[Zanth13]

Xander;245793 said:

And doesn't it say that the races of dwarves, trolls and some others evolved after the Apocalypse? Like from the twisted races of humanity left over?

The Elves are separate I believe.

you might just be right I dont remember

[Dancer+]

Dwarves are stunted human's who had lived under the mountains for too long, I remember. The Elves had retreated to a separate island where they were being harrowed by demons, someone is given the quest of bringing the Elves back to the fourlands. I'm not sure about the origins of Giants and Gnomes.

[Dr Trouble]

When I read the books when I was 14 I really enjoyed them. It got a little boring towards the later books as it felt old. But overall I liked it. And I'd pick up new books and give them a read if I was ever really bored.

The thing about Terry Brooks is that if he wasn't writing suck cliches, he'd be a pretty good author.

[Falcdragon]

A read a couple of the trilogies, but ended up stopping when I realised that the books were so similar that I was getting confused as to whether or not I'd already read a book due to the similarities between them.

[stone monkey]

An old (very old) friend of mine refers to these books as: The [insert proper noun here] of Shannara series (it's a play on how most of the books are named) The books themselves seem to show about as much imagination as the title formula...

I can remember finishing the first, back in the 80s, and thinking: Is that it?

[Abyss]

I suppose they are YA fantasy fic more than anything. I came to them fairly early and enjoyed, although i imagine if i hit them for the first time now i would be fairly disinterested.

I still pick them up second hand mmpb after TB finishes a trilogy. They're fun fluff reads and he has some neat ideas once in a while - i liked ELFSTONES - which has some AWESOME mass battle scenes - with the whole demon invasion thing, and the flying ships in the VOYAGE series were good fun. There is also some singing and some use of 'the truth' as a force for magic which makes my teeth itch altho he makes it more or less work.

His characters are VERY cliché repetitious (young but ambitious do-gooder hero, steadfast sidekick, honourable rogue, tough/vulerable female, taciturn giant, mysterious mage, kind but angry dwarf, elf red shirts....), so if you can take the same basic characters with different names each series, hey, it's all good. He also typically includes at least one 'kewl' character per series who can be fun to read about.

That said, i did not particularly like the WORD/VOID trilogy, which i brought with me on a trip and finished mostly out of boredom.

TB's latest series is linking the WORD/VOID stuff to the SHANNARA stuff via retroactive apocalypse (Post-WORD, pre-SHANNARA) series, and i'm not particularly tempted.


All said, i'd say pick them up one at a time in the order they were written. If you like, continue, if you don't, no great loss to your reading life.

- Abyss, and yes, it's still better than Goodkind...

[Dragonstar]

Sword of Shannara is a blatant rip off of LOTR. I thought Elfstones was the best of Brookes work, the rest of which was pretty crap, first king was the best of the rest. Although i did read in Empire or some other film magazine that there was plans for a Elfstones movie, which done right could be pretty good.

[Optimus Prime]

Brooks just never changed the story. It got old...quick.

@Apt. The "Post-apocalyptic earth" comes into more focus the deeper you read into the series, I've heard. Basically humans obliterated themselves and the survivors found a world that was without technology...except for a few things like Airships and such.

[Zanth13]

Xander;256314 said:

Brooks just never changed the story. It got old...quick.

@Apt. The "Post-apocalyptic earth" comes into more focus the deeper you read into the series, I've heard. Basically humans obliterated themselves and the survivors found a world that was without technology...except for a few things like Airships and such.

and Airships are new as well (as they show up only in the later books) and the later books take place at least a couple hundred years after the first... maybe longer

[Crop]

I really enjoyed Antrax(book number two in the voyage of Jerle Shannara) other than that it is a bit...meh read this before

I wouldn't say that they are a bad read though, they are just a bit repetitive

[QuickTidal]

The last Knight's of the word from the WORD/VOID series, are told of a race of Elves living in blasted out California, and the one character goes looking for them in the second Genesis book The Elves of Cintras. I hear the Genesis of Shannara books are good....I've yet to try them out and see.

[Pallol One Eye]

I started to lose interest in Brooks during the Heritage series. I struggled to finish it and stopped reading him since then.

To put things in perspective though, when Sword was published in 1977 there really wasn't a lot of choice interms of epic fantasy. Donaldson's Covenenant series was published in 1977 as well. Moorcock's stuff, the amber books, Howards Conan stories, LOTR. Not a lot of other stuff that I can remember.

To give him credit Sword of Shannara was the first fantasy novel to make the New York times best seller list. Well that's what his Wiki entry says.

I also agree that Elf Stones would be an awesome movie. It is his best book.

[Lost Marine]

I read the original series when I was in middle school, it wasn't too bad for what it was, which is a quick fun read. Although I have to say that I always found how much trouble the main characters got into to be tiresome. It's like they just bounced from one shit situation to another. It got to the point where you just can't care because it's too much.

I did really enjoy the Magic Kingdom for Sale series or at least the first few, I thought that was a fairly original idea and they were pretty funny.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal;256590 said:

... a race of Elves living in blasted out California....

There are so many reasons why this is funny, i canot even begin to list them.

- Abyss, an' big wussup to my west coast pointy eared surfer homies...

[stone monkey]

Arguably it should be Elves, who spend their time getting blasted, living in California.

I too share Abyss' vision but I think Elves would be stoners not surfers...

[QuickTidal]

Abyss;258293 said:

There are so many reasons why this is funny, i canot even begin to list them.

- Abyss, an' big wussup to my west coast pointy eared surfer homies...

Oh my god Abyss!! This made me piss my pants laughing!!

It's funny how when I wrote that out I didn't SEE the funny....LOL

Great stuff!

[QuickTidal]

I wish to revise what I said earlier in this thread. The LATTER Shannara books....AFTER the first trilogy, are actually not bad, and venture AWAY from the Tolkien derivative and blaze their own trails. I only recently found this out....

...while I wouldn't touch the original trilogy with a ten foot pole...the Heritage series is supposedly slightly better, and then the Voyage, and Druid series are apparently good as well. I sort of spoke out of turn before having only TRIED to read the first book (Sword or Shannara)...though I have it on good authority that the other two from the original trilogy are Tolkien-esque as well.

Like I said before, First King of Shannara was pretty fun, and what I had READ of "Isle Witch" (from the voyage series) was good as well....not to mention my earlier post this week about how much I am enjoying The Genesis Of Shannara series (halfway through Elves Of Cintra now, and it's still good!).

So, grain of salt, it would appear as if Brooks stopped being a Tolkien derivative back in the late 70's early 80's, and branched his series off on it's own tangent. So, I plan to give some more of the latter books a read as well. I just don't plan on touching the original series.....I'll catch up on Wikipedia...LOL

On another front, I just learned that Mike Newell (director of Donnie Brasco, HP & The Goblet of Fire ect.) has signed on to direct a film version of "Elfstone's Of Shannara" for Warner Brothers. I like Newell. It'll be nice to see him tackle something on a grander scale like that. I love Goblet of Fire, and the Dragon chase scene in that makes me think Newell has it in him to do epic live action fantasy. We shall see.

[Giles]

I havent read them for a while but from what i remember the Shannara books do seem to mostly revolve around getting the magic stones to beat a bad guy.
I did prefer the Word and the Void trilogy though as that was more original and had some interesting ideas.
Haven't got round to reading the newest series wasnt sure if id like them when reading the blurbs so didnt bother, may get them at some point but im not sure

[QuickTidal]

Okay, so I am now a few pages from finishing The Druid Of Shannara (Heritage Book II) and I have really really enjoyed it. I have The Elf Queen Of Shannara on the ready to go. I think the thing I like most about Brooks trilogies, or quadralogies is how he spends one book on a few characters quest for the majority of it, while giving you little snippits of the others, and then switchingit up for the following volume and bringing those other characters to the forefront. It's very nicely achieved.

[alestar]

I've only read the original trilogy when I was in my early teens and liked them at the time. They were the first fantasy books I ever read, so I may have a soft spot for them. They were OK for when I read them, but not essential reading material by any means, in my opinion.

As stated by other posters, I agree that the original trilogy was a carbon copy of LOTR (I actually read LOTR right after finishing the Shannara books and this fact probably diminished my enjoyment of LOTR...*sigh*) and I agree that the writing style was more suited to YA audience.

Never felt the desire to read anything else by Brooks...