Angel Fire East

This is a review for the whole trilogy.

I had read some of the Shannara series when I was younger and a few years back read the Genesis of Shannara trilogy and I remember quite enjoying both experiences. When MTV's adaptation of Elfstones came out, I was reminded of the series and thought it would be great to go back and read it in chronological order, seeing as there was quite a lot that I hadn't read previously.

Unfortunately, just finishing this first trilogy has made me second-guess whether I should continue reading this series lest I ruin the nostalgia. This trilogy is one of the most disappointing things I have read in recent years. I heard it was billed as a the bridge between the fantastical world of Shannara and our present times; a prequel of the post-apocalyptic trilogy of Genesis where evil is winning a long, epic battle to turn our world to ashes.

What I got instead was a series of personal stories where good always triumphed. I was told these personal stories were a part of grand scheme of things, but Brooks fails to deliver the feeling that these meaningless events will capitulate into something greater. I was expecting something unusual - evil winning is not something you see often in any form of media - and seeing as the world of Shannara exists, evil must must have triumphed over good in our modern world at some point in time.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see any of those grim, desperate battles wrought with emotion or turmoil in this series. Instead, Brooks opts for the story we've all heard before - character struggles with some mundane, localized evil and ultimately triumphs despite the odds. Rather than tell the tale of girl and a man fighting a grand, loosing battle against a great evil, Brooks seems to have opted to tell stories about their personal struggles. Unfortunately, even this effort falls flat due to the easily predicted “twists”, the abundance of unnecessary detail about events that have little to no impact (such as:the union men talking about the strike and news and descriptions of small town life for pages upon pages, the existence of Jared as his strange disappearance from the rest of the books makes Nest's seemingly integral interactions with him meaningless. Nest's divorce and phone calls from Paul, all of the 'slice of life' scenes in the last book that seemed very out place considering they were supposed to be in mortal danger due to the presence of multiple demons. The entire character of Bennett and her child in the last book, they left no impact. The scene of Nest telling Harper her mother was dead was surprisingly devoid of emotion.), and uninspired characters that seem to be trapped by the same flaws in every scenario and, despite all of their introspection, cannot seem to think their way out of the most obvious of situations.