So my reread of Sword of Shannara left a distinctly bad taste in my mouth - this was what I’d spent so many childhood hours reading? I was hopeful, though, that Elfstones of Shannara would hold up better. I liked it much better when I was younger. I remember it well enough to know that it’s got none of the Tolkien-clone thing going on. It’s got, you know, girls.
I’m happy to say that this is a hell of a fun book. It’s tense, it’s exciting, it’s got twists and turns, it’s got an ending that absolutely floored me as a kid and still holds up. It’s not going to change your mindset and challenge you the way the very best of fantasy can, but it’s a great ride.
It helps that Brooks barely connects this to Sword at all. The protagonist, Wil Ohmsford, is Shea’s grandson, and we get a brief appearance from Uncle Flick at the beginning. Allanon is of course a major presence, and the old king Eventine Elessedil was a minor character in his younger days in Sword. Shea’s Elfstones (given to Wil) play a big part in the story, unsurprisingly, but aside from those, this is nearly wholly disconnected from Sword. It takes place in a different part of the world - the Elves in the Westland are the principal nation here, rather than the men of Callahorn. The bad guys are completely unrelated to the Warlock Lord. This isn’t a sequel - it’s just a story taking place in the same universe.
Quests and McGuffins get a somewhat bad rap in the fantasy circles these days, but cliches become cliches for a reason. Quests and McGuffins are fun! Wil & Amberle’s desperate journey to find the Bloodfire so that the seed of the Ellcrys can be awoken, the tree reborn, the Forbidding restored, and the demons banished again has all that makes a good quest great. There are good reasons for it to be a small, secret company. There are good reasons (from a storytelling perspective) that the journey didn’t start until the 11th hour. The danger is well-done. All in all it works.
Speaking of Amberle - let’s talk about women. Elfstones has two of note: Amberle and Eretria. That’s like 1.9 more women characters than Sword had! (Sorry, Shirl Ravenlock, you might have been slim, beautiful, beautifully slim, slimly beautiful, and repetitively described, and you did a great job being kidnapped and rescued by a handsome prince, but you really weren’t much of a character.) The book fails the Bechdel test, but both characters are forceful personalities and major actors in the story. Neither one is passive in any way. There really wasn’t anywhere to go but up from Sword in this regard, but even so.
We do get a love triangle, which I hate as a rule, but it’s not overdone. Eretria isn’t subtle in her interest in Wil, but Wil is devoted to his quest with Amberle, and, as time goes on, Amberle herself. He’s certainly aware of how attractive Eretria is, but it’s not a source of drama.
One of my absolute favorite things as a kid was the sequence in the abandoned Elven fortress of the Pykon. It didn’t hurt anything that the awesome original cover depicted this scene, but I’m happy to say that this part held up well against my childhood memories. To refresh your memory: Wil, Amberle, and the last few survivors of their Elven Redshirt escort are trying to escape the Reaper that’s hunting them. They shelter for the night in the aforementioned fortress, which contains a backdoor leading to the other side of a pesky mountain range they need to get across. The Reaper catches up to them, kills a few more Redshirts, and Wil, Amberle, and the last surviving Elven hunter (Redshirt Home Guard Captain Crispin) flee into the fortress. They stop to try to collapse a catwalk so the Reaper can’t follow, but the pins securing it are rusted in place and they struggle to remove them. The Reaper shows up, Crispin goes to hold it off, and Wil tries to draw on the Elfstones to help. And the magic fails him. Crispin is killed, but Wil is able to get enough of the pins out for the catwalk to collapse - he and Emberle are safe from the Reaper for the moment, but they’re on their own.
While all this is going on, of course, Eventine Elessedil, his son Ander, and Allanon are with the Elven army trying to hold the Demons at bay long enough for Wil & Amberle to complete their quest. Here we get something that is relatively rare in fantasy: a fighting retreat. Usually the fight against hopeless odds takes the form of digging in at a defensible strategic choke point, holding out as long as possible, and then either A) launching a surprise offensive that takes the enemy by surprise, carrying the day, or B) the longed-for reinforcements come at the last minute, carrying the day. Brooks has done both, but here he does neither. Instead, the Elves set up at a good defensive point, hold as long as they can … and then fall back to their next good defensive point. Rinse and repeat. It’s an exhausting way to fight a war, days of fighting and marching, fighting and marching. Any reverses are transient, reprieves are measured in hours, and it just drags. In a good way, that is, as a reader. By the end, when the Elves have been forced back to Arborlon and Ander is told they can hold out for another day - at best - I’m feeling the exhaustion right along with him. It’s an effect reminiscent of Brandon Sanderson making the chapter “The Last Battle” from A Memory of Light well over a hundred pages - it’s exhausting to read, and I couldn’t help but empathize with the Elves as I did so. It’s all pretty great.
As for the ending, with Amberle herself becoming the new Ellcrys - that holds up too. The foreshadowing is all there, and on a reread it’s very clear to me what is coming. But it’s also easy to see how this would hit someone who didn’t know what was coming.
One final point I want to mention. The Rovers are … unfortunate. Later on in the Shannara-verse they’ll be fine, but in Elfstones they embody pretty much every negative Romani stereotype there is. This applies to Eretria as well - she might be a strong character, but she’s also a very literal embodiment of the sexy, exotic Gypsy woman seen so often in Western fiction. Anti-Romani prejudice has remained socially acceptable far longer than most forms of racism, and I’m sure back in 1982 when this was published it wouldn’t have crossed the mind of anyone involved in its production that having the clearly-based-on-the-Romani Rovers being a bunch of cheats and thieves was in some way wrong. There’s many people these days who still won’t think there’s anything wrong with it. But that doesn’t make it right, and I hate to see it here.
Lastly, thank all that is holy, but the word “Shannara” is barely mentioned in this book. Because it’s the same narrator as for Sword, and he’s still mispronouncing it “SHA-na-ra,” not “sha-NAR-a.”
Starting Wishsong of Shannara next, which I remember liking better than Sword, but not as much as Elfstones. We shall see what we shall see.
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