Review of "The Sword of Shanara"
And now: The review of "The Sword of Shanara"
As the very clever man, greensquire commented on my earlier post mentioning this book, Terry Brooks has, perhaps borrowed a couple of the ideas of some the writers in whose footsteps he has followed. One of the review of the book, quoted on the back cover, describes how the book as "the biggest cult book since The Lord of the Rings."
It is a fair statement, since it is almost identical to the Lord of the Rings. Let's consider the following checklist:
- A comparitively weak protagonist, who is dragged out of his idealic lifestyles in order to save the world.
- His loyal to the death friend of many years, also completely useless.
- An ancient "wizard" character, powerful and knowledgable, who knows that the end of the world is coming and will do everything they can stop it from happening.
- The "death" of the above wizard character midway through the story, and subsequent resurrection, complete with heroic tale of survival.
- A "fellowship", containing the protagonist and his friend, and the wizard, a dwarf, a couple of humans, and at least one elf.
- The eventual splintering of this group into several segmants, each segmant more or less critical to the happy ending.
- A siege of epic proportions upon the last bastion of man.
- Monstorous horrors that are vastly more powerful than the individual characters, servents of the evil one, yet who are also afraid of the sunlight.
- A purly evil entity who's only desire is the destruction of the world, yet who has one crippling weakness revolving around a "MacGuffin" which is exploited to his downfall.
- A naughty, yet helpless, character who has is obsessed with the MacGuffin and will stop at nothing to get it.
- Flagrant worship of the extreamly irritating elven race archetype.
All of these things are contained in both books. I'd forgotten how blatent it is since the first time I read it (perhaps eight years ago?). Despite the similarities in the broad overview of the plot, there are some interesting differences.
One important difference is the world that the story takes place in. Part of Tolkien's genius is the beautiful, intiricate, and detailed world that he created. Right down to the smallest detail, everything has been constructed including complex histories of the various created nations nations, and created languages that the various created races speak. The Sword of Shanara on the other hand, is written in the post apocalypic future, from a world blown to pieces by warfare amongst human nations. Each of the other races are mutations of the original human race. Who said you can't make political statements in a fantasy story? A setting like this removes much of the mystery of the world, and narrows the scope of creativity. I can learn more from Tolkien here I think - a detailed world engages the reader.
My Yr 12 english teacher asked me, after reading one my pieces of creative writing "What was the point of all this? What did you want to teach the reader?" Since then I've always tried to work some moral or lesson into my writing (being such a wise and experienced person, who wouldn't want to listen to my invaluable advice?). According to something I read about Tolkien, his book was written with no such lesson in mind (although no doubt plenty of scholars have managed to derive some), making his works proof that this is unnecessary for a good story. On the other hand, Terry Brooks injects his pieces of wisdom into the story with all the subtlely of an airhorn. It is irritating. It has been done very well in other books I've read (even by the same author), but not here. Subtlty is the key here I think.
The "romantic scene" I mentioned, the prime reason for my wanting to read the book again, was nothing like I remembered it. I think the first time I was suprised to see it coming, but this time I could see see it unfolding line by line. I don't really think I can learn much here, other than it being easier to suck younger readers in perhaps? I do think that romance is a pretty important thing to fantasy stories, at the very least I'd need to attempt it.
The writing style is the thing that I can learn the most from. Each chapter contains at least half a page of descriptions of sunsets and the mountains before getting into any actual story. I really think that this kind of stuff is pretty easy to come up with. Just go to the theasurus and look up "Majestic" and you are half way there. I could write pages of the junk, and while it might be poetic and beautiful, nothing would stop it from bring criplingly boring. Actually I remember hating this about the Lord of the Rings as well. Maybe I'm the only one who hates this?
One last peeve: the dialogue seems so unrealistic, and artificial. Alot of the time the descriptions of the characters' reaction tell more than the words themselves. My dialogue sucks at the best of times, so that definately needs improving.
Dispite the criticisms, I really did enjoy reading it again. The skeletal plot similarities between it an LOTR don't stop the individual encounters from being different, and interesting.
No I'm not going to give it a rating, that would be missing the point.
Next time I'll (probably) review "Making Money" by Terry Pratchet, a book I was given for christmas by my brother. I finished it ages ago, but then, I also finished the Sword of Shanara ages ago :P.