Kevin's Watch

As Jay has very gently and kindly informed me that I'm an idiot, here's the other half of the forum. This isn't a lark... I really would enjoy some discussion about these two guys.

An author once said that Terry Brook's Sword of Shannara book was a 'war crime of a novel'. Pretty harsh.

I have met folk who liked that series .. LOL .. a lot!

as for me .. well nuff said

Heh, don't worry, I always confuse Terry Brooks with Terry Goodkind as well.-jay

I've never read Brooks, mostly because what I heard about his work always came across as being a bit boring and cliched.

The only Brooks I've read is the Magic Kingdom series, which I quite enjoyed. The Shannara stuff never appealed to me; it just looks too generic.

I enjoyed the Magic Kingdom series for a while... got a little old after the third book, though. A novel concept, however. I'd love to buy a magic kingdom, myself. Just one with a few less problems...

I liked the Magic Kingdom books as well, they were lighthearted and fun. I think I got to about the third book? How many of those are there, anyway?

Four or five. The weird wood nypmh with the hair down her arms kinda got to me after a while... too demurely and helplessly feminine, I think.

Terry Brook's concepts (along with Shannara: a blatant Tolkien ripoff) start out reasonably well and go into the crapper quickly-I refuse to discuss a writer of this caliber on a Stephen R. Donaldson discussion board. And I have tried to read his stuff and I am being serious.

Although I've seen the Shannara books in just about every book store I've ever been in during the course of my life, I've never once had the inclination to purchase/read them.

I'm not sure why ...

I've read The first Three Shanarra Books...Sword/Elfstones/Wishsong.
Deffinatly Sword...big LOTR rip-off...he just added Gnomes.
Elfstones, though it had some exiting parts, it was really drwan out, and not much of a story...but wishsong, I liked it, it had a bunch of stories (well two) going on at once, and there wre some exiting parts in it.
But both Elfstones and Wishsong seemed to be varriations of Sword, with the names changed. For that reason, I've never read any of the other Shannara books.

-BTW I went to school with a girl named Shanarra, I wonder whatever happened to her?

Only ever read the first three Shannara books. Wishsong had its moments, but my favourite part was the cover illustration of the wraith-like creature drifting along.

I can't remember my reasons for it at the time, but thats pretty much where I gave up. It was a story told too many times before. I don't even pick them up in the shop to read the blurb.

--Avatar

I read them thru the library. Not bad. Not great. Big tendency to write the same story over and over and over. Names changed to protect the profits.

Magic Kingdom was a good trilogy. After that.....naw.

He is a quick author to read. Nothing deep or lasting. Good enough for struggling readers to start with. Real Authors are more challenging.

I've heard Brooks actually wanted to write a LOTR sequel or something to that effect, but he couldn't get the rights to do that, hence he wrote Sword.

His early stuff is decent but definitely not incredibly deep by any means. I've given up on his newer stuff since it just comes off as recycled material from the previous Shannara books.

I will admit I'm indebted to him for getting me hooked on fantasy in the first place. I picked up a copy of Sword that my older brother had left laying around, and it was all downhill from there.