What is your opinion of Shannara?

[John Crichton]

subjective...

Muzak and pastel prints sell and sell and sell.

Popular taste can spend until it goes broke, that'll never convince me that Madonna is a second Mozart.

Well, that's means they are entertaining someone. I like the books simply because of the pure entertainment value. To me, they are legendary because the series has been with me so long. And it continues to entertain. If one cares not to agree I can completely respect that.

I don't expect things to have the same value to others as they do to myself. And there are obviously some Shannara readers who are just as entertained as I. So, you don't have to like it and no one is trying to convince anyone that Brooks is the second coming of Shakespeare or Tolkien. I just dig his books. Alot.

Man, it's been a while since I made that last post.

 

[jasper]

Sorry guys and gals, old jasper had to go with a 5. Now in the early 80 late 70's I would have rated higher because you could not find on the book shelves.
I read alot. My wife tries to break me out of habit of reread old books which I enjoy. Since I am dumping my Shannara books in favor of nonfiction and have not reread in years. They can't be all that enjoyable. I think Mr. Brooks can't keep the line interesting for me. It the same with Magic Kingdom for sale.

However I do believe that both series would make great cable tv shows on fx, scific or hbo. If and only if they do a direct port over.

Read that to mean, here actors, set directors, etc your first draft of the script are the books.

 

[Mistwell]

The publication of a series for a long period of time does not, in my opinion, relate to the quality of that series or those books.

Xanth is the best example that immediately comes to mind. Every book after the first several is simply a repeat of the first few over and over again. They still sell well, and still come out last I checked.

Romance novel series are, of course, another example of this.

 

[foscadh]

If it had been the first fantasy I had read I might of liked it but it came out near the end of a several year period where I was reading a lot of books. It has been a while so I don't remember all my disklikes but the big one was it was incredibly derivative. Not just the LOR but there were several elements that seamed to come directly from other works and the whole cobbled together in a pretty mediocre assemblage. The prepublication hype on the mediocre Hildebrandt art work didn't help either. As I recall this opinion was shared by most of my friends (also heavy readers) of the time who read it. Some referred the first book as "The Sword of Shannana" a referance to a mediocre or worse TV music program of the time.

 

[Gary N. Mengle]

I read the original trilogy when I was 13 years old or so, and enjoyed it very much.

Years later, when Scions of Shannara came out, I was excited, picked it up at once, and was dismayed at how amateurish the writing was. Sophomore-level Creative Writing class quality, no better. Enjoyable for the level it's aimed at, but no more.

There is no real anti-Shannara bias here so much as there is a general realization everywhere that Brooks is not an especially good writer. Check out rec.books.sf.written, where he's among the most reviled fantasy writers around.

However, all that said, Brooks is a very important writer, perhaps second only to Tolkien in his influence on the modern fantasy market. It was Brooks who demonstrated to publishers that Tolkienian fantasy written by people other than Tolkien could be successful, and spawned what is now a thriving fantasy field.

So, talentless hack or not, give the guy credit for being instrumental in the formation of the fantasy field as it stands today.

 

[foscadh]

Significant possibly, instrumental I don't think so. The sf field in general and fantasy in particular were takeing off already. The marketing of Shanara was more intensive in particular the combined with the Hildebrand (sp?) brothers art work (Which I also rate as mediocre).

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

At least people thought enough of Shannara, for good or for bad, to give their opinion of it on this poll.
If I were a writer, I would rather have a lot of votes in a poll like this - good and bad, than only, say, a few votes with all of them being positive.