I distinctly remember the first time I picked up this book. I was young, and had recently finished Lord of the Rings (and then spent a month or two re-reading it over and over again). I found this at the local indy bookstore in my hometown, and bought it on my dad’s fond recommendation. I remember reading the blurb on the back, and was super excited to give it a read. Even at the time I recognized how much it was ripping off of Tolkien, but I devoured it nevertheless. And then proceeded to The Elfstones of Shannara (which Dad had in hardback) and The Wishsong of Shannara. And I kept on reading Shannara books, plus the Knight of the Word books, plus the Magic Kingdom of Landover books. Terry Brooks was my childhood pulp fantasy, in other words, though I eventually stopped paying attention in favor of other (and better) fantasy. But I have lots of fond memories.
With Terry retiring, I decided (with some trepidation) to read the concluding Shannara quadrilogy, The Fall of Shannara. I felt I owed it to Terry, and I was curious how the world would hold up to my much-more-experienced tastes. You can read the review I wrote here, but the TLDR is that I wasn’t too disappointed. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but it wasn’t bad, and was a decent enough popcorn read. Curiosity further inflamed, I decided to revisit the original Sword of Shannara and see how it held up.
Short answer is that it doesn’t.
I would be remiss not to give The Sword of Shannara its due place in fantasy history. Tolkien was something of a fluke, and publishers didn’t think there was really a place for fantasy books outside of pulp. Ballantine Books decided to give it a go, and Terry Brooks was given the task to make a carbon-copy of LotR as a test run. His original draft, so I’ve heard, was very different, with many of the major characters ending up dead. But he edited it to be closer to LotR as Ballantine wanted, Ballantine used it to launch the Del Ray label, it was successful. In a very real sense, all of fantasy literature owes a debt to the success of The Sword of Shannara.
So did Terry do a good job of copying LotR? Pretty much, yeah. It’s kind of disturbing how close the Skull Bearers are to the Nazgul, Allanon to Gandalf, Shea to Frodo, Flick to Sam, Hendel to Gimli. Legolas gets split up into a pair of brothers, and Menion is kind of a mashup of Pippin and Strider - the personality of Pippin with the skill set of Strider the Ranger (the Kingly parts of Aragorn get taken up by Balinor). The story beats are much the same, with the first half of the book essentially having the same plot as Fellowship but with a few story beats shuffled around. Frodo Shea gets severely injured after leaving Rivendell Culhaven, for example, instead of before. But the pieces are mostly there.
Credit where credit is due: things do get significantly more original when Frodo Shea is separated from the rest of the company during the passage through Moria the Hall of Kings. But even then he ends up meeting Gollum Orl Fane and makes his journey to Mordor the Skull Kingdom, and the rest of the gang ends up fighting to defeat the armies of Sauron the Warlock Lord at the siege of Minas Tirith Tyrsis, with help coming at the last minute when the army of Rohan the Elves shows up.
But if Lord of the Rings is a delicious feast by a master chef, The Sword of Shannara is take-out from Chuck E Cheese. (Aside: there’s a Chuck E Cheese near my house, and they’ve had signs up since shortly after the quarantine began saying they were open for take-out. I have found this endlessly amusing - who in the world is going to think “let’s get pizza” and decide to get it from Chuck E Cheese when you could get it from literally anywhere else?) Sword has no depth at all. It’s painfully shallow to read. It has the form, but it's purely superficial.
Moving on to other aspects that have nothing to do with Tolkien: there were many things about this book that just plain irritated me. The scale, for one. They’d go on these epic journeys and talk about how far they’d come, and the journey would take like … a day. They talk about the march across the Rabb Plains as something huge and daunting, and it takes them a few hours. I could literally cross the width of it on my morning run. The Dragon’s Teeth are tall enough to be permanently snow-capped and for breathing to be difficult. They scale them in a few hours. It’s just jarring.
Other things that really annoyed me, in no particular order: Despite being disarmed and tied up by the Trolls that captured them, no one seems to worry about the fact that Panamon literally has a pike for a hand; those same Trolls decide to help Shea because Keltset has the Best Troll Ever merit badge; the Warlock Lord’s lair of Skull Mountain is literally a mountain shaped like a skull, and yet Shirl Ravenlock is a redhead.
Let’s talk about the women of The Sword of Shannara. Well, the woman of The Sword of Shannara. About two-thirds of the way through the book we meet one of these exotic creatures: the aforementioned Shirl Ravenlock. She’s a princess. She’s really pretty. She gets kidnapped. That’s about it for her. She’s literally the only woman in the story. I know that puts Sword one-up on The Hobbit for women, but in my (male) opinion having no women is almost better than having one whose sole role in the story is to be daringly rescued by, and then fall in love, a handsome prince. At least all the first generation Disney princesses got musical numbers. The beautiful, slim Shirl has zero qualities other than being beautiful and slim.
Which leads me to my next complaint: the writing is painfully repetitive when it comes to descriptors. We know that Shirl is slim and beautiful because we are told that practically every time we see her. Allanon is “the giant Druid,” Balinor is “the giant Borderman,” Hendel is “the taciturn Dwarf,” Flick is “the faithful Flick,” Shea is “the little Valeman,” Menion is “the brash Highlander,” and on and on and on. “Mammoth” is a favorite adjective of Terry’s, and there are lots and lots of eyes filled with “undisguised hatred.”
If I were reviewing Sword on its own, I’d probably give it two stars. The writing is accessible, and it’s got some of that cheesy popcorn read goodness, but it’s painfully unoriginal and the writing needs a lot of editing.
I’m going on to The Elfstones of Shannara next, which I remember as being a major step up from Sword. I hope my memory is accurate, because this was not enjoyable to revisit.
One last note: the audiobook narrator pronounces it “SHA-na-ra,” not “sha-NAR-a,” as is proper. I assume that Terry Brooks was consulted on that, because it’s the freaking title of the entire universe, but I’m afraid that the narrator and (with all due respect) Mr Brooks are wrong. It’s pronounced “sha-NAR-a,” and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
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