Uptown Oracle Reads… Sword of Shannara

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)