The Sword of Shannara, again

I've written before about Terry Brooks' (or is it really Lester and Judy del Rey's?) The Sword of Shannara, largely a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings. When I last read it a decade ago, I wrote I'd probably never read it again:

I don’t hate The Sword of Shannara, but I doubt I will read it again. It does suffer in comparison to The Lord of the Rings. As I’ve aged my readings of Tolkien have become deeper and his themes more resonant while Brooks’ first book seems shallower and less successful than it did when I was eleven. The golden cloak of nostalgia — for my youth, for the excitement of reading a big book so quickly, for all sorts of things I associate with Sword — is fading. I fear if I read it again it will vanish entirely, and I think that might be a very sad thing.

The thing, now, is, I might actually read it again as part of my series of articles about Prof. Tolkien's writing. Brooks' novel is inextricably tied to LotR, as is my old affection for it. Since the glow fade from Sword for me, I don't think I've ever read it in close conjunction with LotR and I'm curious to examine them side by side. 

Now, I don't think my somewhat still warm feelings for Sword will fade after a reread. Those feelings were real, and I can never be less than grateful for the world of fantasy reading that it was instrumental in opening. The Lord of the Rings was and will always remain its own thing for me. It stands alone. Sword is part and parcel of the stacks of books I read in its wake, but it is and will always remain the first one. 

I don't get the feeling Sword is anywhere near as popular as it once was. With the death of the Tolkien clones in favor of the GRRM clones, readers' tastes seemed to have shifted from the too-noble heroes to the too-amoral anti-heroes. Brooks has sold 25 million books over about fifty years, whild GRRM has sold over 90 million. That all makes me a little depressed. At least the Tolkien clones, even if poorly, stressed things like honor and courage. 

I probably won't read it until the end of the summer, though, I will advise anyone to never rely on me saying when I'll read what. 

PS: Aside from those of Glen Cook and Terry Pratchett, I don't think I've read more installments in a series than those of Shannara. I've definitely read the first trilogy, the four Heritage of Shannara books, and, I think, First King of Shannara. That's eight, big books.

There's a flatness to Brooks' writing - I said previously that Sword settled for talking when it should've been singing - and his characters never stray far from the standard fantasy/adventure stories tropes, but there's a compelling drive to his narratives that dragged me on to the next book. I actually planned to finish the series (I really wanted to get to the later books that bridge the gap between the demon-cause nuclear holocaust and the world of Sword). At this point, I doubt I will, but I might just skip nine (9!) books, and pick up some of those later ones.

Hildebrandt's Shannara

According to Terry Brooks, part of the plan to make The Sword of Shannara into the next Lord of the Rings was to get the Brothers Hildenbrandt to do the book's artwork. They had done a successful Tolkien calendar in 1976 and editor Lester Del Rey told them to do the same style of pictures for Sword. They complied, producing a full color cover and fold out picture of the book's band of travelers, as well as several black and white images.

I included the two color paintings with my previous Sword post but I'll include them again.

Here are the rest.

Allanon at Shady Vale

Hendel and apple

Escape from Paranor

On the Walls of Tyrsis

Skull Mountain

Palance and Stenmin

The Sword of Shannara

Why The Sword of Shannara You Ask

Some folks might have noticed the gold hued Hildebrandt Bros. cover of the original The Sword of Shannara over there on the top left corner. Yeah, I've reread it for my next Black Gate review. And I don't hate it. There, I've said. You can burn my membership card in the guild of swords & sorcery aficionados, but I sort of like the poor thing.

For those uninitiated in the history of The Sword of Shannara, legendary Ballantine editors Lester and Judy Del Rey were looking for something to echo the success of The Lord of the Rings (and kick off their new Del Rey imprint). They discovered young Terry Brooks, and worked with him to turn his manuscript into a novel that would do just that.

And it did. According to Wikipedia, it sold 125,000 copies its first month in print. The Sword of Shannara was one of the first fantasy books to climb the New York Times Bestseller list and awakened the publishing industry to the potential of fantasy fiction. It also set the stage for scads of other Tolkien pastiches to appear. Like GRRM paving the way for a host of other grimdark authors, Terry Brooks and Sword showed there was profit to be made in a certain direction.

While we've all had it up to here with secret heirs, bands of diverse heroes bound together on a quest, and evil dark lords and their monstrous hordes and henchdemons, there was a time when we didn't. An innocent time when not everyone and his brother and sister were writing that exact same story, again, and again, and again. When the only big fantasy novel you had read was LotR because that's all there was.

I can't stress how important and mind-blowing it was when The Sword of Shannara first appeared. My fantasy reading friends (all guys I must admit) and I went nuts. The original hardcover was over seven hundred pages long and I know two guys who read it straight through in a day. It took me at least three or four. It was the longest book I had ever read at that point in my life.

Even though we were young, I was only eleven, we all saw the blatant Tolkien rip-offs homages. The whole basic plot: determined band sets off to the big villain's kingdom for some magical folderol that will defeat him. We didn't care. Sure the Siege of Tyrsis equals the Siege of Minas Tirith, Stenmin equals Womrtongue, and a host of other people, places and things in Sword mimic or echo things in LotR. And we still didn't care.

Tolkien's heroes

Brooks' heroes

We were so hungry for new fantasy that satisfied the same things LotR had done for us; good triumphing over evil, adventure and excitement, and cool characters. There was other fantasy out there, Moorcock, Philip Jose Farmer, Ursula K. LeGuin, among others, but they were not offering the same things as Tolkien (and I'm sure all of them would be proud to admit that). Brooks and the Del Reys knew exactly what the hordes of young fantasy fans were hungering for and they gave it to them. They took Tolkien, made it simpler and easier to read, and WHAM!, took us for a roller coaster ride.

I came up with the idea of revisiting The Sword of Shannara last year. It's been a decade or so since I last read it and it seemed like something ripe for examination. To gain a little added insight into the book's history, I sprang for the 35th Anniversary Annotated Edition. Brooks towers over the history of fantasy because of the vast numbers of books he's sold and the fact he served as a gateway for so many readers into fantasy. I'm curious how much he matters anymore. I hope to generate a little discussion about this come Tuesday.

Here's my Black Gate article from 2015: You Can't Go Home Again.