The Sword of Shannara

So, I definitely went into this with a lot of bias. Everyone had already told me this was a blatant Tolkein rip-off and Terry Brooks is a cheap hack. I can see where everyone is coming from, but I'm going to try to make a review of my own opinions.

The first half of the book, it was hard to avoid the LOTR comparisons. Brooks has openly confirmed his inspiration and his desire to write an LOTR that was a little less academic, a little more action based. That's fair. Did he succeed? I don't really think so. There were a lot of first novel issues. The third person omniscient narrator was a little too blatant in its perceptions. The characters were pretty bland and one-sided. You could say some of this for Rings too, but Tolkein has a prose that is a joy to read, where Brooks is (at this point at least), pretty dull.

The second half was a lot better. The distinct parallels are much fewer, and the new characters like Panamon Creel and Keltset made the action/adventure side come to the fore. One of the strongest criticisms of Rings is that pretty people are good and ugly monsters are bad, and Shannara avoids this with characters like Keltset and the healer gnomes. He at least recognizes his villainous races as complex enough to have good people among them.

The biggest issue I had was it kind of felt like Brooks read LOTR and said, “You know what this needs? Less chicks.” It took 342 pages to get a female character onstage, and her role is limited to being obsessed over and kidnapped by male characters and doing absolutely nothing herself. But no, let's add more blonde, white dudes and get rid of all those pesky womenfolk.

Parts of the book were enjoyable, but I think overall its going to be pretty easy to forget. Still, it's another classic of the genre I can cross off my list.