I was introduced to this book by my best friend in 8th grade, who I am pretty sure also introduced me to The Lord of the Rings and who I know introduced me to The Dragonriders of Pern.¹ I loved this book when I first read it. She also liked it because it was illustrated by the Brothers Hildebrandt, and they are great fantasy illustrators.² I think her brother “knew” them or something and she maybe met them once, which was a Big Deal in 8th grade.

So let’s start with the plot. Oh, by the way, spoilers.

A young man, Shea, who has really never been out of his idyllic community, is warned by a wandering druid³ that he is being hunted by flying black creatures sent by the ultimate evil to kill him. These creatures are so imbued with evil that even their presence causes men to panic and their blood to run cold; and the druid tells the young man to flee his home, and then departs. Shea’s adoptive⁴ brother, Flick, another young man who has never really been out of his community, accompanies him on his journey.

The two young men head for a neighboring community, getting lost in the woods and having life-threatening adventures along the way, where they meet up with a friend, a happy-go-lucky, bored prince who knows slightly more about the world. Together, they head to a forest enclave of dwarves, where they pick up the rest of their fellowship: a ferocious dwarf, much feared by the enemies; a battle-hardened prince, an outcast from his kingdom, who leads the company of soldiers responsible for protecting the idyllic communities to the south from the evil to the north; two elves who are brothers and were sent by their king to participate; and the aforementioned druid.

The druid reveals to them that, in order to destroy the ultimate evil, they must seize the magical Sword of Shannara, which only Shea can wield against the evil due to a technical oversight when the sword was created long ago. The sword is kept at the Druid stronghold, also in the north, but not as far north as the ultimate evil’s stronghold. Unfortunately, the ultimate evil has recently seized the druidic stronghold, and there is some question whether the sword is even still there.⁵

The company then go on to have numerous adventures on their journey, having to elude their enemy’s henchmen (trolls and the evil gnomes⁶), traverse a high mountain range through an abandoned underground trail called the something of the dead, after which one of their company falls from a cliff to what is surely certain death. The rest of the troop manages to reach the druidic stronghold, which is indeed being held by evil gnomes, and the druid fights one of the black flying things and falls, locked in combat, to what is surely certain death in the fiery furnace that heats the druid’s stronghold. And, sure enough, the sword is not there.

Meanwhile, Shea, who as you may recall, fell to his almost certain death in the mountains, did not die but instead landed in a river flowing the wrong way for his purposes, was carried backward out of the mountain range, doesn’t drown, and is captured by a company of gnomes. He is then rescued by a one-armed bandit and a good troll.⁷ Together they make their way north towards the druidic stronghold to reunite Shea with his friends – with a few adventures on the side. On the way, they stumble across a recent field of battle between the evil gnomes and the good elves and pick up a slightly mad gnome who has scavenged a bag of junk from the field of battle, including a battered old sword that he is unreasonably attached to, though it’s not much to look at. They travel in his company for a few days until he escapes them, taking only that battered old sword, and that is when Shea realizes: that was the Sword of Shannara. V8 slap and fast pursuit.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew has agreed to split up: the elves and the soldier will head south together to prepare the borders for the war that is surely coming. The dwarf will head home to warn his people. And Flick, the druid (whose death was apparently not as certain as reported), and the happy-go-lucky, bored prince will remain in the north hunting for Shea. But Flick’s team quickly realizes that the ultimate evil is sending an overwhelming army of evil gnomes, unfriendly trolls, and flying evil things against the border communities, and the druid sends the prince off to warn the soldier, the elves, and the dwarves. Intending to spy on the huge army and learn their intentions, the druid then dresses up Flick as an evil gnome and sends him in to infiltrate the camp and spy, but instead Flick rescues the king of the elves, which is a good thing because, since his disappearance on the field of battle, the elven army has been kind of milling about without leadership, being of no good to anyone.

Meanwhile, the soldier and his elven companions have discovered that his father, the king, is ill, and that his brother has gone mad under the influence of a traitorous advisor who is doing evil’s bidding, and has disbanded the army, replaced the palace guard with men loyal to his advisor, and declared himself king. The mad brother captures them all, throws them in the dungeon and, when the dwarf (who returned to this castle because he had a bad feeling about all this) returns to rescue his friends, imprisons him, too.

Meanwhile, the happy-go-lucky prince manages to sneak through the army of evil, and happens to rescue a beautiful princess, whom he quickly falls in love with and vice versa. Slight commentary here: this is on page 456 of my Del Rey mass market edition (31st printing, 1991). Page 456 and this is the first time we meet a woman in the whole dang book. Prior to this there are but two mentions of women: Shea’s mother, a plot device, who died years before the book begins and explains why he has to be the one to wield the Sword; and the younger elf-brother’s fiancée, whom he has deserted on the eve of their wedding to go on this quest, and whose virtues he expounds from time to time, as character development or something. The princess rescued on page 456 has a name and gets a few lines, but she doesn’t take any independent action of her own, so don’t be thinking she is going to kill one of those flying wraiths or something.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, happy go lucky prince rescues and falls in love with princess, and they manage to evacuate the 40,000 people of her town just before the advancing army sets it alight. The town takes refuge in Minas Tirath Tyrsis and the happy-go-lucky prince manages to rescue his friends from the dungeons, the mad prince being stabbed to death (great Hildebrandt illustration) by the evil advisor who disappears into the secret passages of the castle. But there’s no time to look for him, for here comes the vast army of evil gnomes and trolls. The soldier manages to reform his defensive company and, against all odds, hold off the enemy despite the presence of those evil flying things that send terror through his men, and sabotage by the evil advisor, who finally gets killed at the expense of the dwarf’s life. Will the elven army arrive in time to save the city?

Meanwhile, Shea and his companions, after several more adventures, manage to track the evil gnome who stole the Sword, to the ultimate evil’s lair in the far north. They discover the crazed evil gnome locked in the dungeons – still with the sword, because why take that away from him? – and Shea possesses the sword and, against all odds, manages to vanquish the evil overlord, the army falls apart, good triumphs over evil, old friends are reunited, and everyone (except the dwarf and the druid who mysteriously disappears for a nap until the next time he is needed) lives happily ever after on page 726.

726.

Yes, 726.⁸

I read this several times when I was younger and thought it was the bee’s knees.⁹ Clearly I read it again in 1991, since that’s the printing of the copy from my shelf. While I was slogging through this, I discovered a dog-ear on page 417, which tells me that I got that far before giving up the last time I was reading it.

And slog is the right word. This is Brook’s first book ever¹⁰ and it shows. His world-building is cursory, the druid explaining that this is actually a future earth¹¹, not a past or middle earth. Apparently the elves were always there; but, after humans destroyed the world of men, the remnants evolved into evil gnomes, dwarves, trolls, with a few “real” humans taking refuge in the south. Then there were a bunch of species wars – pitting trolls against gnomes against dwarves against men against elves. The druids decided they needed to use “science” from the old world to establish world peace, but that was too hard so they used magic instead, and the ultimate evil guy, whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, turned it all evil…

The writing style is turgid at best and heavily over-modified with no noun left without adjective and no verb left without adverb. Think I’m exaggerating? From the page 1, sentence #2 (emphasis mine): “The trail stretched out unevenly down the northern slope, winding through the huge boulders which studded the rugged terrain in massive clumps, disappearing into the thick forests of the lowlands to reappear in brief glimpses in small clearings and thinning spaces of woodland.” Every f*ng sentence is like this, I kid you not, through the first couple of chapters, until the author started to focus on plot and calmed down a little, returning to his love of modifiers with a start from time to time when he realized that maybe he wasn’t doing his job as an author. (I caught myself mentally rewriting his sentences with more vocabulary and fewer moderators – never a good sign.)

Character development is null. They are a bunch of stock characters who, every now and then, have a little internal monologue, where they recount the journey so far and feel guilty for their part in losing Shea or stepping into a trap or something. Or the younger elf talks about his girlfriend.¹² You don’t get a sense that any of them changed or learned anything from their adventures. They don’t trust the druid at the start and worry about his ulterior motives throughout the book (more interior monologuing) but nothing comes of it. People take on what others worry are mortal wounds and are quickly healed with no lasting repercussions. People fall “to certain death” and reappear a few pages later¹³, unchanged. Even Shea, who is forced to confront some hard truths about himself when he takes hold of the Sword of Shannara, shows no sign of change afterwards. Oh, after they save the world, the druid smiles – that’s it.

As the book goes on, Brooks piles on more and more useless interior monologues, and descriptions of battles, that I grew weary and skipped over them.

All that said, I still found myself compelled to read the dang thing all the way through even staying up past 3 am one night to finish it. There’s something about the plot that keeps you hooked enough to put up with Brooks’ first-novel writing style. What does the Sword of Shannara actually do? What is that one good troll’s secret? What mischief is that evil advisor who escaped into the recesses of the castle going to get up to? How are they going to get out of another fine mess?

This is the part where I usually tell you to read the book and I’m not going to do that.¹⁴ This book has a special place in my heart because of the friend who recommended it, and the fact that, when it came out, there wasn’t much else out to read if you liked Tolkien.

So either you already read this when you were younger and it holds a special place in your heart, too; or you didn’t and would read it now and wonder why on earth anyone who stick through a 726-page long book, with obvious allusions to Tolkien, and enough unnecessary modifiers to slowly choke an undeserving grey-and-white cat.

Oh, BTW, just realized that the latest edition does not have the Brothers Hildebrandt illustrations. If you do decide to read this, it’s one where you’re going to want to buy used so you get those. Oh, and I feel like you should listen to 80s rock – something like We are the Champions while you’re reading this, to get the full experience.

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1. And our other friend, whose father regularly took her little brother and sister to picket the local porno store, was left out because she wasn’t even allowed to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe because it contained elements that weren’t real. By that measure, she shouldn’t have been allowed to read the Bible, and I tried explaining how Christian C.S. Lewis and Tolkein were, but got nowhere. ↩︎
2. In those days, that counted. I still have a book of Michael Whelan’s art on my shelves, which I will not be posting about. ↩︎
3. We’d call him a wizard. Hey, if he knows arcane lore, speaks to the dead, and shoots lasers out of his fingers, he’s a wizard. ↩︎
4. Shea is adopted, not Flick. ↩︎
5. The druid gets away with not revealing the backstory or answering direct questions by being “mysterious.” ↩︎
6. Yes, you hear me right, evil gnomes. ↩︎
7. He’s a good troll. ↩︎
8. Brooks went on to write a lot more books, so I’m assuming he got this length-thing out of his system. ↩︎
9. My husband tells me that I told him once that they should make a movie of it, which I don’t remember saying, ever, but that’s the problem with marrying someone who knew you when you were young and callow – they remember this sh*t (or say they do) that you’ve done your best to forget. ↩︎
10. At least, according to Wikipedia. ↩︎
11. With one character using a flashlight to distract the flying evil things. And I thought maybe this was the book where they saw a monorail off in the distance, but maybe that was Elfstones of Shannara, or perhaps that was in Suzy McKee Charnas’s Walk to the End of the World. If you know, let me know because I’m not re-reading either of those to figure it out. ↩︎
12. “I’ll be married to Lynliss and we’ll have many children… She is like no one you have ever seen – a gentle and kind girl, as beautiful as this pond is clear.” Gak. ↩︎
13. “I got better.” ↩︎
14. Although I will say it’s still better than David Eddings, whose stronger writing was offset by the rampant misogynism in his books. ↩︎