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<blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 8583172" data-attributes="member: 50987">A lot of people consider The Sword of Shannara to be derivative of Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.&nbsp; (I'm not sure why Sword gets singled out while other, even more derivative works get a pass, but anyway.)&nbsp; I feel like once that reputation was established, readers began to apply it to all of Terry Brooks' works.Whether you believe the critics or not, you'll find that The Heritage of Shannara series is less derivative than the first trilogy.&nbsp; The setting is the same, but the plot, the tone, and the character arcs are more modern and Brooks manages to avoid many (but not all, alas) of the bad fantasy tropes that are prevalent in the genre.Another big difference is that Heritage is much more representative.&nbsp; In The Sword of Shannara, there is only one female character (Shirl), and she has a very minor presence in the story...essentially she exists solely for another major character to rescue (by accident, I might add) and fall in love with.&nbsp; That old &quot;woman as a quest reward&quot; trope is everywhere in the whole fantasy fiction genre, and The Sword of Shannara is hardly the worst offender, but it's a solid criticism.In contrast, Heritage has numerous female characters that are essential for driving the plot (Wren Ohmsford, Quickening, Damson Rae...), and they are much better written.&nbsp; There's at least one black main character (Walker Boh, the titular &quot;Druid of Shannara&quot; of book 2) as well.&nbsp; It's not a perfect book series; there's a heavy-handed &quot;doomed romance&quot; arc that today's readers might roll their eyes at, but it's still much better than the terrible &quot;broken bird&quot; trope in Elfstones of Shannara (the second book of the previous Sword of Shannara trilogy.)[SPOILER]Amberlee deserved better.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CleverNickName, post: 8583172, member: 50987"] A lot of people consider [I]The Sword of Shannara[/I] to be derivative of Tolkien's [I]The Fellowship of the Ring[/I]. (I'm not sure why [I]Sword [/I]gets singled out while other, even more derivative works get a pass, but anyway.) I feel like once that reputation was established, readers began to apply it to all of Terry Brooks' works. Whether you believe the critics or not, you'll find that [I]The Heritage of Shannara [/I]series is less derivative than the first trilogy. The setting is the same, but the plot, the tone, and the character arcs are more modern and Brooks manages to avoid many (but not all, alas) of the bad fantasy tropes that are prevalent in the genre. Another big difference is that [I]Heritage[/I] is much more representative. In [I]The Sword of Shannara,[/I] there is only one female character (Shirl), and she has a very minor presence in the story...essentially she exists solely for another major character to rescue (by accident, I might add) and fall in love with. That old "woman as a quest reward" trope is everywhere in the whole fantasy fiction genre, and [I]The Sword of Shannara [/I]is hardly the worst offender, but it's a solid criticism. In contrast, [I]Heritage [/I]has numerous female characters that are essential for driving the plot (Wren Ohmsford, Quickening, Damson Rae...), and they are much better written. There's at least one black main character (Walker Boh, the titular "Druid of Shannara" of book 2) as well. It's not a perfect book series; there's a heavy-handed "doomed romance" arc that today's readers might roll their eyes at, but it's still much better than the terrible "broken bird" trope in [I]Elfstones of Shannara [/I](the second book of the previous [I]Sword of Shannara[/I] trilogy.) [SPOILER]Amberlee deserved better.[/SPOILER] [/QUOTE]

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