Long ago, the world of the Four Lands was torn apart by the wars of ancient Evil. But in the Vale, the half-human, half-elfin Shea Ohmsford now lives in peace - until the mysterious, forbidding figure of the druid Allanon appears, to reveal that the supposedly long-dead Warlock Lord lives again.
Shea must embark upon the elemental quest to find the only weapon powerful enough to keep the creatures of darkness at bay: the fabled Sword of Shannara.
This is the first time I've read Sword of Shannara in many years and I can still remember when I first encountered it as a very small Waylander almost forty five years ago. At that time readers and Tolkien fans like my father threw a lot of criticism at Terry Brooks along with accusations of plagiarism due to perceived similarities with The Lord of the Rings. Well... they were and to some extent still are inevitable. With that being said I'm going to attempt to write my review with as little bias as ten year old Waylander had.
I've always thought that a good review should have a few things I liked, a few things I didn't and a conclusion so let's get on. To begin with Brooks' world building is very good but I found the distances covered in the stated times to be somewhat unrealistic. Brooks' descriptions of Tyrsis are some of the best I've seen in fiction but I can't get away from Shae moving from the environs of Paranor to the Skull Kingdom in what seems like the blink of an eye.
The story itself is engaging with realistic believable characters but is so vanilla I can see where the Lord of the Rings rip-off accusations come from. Not that I think it in any way is a rip-off, influenced by most certainly but a rip-off not at all. It's the classic poor farm boy hero story we've all seen a million times by now. This doesn't make it bad, Sword of Shannara is an extremely well written tale, it's just that with it being the kind of story it is and Brooks' first novel shows... a lot.
With all that being said I do recommend Sword of Shannara with the caveat that it's a first novel and a tiny bit vanilla.
So, there we have it my thoughts on Sword of Shannara. I hope this prompts you to try Brooks as an author and Shannara as a setting, I promise you won't regret it.
Love your face - Waylander
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