran, where I live.

I'm not sure whether I'll continue through the first trilogy, but I imagine I will, given that I enjoyed this reread a lot more than I expected to.

I absolutely adored this book and I don't know why people hate on it so much. Yes it is very tropey and has several scenes from Lord of the Rings but it's not as bad as I expected. In several way I think it's better than Lord of the Rings.

Before you throw your phone, I'm not saying this book is better but there are 2 categories that Brooks absolutely does better than Tolkien.

1) Prose. The prime issue with people who don't like Tolkien is that his prose is too outdated mixed with slow storytelling. Brooks' prose is actually very simple and easy to follow. His story can be slow but he throws in a good action sequence every once in awhile to keep you engaged, which brings me to my next one...

2) Action. My personal biggest issue with Tolkien is that he's not very good at writing action scenes. When I read the book I just imagined the movie scenes most of the time which in some ways robs me of my experience with Tolkien but in some ways makes it way better. Brooks is significantly better at action scenes but he is by no means better than what we have today. Which is a great thing that we can have improvement from a book written almost 50 years ago.

What makes Tolkien better is his character development and world building. Although Brooks does a wonderful job with character development as well as world building, I just don't love it as much as Middle Earth.
I also really enjoyed the creativity of the monsters as well but once again, not better than Tolkien.

Brooks also used the word “awesome” about 30 times which I've noticed a lot of old books use this word. I think it's a little childish in adult books to be used to this extreme. He desperately should have consulted a thesaurus.

All in all I very much recommend this book to people who like Tolkien tropes but don't like his prose or to people who just want more of the same.