Hello everyone!
Back to books for this Thursday and I'm going against the promise I made myself a while ago again. Yeah, I'm a real professional with that, apparently! :P
The thing is, trying to clear out my impossible backlog of reviews to make room for new ones means I have to eventually touch these books as well even though I STILL haven't read the last one in the trilogy.
I'm a bad person.
No, really, I am.
But I feel like, after grinding my teeth through three of Brook's novels, I'm going to grow old or at least grow grey hair before I managed to plod through number three, and I really am NOT looking forward to it.
Time for some positive affirmations and then I can jump right in!
But first, let me talk about The Sword of Shannara.
Roughly a month and a half ago, almost two months to be exact, I wrote a review for the prequel book of the Original Shannara trilogy series, about The First King of Shannara (you can read it here). It was also there that I explained in detail how I thought Shannara was the name of the land, not the surname of an Elven family. Or maybe I didn't, and I'm only doing it now. In any event, I didn't know Shannara referred to the ELVES or Half-Elves of that lineage, and not the actual geographic location.
More fool me.
Briefly though, in the prequel, we understand the rise of the Warlock Lord, that there's a druid Bremen on the loose, and they're going off to forge a sword that will eventually defeat the bad guy, which it does ... to a certain extent.
And then we start the trilogy.
Here, we meet Shea, who is the last direct descendant of Jerle Shannara, although he has grown up in this remote valley with literaly no connections to the outside world until Balinor (who happens to be a prince in exile) comes to warn him that he's got to do a very quick run into the night scenario to survive. He grabs his 'brother', Flick, and they're off! Only to pick up yet a third companion, Menion Leah, and continue trudging on to a location where they're supposed to meet the druid Allanon.
The whole point? Brona is very much still alive and kickin and he wants to do a repeat of his earlier 'cover the world in darkness' idea, so now they have to once more locate the sword which was originally formed to destroy him.
I'm sure you're wondering: but the sword is a sword! Why's Allanon harping about only Shea being able to wield it?
Well, kids, this is the problem: Bremen made a little mistake. When he was handing the sword over to Jerle Shannara, he gave it to HIM, and not to the people of the Four Lands as a whole. This, in turn, means that ONLY a member of the house of Shannara can use it (ideally it would be Jerle, the original recipient, but let's leave the poor Elf to his eternal slumber in heaven). So basically, it's Shea.
According to Allanon, the sword was entombed by Jerle in Paranor, the ancient druid keep, and the group traipse over there to get it ... but it's all a trap and they get a) separated and b) locked on top of a tower while c) gnomes run around like banshees.
The only one who actively manages to go after the Sword (and gnomes) is Shea, but he runs into his own set of problems in the form of highway robbers Panamon and Ketrel, although these guys go and help him track the unfortunate gnome with the sword down since they didn't immediately realize the sword was there in the first place.
In the meantime, while they're off trekking across Brona-land, the rest of the people prepare for this second war and try to brace themselves. Unfortunately, Balinor and the Elven princes get imprisoned by Balinor's mentally unstable brother (who's also possessed by a mystic, thank you very much), but Menion comes through as he went to a different besieged city, rescued a princess, evacuated said city, and came to help the rest of the gang. Talk about multi-tasking.
Allanon and Flick are travelling after Shea, fast, but instead of finding him, they actually run into the Elven-king Eventine, saving him from captivity. Shea, bless his heart, gets his hands on the Sword and finally kills Brona with it. After that, everyone sort of scatters into the four winds, and Allanon goes to take the Druid form of a really long nap.
Until next time, of course.
This book had much the same issues as the prequel, with the descriptions taking away from the pacing of the story because it slowed EVERYTHING down quite badly, although I will admit there was a fraction more activity going on here with everyone busy doing their own thing. Also, I prefer Allanon to Bremen so there's that, too I guess.
However, as much as I might have liked this book a bit more than King, it's still such a close copy to the Lord of the Rings that it made my head hurt on occasion.
I have nothing bad to say about the TV show though!
xx
*image not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment