Kevin's Watch

I read most of the books in the series and found myself disliking them the more I read, but I dont know exactly where to place the criticism.

Anyone else read these books and have thoughts/comments on them?

Yeah; we've done that already several times in this forum. Go to the bottom of the page and you'll see the "Goto Page" thingie; my guess is Shannara is somewhere on page 4 or 5.

There's also some Terry Brooks-bashing in the General Literature Discussion forum of the Library. Nothing terribly insightful, though, if I recall.

i thought they were very good books...entertaining, good stories, characters...i dont know why people bash his stuff so much

"Nothing terribly insightful." OH Thanks Alot!

theDespiser wrote:i thought they were very good books...entertaining, good stories, characters...i dont know why people bash his stuff so much

If I had read Shannara before The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and LOTR, I would tend to agree with you, because Brooks is a good enough writer to keep me reading. But, I didn't read it first, and couldn't help but compare it to LOTR, which, no matter how many times I read it, comes off as a brilliant epic, while Shannara was just goo, but not particularly original. This is just my opinion; if you like it, that's fine. There are several books I like that most other people don't. It's just a matter of taste.

Hey, I said I could't recall! That place brings back bad memories.

well, as a matter of fact, i read em AFTER TCTC and BEFORE LOTR(although i had started the Hobbit before i read the first Shannara book)

and still liked em...i dont get in the habit of comparing stories(except TCTC and LOTR)...mainly im just looking for another world to invade and read about and new stories and characters...

I enjoyed the first Shannara trilogy a lot. Great adventure story. I particularly like the two Jachyra battles we saw, and I'd pay Brooks several hundred dollars to write a few more paragraphs of the one against Garet Jax!

And I think that, when Brin Ohmsford was seduced by the Ildatch, she was among the most powerful forces I've ever read. If she ever got control of herself, and thought clearly, she could have done just about anything!

I also liked the Dagda Mor, Changeling, and Reaper an awful lot!

I liked the first trilogy and the Heritage of Shannara series, but anything that I read after that just doesn't excite me at all. Way too much milking of the Shannara world, IMHO. Raymond E. Feist suffers badly from this as well. Older stuff = good. Newer stuff = commercialized pap that they know will be eaten up by the die-hard fans, IMHO.

I give Brooks credit for making his stories interesting and creating some scary monsters (The Reaper and the Creepers, in particular), but I can't say they're incredible in terms of making me think "God...that was such a good book."

I like to think of it as reading a magazine on the toilet: Not particularly deep and inspiring, but entertaining and passes the time.

I'm about 80 pages into Sword and its not getting better with age. Perhaps once I've finally finished the first book.

I think the series could have benefitted by having stronger female characters in it.