Living in peaceful Shady Vale, Shea Ohmsford knew little of the troubles that plagued the rest of the world. Then the giant, forbidding Allanon revaled that the supposedly dead Warlock Lord was plotting to destory the world. The sole weapon against this Power of Darkness was the Sword of Shannara, which could only be used by a true heir of Shannara–Shea being the last of the bloodline, upon whom all hope rested. Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of Evil, flew into the Vale, seeking to destroy Shea. To save the Vale, Shea fled, drawing the Skull Bearer after him….
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The Sword of Shannara
Terry Brooks
I really wanted to like The Sword of Shannara but it kept disappointing me over and over again. It’s basically Lord of the Rings but written about 20 years later and by an American author. It’s starts off as a typical fantasy ‘we’re off on an adventure’ kind of journey where we have the special guy who’s being guided by the old and wise magical guy. And it keeps up with the same characters and places from the LOTR books throughout, which are often so blatent I had to roll my eyes a little bit. So this review will be very spoiler-y for any who haven’t read it.
Shea is our small time countryside human (there’s no hobbits in this world) who’s never thought he’s anything special or that he could help the world. He’s sought out by Allanon, who is for all intents and purposes this series’ Gandalf. But he’s also sought out by some bad guys, who aren’t given a name but they’re working for Brona who is was ‘killed’ years ago but is now back as a bodiless spirit to wreak havoc on the world. We also have Flick who goes along with Shea even though it’s going to dangerous and he’s totally not equipped for this kind of thing.
Allanon also acts too much like a guide book. There’s whole pages of him just talking at Shea and Flick, about the past and history of this world. We get a lot of info-dumping at the start of the book.
The first part of the story is when Flick and Shea need to get to Rivendell… I’m sorry Culhaven which is home to the dwarves. Where they meet their very own fellowship. We end up with a human, Balinor, who acts half and half as Aragorn and Borimir, although Shea also takes the mantle of Aragorn as a lost heir. There’s two elves, who are Legolas and make up the numbers as we started to merge characters. Then we have Hemdel the dwarf who is obviously Gimli. The Prince of Leah acts as Merry and Pippin as he’s always been close to Shea, and he also ends up in his own adventure.
The Hall of Kings is basically Moria and the residence of the Army of the Dead. There’s a hall where our companions must not adhere to the whisperings of ghosts. Then there’s a hall filled with a giant lake, which (as you probably guessed) a giant tentacled monster comes out of to attack our characters. They must also get through The Hall of the Kings to continue with their quest, but then afterwards we lose one of the fellowship.
Then of course there’s the place the bad guy resides in. It’s surrounded by mointains, and the home base is Skull Mt. Of course the mountains are filled with venomous spiders, although not called Shelob and it’s really hard to get into the Skull kingdom. I can’t even give this one a slight pass because we don’t even bump into the spiders, it’s mentioned in a throwaway line which made me think ‘Of course there’s spiders’.
The clear plagiarism, which I’ve been informed is because of the time period and what publishers were looking for, just turned me off the book and made me quite bored. I read the majority in one day as I wanted to create a vlog of reading the series, I had around 100 pages left which I only finished 2 months later because I just wasn’t interested enough.
There were some good points in the book though. My main one was that people actually died, as in main characters that we knew about. This really shows the consequences of the journey taking place, and it was great to know that our main characters weren’t safe from death. But then again the main characters were the only ones that had depth anyway. We had the Stors which aren’t even introduced by name, but many of them help our characters in one of the chapters.
The book also serves as a great world builder for the rest of the series. I’ve watched the TV series which is focused on the second book and this looks a lot more original than this book. There’s so much history given to us throughout this one though, that I would hope the next one would be more plot focused and have more character depth. Overall, not a great read but it may be a necessary read for the series? (Let me know if you know more!)
POSITIVES
+ Includes death that actually impacts story
+ Great world building for series
NEGATIVES
– Info dumping
– Too similar to LOTR
– Lacks female characters (except for romantic interest)
Comments
10 responses to “Uptown Oracle Reads… Sword of Shannara”
Having a death that impacts a story is always something that grips me into the book for longer! Definitely going to have to check this out after hearing your thoughts and opinions. Thanks!! Xoxo
http://www.beautynbrushes.co.uk
Oh my lord, I can’t believe how similar this sounds to Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit. Thank you for the review, I really like that you’re always so honest.
Hmm I think I’ll pass! X
You know a book can’t be that great when it takes so long to finish. I have to admit I don’t think I would have been able to finish it. It doesn’t sound like it has much drawing you in x
Sophie
http://www.glowsteady.co.uk
This sounds like a complete ripoff of LOTR. I think I’ll just stick to the original.
how i have seen all of season one and not noticed this comparison? ahah.
i have the book borrowed from my dad as he likes it but im not sure i can ever pick it up because im not reayd for the commitment
Season one is actually based on the second book – So not actually as LOTR-sy as far as I’ve been told!
But yeah, the commitment to read the whole series seems a bit daunting!
Loved this book but then again I’m a complete fantasy nerd and pretty much most things in fantasy can be attributed to LOTR. It’s like reading the Middle Grade books nowadays and you see so many Harry Potter similarities (ie: kid goes to a boarding school for the gifted, a bully is involved, there’s a mystery plot, kid is pretty special and is part of some sort of prophecy..yadda yadda yadda)
I know it gets old seeing these but somehow some of us always come back to it 🙂
Yeah my main issue was that it was just a little bit too like LOTR – and since that was what I kind of grew up watching and reading it was a bit like meh for me! and I do struggle with Harry Potter a-likes too! Completely understand why other people do like it though, and I’m excited to read the rest of the series!
[…] plagiarism of Lord of the Rings. If you want to read all my thoughts about the copying read my review. Hopefully the next book will be […]