Terry Brooks
Completed 2/9/2026, Reviewed 2/9/2026
2 stars
Ugh, what a slog! This book was so derivative of Lord of the Rings that I couldn’t help myself from comparing the two through the whole read. It was very overdramatic with almost no comic relief. And while LOTR at least had three women characters, Shannara only had one, with a smaller role than Arwen. I only liked three characters, a heroic and selfless dwarf, a rock troll, and a thief modeled after a character from The Prisoner of Zenda (per Wikipedia). The book appears on a couple of “Best of..” lists. My guess is because it was one of the first epic fantasy novels since LOTR to hit the mainstream, feeding the new generation of LOTR fans hungry for more of the same. If I read it back when it was published in ’77, I might have liked it more. But nearly fifty years later, it simply feels like sloppy fan fiction.
Two diminutive brothers are visited by a strange Druid. Allanon (whose pronunciation I could never divorce from the nearly identically spelled twelve step program) info dumps on the two that Shea is Flick’s adopted half-Elven brother. Shea is the last of the Shannara line who can wield the Sword. However, the Sword has been stolen by the evil and ancient Druid Brona. Brona is trying to take over the world by pitting all the peoples against each other. Shea must find the Sword and destroy Brona. Along the way, he picks up his best friend and prince named Menion. Flick also comes along. They end up in a fellowship with a surly king named Balinor, a Dwarf named Hendel, and Elven brothers named Durin and Dayel. They are chased by dark Skull Bearers, gnomes, and trolls. Eventually they break apart. Shea gets captured by gnomes and rescued by a thief and a rock troll. They go off in search of the Sword. The others go in search of Shea and to help defend the Southern Kingdom from Brona’s massive army of gnomes and trolls. Oh yeah, there’s an outcast gnome that has an obsession with the Sword.
So yeah, it’s like Brooks took the plot points and characters of LOTR, threw in a sprinkling of Zenda, jumbled them in a sack, and pulled the elements out at random. He did throw in a couple of other ideas, like the Sword being for good, not evil; the benevolent rock troll; a Siren; and a princess named Shirl in distress. However, these could not distract me from obvious LOTR parallels.
I never warmed up to most of the characters. I did like Hendel the Dwarf. He seemed like a caring, compassionate soul who went farther than the others in putting himself at risk for Shea. I also liked Panamon Creel, the thief. Despite being a tempestuous, one-handed trickster, he added some humor to Shea’s situation. Keltset, his mute Rock Troll sidekick, was obviously a gentle giant with more secrets than any other character. The best scenes were when Shea, Panamon, and Keltset were traveling together.
Secrets was a big theme in this book. Despite the myriad of expositions, Shea never fully understood the journey he was on. Then he kept what he did learn from other characters like Flick and Panamon. Allanon was big secret holder. Balinor kept a lot to himself, particularly at the beginning of the book. Everyone was afraid of telling everyone the whole truth about everything to spare each other feelings of fear or despair. Reading all that was frustrating. There would have been less trouble if people just told each other the truth.
Brooks also used a common ploy to get more words down on the page by having each of the characters going over and over their situations in their heads. Rather than add to the characterization, I found it tedious. And the info dumps were mind numbing.
I could not get my heart in this book. It took me nearly two weeks to read this doorstopper. The only thing I really liked were the five illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I loved their LOTR calendars in the mid ‘70s and the coffee table books of their art. While they perpetuated ideas that were never mentioned in the books, such as the hobbits’ feet being oversized, Balrogs having wings, and Aragorn being broad and bearded, it was just great that someone had such detailed renderings of the events in the trilogy. So when this book appeared in bookstores with a Hildebrandt cover, I was intrigued. I bought the book as a teenager, but never read it. Having finally done so, I can tell my younger self, “You didn’t miss much.” Two stars out of five.
