Tome Thursday: The First King of Shannara

Hello everyone!

Book talk time, as it happens every Thursday, and somehow, I've managed to accumulate so many books I'm not even sure how or when I managed that.

Isn't it supposed to be easier to watch TV shows or movies and raking them together than getting so many books?

Apparently, for me it isn't. I'm actually struggling with the movies thing, although to be fair I've devised a system now because I do have a bunch of movies still left over to watch, and those new ones that keep on popping up ... yeah, I have my work cut out for me haha!

But each Thursday I talk about books, and although I promised myself I wouldn't type this one up before I finished the entire trilogy, I decided that, as this is a prequel and not in the trilogy itself, it can have a stand-alone blog post and nothing will be hurt from it.

As I've predicted in my earlier Tweet, I'm talking about The First King of Shannara.

Terry Brooks is the author of a gazillion books that take place in this realm he devised, which is fantasy and dystopia all at the same time as I've put two and two together and realized it's actually OUR world, but a lot of years in the future, and it somehow went ... backwards? Sideways? Who the hell knows.

There's just a lot of magic running around, along with sexy Druids (I'm looking at you, Manu Bennett).

Now, before we begin, this series was recommended to me after I saw MTV's trailer for its show, The Shannara Chronicles (based off the second book in the original trilogy, The Elfstones of Shannara), and I promised myself I'd read it before the show aired, and I sort of kept that promise. I only have the last book to read, now.

And let's just be clear on one thing: there are good aspects to the book I'm going to talk about. But there are also some less good ones, and unfortunately ... there's a lot of those, too.

I digress. Let's talk about the story, first.

After what is called the First War of the Races, the world seems to be at peace, but the druid Bremen knows this isn't so, as he has managed to figure out that Brona, who now calls himself the Warlock Lord, has survived the initial conflict and is gathering an army to him so that he may destroy the world and cover it with darkness (or just make it a playground for all things that go bump in the night, you know, the usual deal).

He sets out to warn the Druid Council in Paranor, the keep where they live and study, but they refuse to listen, and as a result ... end up dead. Compliments of Brona.

Oops.

Not all of them, though, as two, an elf Tay, and a Dwarf, Risca, both follow Bremen out of Paranor, along with a young girl named Mareth, and along with Kinson Ravenlock, a human hunter and Bremen's companion, they head off to get some visions to help them on their quest to save the world.

Because nothing speaks good idea better than visions from a bunch of ghost Druids, right? Right.

Well, the ghosts give Bremen four visions, or four tasks he must complete so that the world can be saved, and the first one is to get a talisman from the ruins of Paranor so that a sword can be forged later on with the talisman at its center. That sounds reasonable enough, actually.

While he's off doing that, Tay and Risca go to warn their respective peoples about the incoming danger; Tay has also been tasked by Bremen to go and find the Black Elfstone, for which he takes with him a team of Elven warriors, led by Jerle Shannara (remember the surname, kids), and among them is also Preia Starle, who Tay secretly loves. Their mission is a success, insofar as they get the stone, but Tay perishes in the attempt. As for the Elves, with the royal family all but decimated, with only two young boys left, the people choose Jerle as their king to deliver them from evil, and he eventually marries Preia and has a bunch of daughters.

But back to the story.

Risca has warned the Dwarves and they have managed to slow Brona's attack on the land, until they could manage no more and withrew to their secret hiding places, letting him go unchecked towards the Rhenn, the position the Elves have chosen for their final stand.

Bremen, who has succeeded with the sword quest, brings it to Jerle, as a weapon that can kill Brona; the Elves have victory at the Rhenn, and they pursue the Warlor Lord's forces to get Jerle close enough for the kill. Kinson and Mareth have also found the Dwarves, and the peoples manage to catch the Warlock Lord between hammer and anvil - only the hammer doesn't deliver.

Jerle does stab Brona, but the sword doesn't work any special magic other than the belief of the one wielding it - and in a cruical moment, he wavers, meaning Brona is capable of escaping, but he IS exiled. Small comfort, that.

In the end, the death toll is quite high; Kinson and Mareth eventually marry, and Bremen decides to leave everything, the Druid legacy, the Black Elfstone, Paranor, everything, to a young boy named Allanon, who he has chosen as his successor.

Fin.

Okay.

The concept of the story was sound, but I had a few problems with it: one, I could pretty much see Tolkien's influence on every page, and it sort of rankled because I'd already read that. I persevered though, and came to my second issue: the descriptions.

I get it. The author wanted to get us to see this beautiful world that came out of the wasteland and apocalypse that we somehow managed to contrive over our heads. I like and respect a good descriptive passage as much as the next person, but at some point, I feel the author, as a writer, has to stop patronising his or her readers with endless details and things that had already been explained (albeit a hundred pages ago), and allow the story to pick up the pace. With this one, I had the plodding feeling until the battle for the Rhenn, which takes place in the last fifth of the book, so to speak. So the first four parts? I lagged through those, and sometimes skipped through to where the characters were interacting. 

Don't get me wrong. I do want to know where I am in an unknown world. But I figure I'd much rather see what the guys and girls are doing than count blades of grass along the way to a destination.

And that was the main problem of this book, aside from a very, very slow build-up which was a direct result of the descriptions, basically. It had the potential to be so much more, and quite explosive, but I felt like it failed, mainly because when I expected things to happen, and happen fast, the only thing that did happen was that another forest appeared and we were treated to the vast expanse of the trees, the grey bark, and the ruddy leaves ...

All in all, it wasn't as enjoyable as it was made out to be when I was introduced to it. I did read it though, so I guess that counts?

xx

*image not mine

**below is an excerpt from a Goodreads review that I felt like including.

Bremen: "Hey I'm an old, serious man with large amounts of training in the druidic art of verbal diarrhea."
Kinson Ravenlock: "My friends call me a generic fantasy-story human swordsman. I like to think that I have skill with a dagger as well."
Jerle Shannara: "If you like hot-tempered warriors with a passion for punching and the tendency to needlessly risk their lives, then you'll love me. I'm also very emotional, and I like to show this by spending the entire second half of books sulking in a corner and lamenting my best friend's death.
Tay Trefenwyd: "SPOILER ALERT I'm the guy that dies."
Preia Starle: "If I had to describe my personality with just three words, I'd use:
1. Woman
2. Elf
3. Female
What do you mean that's not personality? I don't even know what that word means."
Mareth: "I'm a small, vulnerable girl with a hidden past and a talent for magi-GARRGGHH I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE THEY'RE SO GENERIC &$%*#$!!
Warlock Lord: "Hi I'm Sauron."