Sword of Shannara-- I mean, LORD OF THE RIPOFFS

[timepiececlock]

So. I'm almost 200 pages into Sword of Shannara. I still haven't decided if I want to finish it or not.

In terms of the LOTR plot, which is how I judge this book, I'm a bit after the Rivendell war council and right after the snowy pass where they decide to possibly take a different route, though in this version Gandalf has decided to leave the fellowship a little early and of his own volition, instead of falling into darkness.

I could take out the names and describe the plot to you, and you'd accuse me of describing the LOTR, right down the detail of the young hero falling asleep after a battle and waking up in the safe hall where the wizard is waiting with an apology for not having met up with them earlier. This isn't just inspired by LOTR, it is accurate right down to the bullet points of the plot outline.

Anyway, is it worth finishing? I know the books were popular, but so far the writing style is only mediocre, the characters are shallow, and the prose hardly poetic or meaningful. I love a good sword-and-sorcery LOTR-inspired story, but I don't want to reread LOTR with different character names. I'd rather just read Tolkien.

Comments

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

can't help you there. I only got about thirty pages in before the characters bored me so much I put it down. I hear the next couple of books are good, and that this one, for being one of the first of its kind, is also good. *shrugs*

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

I actually started to read one of those novels myself a few years back. My sister picked it up at a yard sale and gave it to be because I'd been a fan of the LOTR novels. I think I managed to get about twice as far as the above commenter before I gave up. I flipped to the back portion of the book, it didn't appear to improve.

[pico-the-great.livejournal.com]

My only experience with Brooks is the hundred-odd first pages of that same book. I put it down unfinished, because it was getting to the point where - I experimented and found this to hold true - I could read the first and last sentence of a paragraph and ignore the rest.

And that was boring and not worth it.

[spikewriter]

Dating myself, I remember reading Sword of Shannara back when it first came out. Lots and lots of hype.

Not much pay off. Yeah, it's pretty much a LotR rip-off. I never picked up another.