[Jaded Wolf]

I was surprised not to see Terry Brooks in this forum so I will add in here. I am a big fan of Terry Brooks since starting with The Heritage of Shannara in the early nineties. Since reading those, I have made a point of finding the original Shannara series and reading those. I've read a few of the Magic Kingdom of Landover series and have really enjoyed the Word and the Void series. If you have not read these books then I highly suggest reading them.

In the Shannara series you will find good versus evil with believable characters. Terry Brooks has done an excellent job of making these characters likeable and realistic. The Shannara series really defines the line between good and evil and shows the consequences of choices we make. It also shows people going above and beyond and sacrificing all they have for a common cause.

The Word and the Void is good for the confrontation between good and evil in today's modern world. This series is perhaps the darkest of all of Terry Brooks' books. In this series we see characters with flaws yet they still overcome them to fight evil. We also see the price one character pays for his service.

I haven't read all of the Magic Kingdom series yet. I have been so busy in the other series. However, I read the first one and I enjoyed it. It stands apart from the others as being more of a fairytale and comical. From a talking dog to a Chicago lawyer becoming a king, it really is different.

Terry Brooks also wrote the adaptation for Star Wars Episode I and I will admit that it is a good read given what Terry had to work with. So, let me know what you think and I look forward to hearing your comments. I will also be updating this forum with character listings and better descriptives of the books in each series.

If you need to more than you can always check out the website The Wondrous Worlds of Terry Brooks It has all the books listed and news on upcoming releases.

This post has been edited by Jaded Wolf: 06 August 2006 - 03:38 PM

[EwokHunter]

Terry...who? This question maybe ''Terry-fies'' you.

[natalie]

yah... who's Terry?

[Lord Aquaman]

I'm afraid the only Terry book I've read was his novelization of Phantom Menace.

[civilian_number_two]

I read THE SWORD OF SHANARRA. It was about a special half-elf guy who had a secret mission to get an artifact from a bad dude. He learned about his mission from a mysterious old druid who informed him to travel somewhere through the woods and meet up with a scout who would guide him. Along the way he met vatious others of assorted races and classes, was separated from the group and guided to the bad dude's place alone, whereupon he got the sword and beat the guy by destroying it, or killing him with or something; I can't remember.

I sure remember how when I read it in grade 11 I really noticed what a ripoff it was of LORD OF THE RINGS, but minus the super-detailed world and the poetry (it was a ripoff right down to the detail of Gandalf/Allanon's letter and the flight through the woods to meet the guide). I hated it, but read THE ELFSTONES OF SHANARRA anyway. That was another solo quest/ get the artifact thingie, but it was less derivative, and a better read. I don't remember it as well, but do recall that there were bits in there not ripped off from anything I had already read. However the skeptic in me has to say I haven't read too much fantasy. For all I know it was a ripoff of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

[Cyzyk]

Where's the vote for, "Read two and never touched one again"? That's where I fall.

If you want to read good fantasy, you're in the awkward position of being stuck between old stuff (Conan, Fafhrd and Grey Mouser), which is a kind of shallow but fun, and LOTR-wannabes that fail to realize LOTR was a travelogue through a world that is only new and fascinating once.

Elves and trees do not a good fantasy story make.

[Jaded Wolf]

The Brooks books are much more than elves and trees. I'm also sick and tired of the notion that anything that comes after JRR Tolkien is a rip-off. Tolkien did not invent the fantasy genre and everything that comes after Tolkien is going to share elements of Tolkien simply because all fantasy borrows from older myths and legends our ancestors once believed in.

The thing about most of Terry Brooks' books is the underlying repercussions our acitons are having on our planet. The characters feel real simply because even though the story takes place in a fantasy realm the characters are not distant like most fantasy characters. Also, Terry keeps his stuff real simple and non-convoluted unlike Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I quit reading that series after the eigth book because it got to be too much.

[Game Over]

Weren't the LOTR trilogies rip-off of Norse mythology?

[Gobbler]

No, hardly any similarities of significance. Sadly. I would have liked to state stuff like "Well Norse mythology is only a rip-off of <insert a few Proto-Indo-European religions here> too", but yeah, that would be utterly superfluous now.

[civilian_number_two]

I agree that Tolkien didn't invent fantasy, because of course I have to. But Terry Brooks's breakthrough novel THE SWORD OF SHANNARA is a point-for-point riposs of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. There is a Gandalf character, a Frodo character, and an Aragorn. There is an undefined villain we never really get to meet and an artifact that needs to be found, or destroyed, or both, in the villain's lair, which is reached by walking. Along the way they have to hide from "Skull Bearers" and their encounters with these indestructible superfoes bear such strong similarities to the encounters with the ringwraiths that I shouldn't have to make the argument. Frodo flees the skullbearers that come to his hometown (!) and goes to the town of Leah where a council is held and it is decided that group of various races and classes should walk to the Warlock King's domain and steal a sword, which was the only thing that could kill him. The group loses track of the Gandalf character when a note left for them with some bartender in an inn is either lost or misread, and later the Frodo character gets separated from the group when he fall off a cliff or something, so he has to deal with the artifact alone.

Finding common comparisons between one fantasy story and another is a fun game to play I know, and if you are superficial enough you can find them anywhere. In this case however this is not the game I am playing. I am not looking for generic similarities and thereby concluding that all fantasy is ripped off from Tolkien. I am talking about this one specific book, and the similarities are pretty damn direct and they all occur in the same narative order. If I rememebr it right, at one point they even believe that the Gandalf character has been killed but later it turns out he wasn't. Meanwhile there's a kingdom under attack and its king is isane and needs to be ousted by one of the heroes so that the kingdom can defend itself from the armies of the unseen Warlock Lord that Frodo is off to face. THE SWORD OF SHANNARA is a summary of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The plot is so directly similar that it's amazing he gained any readers and wasn't turned on immediately by fans of the genre.

Fantasy editor Lin Carter denounced The Sword of Shannara as "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read". Elaborating on his disapproval of the book, Carter wrote that "Terry Brooks wasn't trying to imitate Tolkien's prose, just steal his story line and complete cast of characters, and [Brooks] did it with such clumsiness and so heavy-handedly, that he virtually rubbed your nose in it."

That last paragraph stolen from the section "Similarities between Sword and The Lord of the Rings" in a wikipedia article, which includes many other famous authors' negative takes on the novel, including Tom Shippey and Orson Scott Card.

http://en.wikipedia....ord_of_Shannara

One thing I learned from that article is that a film is in the works of ELFSTONES OF SHANARRA; I supoose the filmmakers knew that a movie of SWORD would receive too much criticism. It says that they would hope to make a SWORD movie later, but I would really be surprised. It would be virtually impossible to distill that story into a film without making its derivation obvious even to the dumbest child.