The Shannara Series

I was introduced to the Shannara series when my fifth grade teacher started reading The Wishsong of Shannara to us. (Side note – evidently the author, Terry Brooks, pronounces it “SHA-nna-ra”, but I think that’s ridiculous. Feel free to read it “Shan-NA-ra.”) I was pretty impressed. The characters have some nifty magical powers, it’s a classic “normal person needs to save the world” motif, and I really like the character Allanon. The Wishsong is actually the third book in the series, but I ended up reading those three books in reverse order. (They’re all at least a generation apart from each other, so you can really read any of them independently.) Some time after that, I learned that Terry Brooks was writing more Shannara books, and I was pretty excited. The Heritage of Shannara is a four-book series that’s tied together – three characters are given separate tasks to accomplish that will (somehow) allow them to defeat the evil forces that are spreading over the Four Lands. Each of the first three books focuses on one group of characters, while mentioning the others. The fourth book ties them all together in a very impressive finale.

So here’s the thing – that’s where the awesomeness of the Shannara series fades out. There’s a prequel – First King of Shannara. It’s okay, but there’s about a page near the end of the first section that you need to skip, because it’s really icky. (I believe I skipped it, actually, but it was pretty clear that nasty stuff was afoot.) And then came the next series, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara. It starts out with a guy getting washed up on shore, and I was worried about how graphically his demise had been detailed, but I kept going because – hey – this is a Shannara book. The way the plot unfolded felt very professional, bringing in all sorts of nostalgia while weaving in enough new stuff to avoid making it feel cookie-cutter-y (although I might have preferred that). There was lots more graphic violence in the book though, and the next two only got worse. There’s a lot about people being possessed, by both a homicidal computer system and a witch-type guy whose method is nasty enough that I won’t describe it. And for some reason I kept reading; I guess I thought that if I got closure on the series, the rest of the stuff wouldn’t bother me as much. But when I got to the part where a female character is brutally killed (etc.), I had to decide to stop reading Brooks’ new novels. And by the way, there really isn’t much closure to the series – it sort of leaves you with a cliffhanger, I guess so you’ll read the next series.

The bottom line is that I totally recommend the first seven Shannara books. (Anything whose title is “The <blank> of Shannara” is good). First King is okay, but watch out for that nasty bit. And I strongly recommend against reading anything beyond that.
I’ll write more about the individual Shannara books later.