The Sword of Shannara 20th Anniversary Edition

I was hesitant about investing the time and reading this at first. I had actually purchased and begun reading the trade paperback when it first came out, a million years ago, when I was in college, but other things -- American Literature, English Literature, Comp -- had to take priority and I put the book aside and never came back to it.
Years later, after rereading Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Chronicles on Kindle, I recalled "The Sword of Shannara" -- aware that it had become a bit of a cottage industry -- and looked for it on the store. I became hesitant about rreading it, as I said above, after reading some of the blistering criticisms of it on this site, most of which were based upon the similarites between this and "Lord of the Rings." I don't like wasting my time on bad books, and if I were to believe some of the reviews, I might have had to endure such a close ripoff of Tolkien that the characters might be named "Frudo Buggins," "Gindolf," or "Scowron." I feared that much of an imitation.
I pushed forward and purchased the book and was more than pleasantly surprised. Of course the book borrows some of the benchmarks of "Lord of the Rings," just as Tolkien, a linguist and literature expert, borrowed archetypes from classic epics, ballads, and folklore. Yes, there's a pair of innocent types who undertake a great quest, there are elves, there is an ovewhelming, ominous presence, and a crazed, obsessed, pathetic little character who briefly comes into posession of an important talisman, but when you look deeper, the comparisons begin to fade. For example, Allanon, the wizard-like leader of the group, is far darker than the fatherly Gandalf; Hendel is a much more rounded character than Gimli; the Warlock King is a far different person than the omnipresently evil Sauron. And the tone of the story and set of adventures undergone by the chaacters is farther from Tolkien than you might imagine.
I am not dismissing the similarities. Brooks himself has admitted to them. There are plenty of points of reference between the two works. But the charges of "imitation" and near-plagiarism are simply not accurate.
I have more of a problem with the unevenness of the writing style. Brooks picks and chooses when to describe things. We have a good description of the "thing" that attacks Flick and Shea in the marsh early on. We know how the Warlock King looks; we can visualize Allanon; we can see Balionor's city and the details of the final battle. But the description of the mysterious beast that attacks the travellers in the ruins of an ancient city is horribly inadequate -- what does he mean when he says it's a mass of metal, flesh, hair, etc.? And there are too many times where he seems to be giving the Cliff's Notes versions of the journey -- they walked, and talked, and got to know each other; they escaped by making the goblins think they were being attacked -- in other words, I'd like to know what was said, what was done, that type of thing. And another reviewer spoke of Brooks's habit of summarizing the story every two or three pages.
However, these quibbles really didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the novel. As frustrated as I might get with the style, I was invested enough in the story and the characters to continue. I would certainly recommend this to others.

It has many parts that are incredibly similar to Lord of the rings but was well written. It was long winded and heavy with descriptions. There were a lot of repetitive thoughts from the characters. I am interested in finishing the series but I hope to see more original ideas.

This book has received a LOT of flack for "borrowing" so much from "The Lord of the Rings." When I read it over 20 years ago, I hadn't read Tolkien's odyssey...and "...Shannara" blew me away! It was the first fantasy novel (as opposed to science fiction) I ever read and it opened a lot of doors. I wasn't sure I would like it. Once I read it, I picked up "The Hobbit" and "Elric of Melibone" and many, many others.

Now, yes, I definitely see the similarities to "The Lord of the Rings". BUT...I also see similarities between "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever" and "The Lord of the Rings".

To make a long story short, (I know, too late) I will always consider "The Sword of Shannara" an important piece of fantasy.

Terry Brooks likes to describe landscapes, a lot. I mean a lot. More than he develops his characters, actually. His favorite word in this book is "Suddenly." Seriously, look at the first hundred pages with a highlighter in your hand and count them. It's absurd. I think his editor caught on because you can find a number of substituted adverbs or adverb-like starters on paragraphs where it's obvious the man originally started it with "Suddenly". Let me describe the PACE of this book for you... Slow, slow, slow, BAM Something happens briefly, Slow, slow, slow, BAM something happens briefly... repeat, repeat, repeat. It's not until the siege later in the book that anything even remotely begins to happen. Those "slow" periods are usually full of landscape descriptions. Oh, and weather descriptions where it details how that weather affects said landscape.
**Spoilers to follow** Fair Warning ** Spoilers to follow**

The book premise is an obvious rip off of the Lord of the Rings.The book opens on a doppelganger for Samwise Gamgee. Then, two unsuspecting, home-bred boys (hmm, just like Sam and Frodo) from a Vale (Shire) go on a wild adventure to escape capture from a black robed inhuman creature from the spirit world who serves the Dark Lord (*cough, Nazgul rip off, cough). They make a wild escape to find help from a highlander (read: Ranger/Aragorn), who is heir to a throne. He takes them on their way and they also get help from an outspoken Dwarf (Gimli) and two elves (who together make up Legolas), and are all the while directed by a wizard of unknown origin or power (Allanon). They also have help from a nobleman/warrior (who is like Boromir). Its a shameful rip off for most of the book. Oh but wait, instead of orcs and uruk-hai, there are ye olde gnomes and trolls. Well, great. Thanks. That's at least something.
I'm still trudging along through it, hoping like heck some originality starts showing through.

I gave the sword of sharnnara two stars because I can see the similarities between this and a little thing called lord of rings and I've never even read much or seen the movies but I can already see where the story is going and I just honestly see myself finishing it I barely watched the TV show which looked good at first but I don't know two stars seem kind and I hope in the future there can be more character in depth more than just about the wars of the past more action hundred pages and barely any action don't know if I can recommend but to each his own

One of my all time favorite books. Extremely exciting, well written, and hard to put down. It is long but I have read it twice and both times and under a week. I highly recommend this book to everyone no matter what type of books they like.

At first I was concerned Brooks was writing a cheap copy of "Lord of the Rings", however, Terry Brooks is a first class story teller in his own right. Didn't take long to suck me into the world of Shannara.

Mr. Brooks offered an interesting twist on what has become the standard mold for fantasy worlds. In Sword of Shannara the fantasy world being portrayed is not some other world or alternate universe but our own Earth far off in the future. As a result of a nuclear holocaust several races developed from mankind: dwarves, gnomes, and trolls. The characters are well developed and believable, truly a part of the world that Mr. Brooks has created. If taken by itself the story is engaging with a fair amount of twists and turns to keep the reader turning the pages. On the negative side is the similarity of story elements to J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. The Northland was described much like Mordor. In place of orcs and goblins you had trolls and gnomes. The similarities go on and on. Overall a good first book for the trilogy. I enjoyed it enough to give the next book Elfstones a try.

This first series was really compelling for me. I loved tucking in with them of the evening as my recreation. I found these books after watching the tv series which were based on these first 3 books. I loved finding out the full backstory for the story of tv series which sometimes felt disjointed. Then I went on the read the second series of 3 books, but the form, structure, and story were now completely predictable and I quickly lost interest.

This was originally written as Lord of the Rings fan fiction and that's what it feels like. The writing is overwrought and everything is done "breathlessly" and the characters are constantly "shocked" and "stunned," like they can't have a thought past whatever the last sentence was told to them. Had they also read The Lord of the Rings they too would know exactly what comes next.

The series goes on and on and typically I love that but I'm not sure I want to hang out in this world past one book. I originally checked it out because MTV is doing a series based on it and I'm a total sucker for all things dungeon-and-dragon-esque.

I suspect that Brooks got better as he went since it took him ten years to write this and he did it while attending law school, so that might tempt me to try book two.

I picked this up with a good deal of anticipation, hoping to read in these pages some of the best storytelling in fantasy fiction.
I could not have been more wrong.
I kept waiting for something awesome to happen, something to lift me out of the lazy haze of what seemed like an amateur re-telling of the Lord of the Rings story, only much, much less interesting.
For a large chunk of the book, I felt like I was sitting around a fire listening to a boring old man tell the complete history of a kingdom....and then realised...I actually was.
I understand that as readers, we all have different tastes, but for the life of me I can't understand the rave reviews on this title. I kept yawning and putting it down, and then made myself persist hoping for some degree of pace change or plot twist. Something to make me wanna turn the pages faster. But it never happened. Sadly, I had to put it down without finishing it.