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Oct. 3rd, 2013 09:10 pmI am rereading the Shannara series on the Kindle because the books are very heavy and unwieldy. (Seriously. They're huge books.) I wanted to see if they held up to my memory. They do not.
The are, in a word, bad. They seem to be the product of the same profound misreading of Tolkien that gave us the beloved Nimoy album and the Rankin-Bass cartoons. It's hard to imagine but it's as if someone was so inspired by Ulysses that they decided to write fan fic about all the characters but change their names, and maybe through in a topical theme or two--like maybe turn it into a post-apocalyptic story or something.
I saw the acceptance letter for the Sword of Shannara at the Science Fiction Museum. The editor was enormously nice and profuse with their praise before laying out in simple terms the bits that had to be cut. Apparently there was a giant spider in the book at one point--I don't remember one, but maybe I've forgotten and it's still in there.
The are, in a word, bad. They seem to be the product of the same profound misreading of Tolkien that gave us the beloved Nimoy album and the Rankin-Bass cartoons. It's hard to imagine but it's as if someone was so inspired by Ulysses that they decided to write fan fic about all the characters but change their names, and maybe through in a topical theme or two--like maybe turn it into a post-apocalyptic story or something.
I saw the acceptance letter for the Sword of Shannara at the Science Fiction Museum. The editor was enormously nice and profuse with their praise before laying out in simple terms the bits that had to be cut. Apparently there was a giant spider in the book at one point--I don't remember one, but maybe I've forgotten and it's still in there.
