The Sword of Shannara

Too many inconsistencies. Every couple of paragraphs I would cringe at the spilled nonsense, that wasn't even disguised as good writing.

Int the first meeting with Allanon (Gandalf), the druid (wizard) basically assaults the main character (some character) Flick for no apparent reason:“See, I could kill you, but I won't. Learned the lesson? Never talk to strangers. Now, take me to your brother, he has a destiny to fulfill, you are just a sidekick. I won't go into details about it though, just gonna say he is the chosen one, and if he doesn't do anything about it, the world will end. What does that mean you ask? What should he do? Who am I? Why should he trust me? Well, that is the feeling I want to pass: confusion! By the time he has the opportunity to ask me all these questions I will be long gone, hehehehe.”So, after that very convincing argument, with impeding doom lurking around, Flick and his brother Shea do exactly what you would expect of them: absolutely nothing about it. What did Allanon expected with that kind of attitude? Well, at least he did leave behind the Elven Stones to help out the brothers. And everyone KNOWS what that means. What, you don't? Well, if the author keeps mentioning the name in the story over and over, with reactions of amazement from the characters, it will soon sink in... just a few more hundred pages.Anyway, after a few weeks, an ugly creature appears. It can smell Shea's blood (I think they were warned about this by Allanon). They feel they must leave to prevent harm to come to their village. They have two alternative paths to follow: a safe route that the enemy will expect them to take, or the dangerous route, which might kill them. They take the dangerous route, but somehow (blood smelling anyone?) the ugly creature still follows them.Shea want to enlist the help of an old friend of them, which was the prince of a neighboring country or something. But Flick does not like the guy, because he is a meany, so he opposes the idea. Way to go Sam, I mean, Flick! Because I'll be dammed if I will ask for the help of a powerful ally to save the world if I don't like him, even though we have no one else to turn to.By the time they arrived at that country, I stopped reading. As it turns out his brother is the main character? Both were presented very poorly. This is a major sin in stories. The main character should appear first and be made very clear about it.

This book is primarily bad because of the obviously borrowed ideas from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. If you've read LotR, you'll find Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, Samwise, Boromir, Grima, Sauron, Gimli, Legolas (as 2 elves), and even Gollum. Locations? The Shire, Rivendell, there's even a mountain version of Moria and a Gandalf-like fight with what's really just a Balrog and a Gandalf-like fall as well.

The writing itself is not that bad, but the pacing is quite slow, with a lot of reminiscing portions. The last part of the book gets better but overall, if you skip this one, you wouldn't lose out much on the world of Shannara.