The Sword of Shannara Book 1

The Sword of Shannara is the one book by Terry Brooks that started it all. It originally set out as a three book trilogy that evolved into a sequel trilogy and then two different sets of prequels yet the first... The Sword of Shannara is by far the better of all the reads in this epic series yet the next two books seemed almost companionable when standing next to the first. My only problem with this is the vastness between the time eras with little or no background story between books. Yet still, Brooks held my interest for six of the twenty some odd books that lay in this epic adventure of the Ohmsford family prodigy.

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The Sword of Shannara is a 1977 epic fantasy novel by Terry Brooks. The first book of the Original Shannara Trilogy, it was followed by The Elfstones of Shannara and The Wishsong of Shannara. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and historical adventure fiction, Brooks began writing the novel in 1967. He finished it seven years later; after being accepted for publication by Ballantine Books, it was used to launch the company's new subsidiary, Del Rey Books. Upon its release, The Sword of Shannara was a major success and the first fantasy paperback to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. Its success provided a major boost to the commercial expansion of the fantasy genre. The Sword of Shannara interweaves two major plots into a fictional world called the Four Lands. One follows the protagonist Shea Ohmsford on his quest to obtain the Sword of Shannara and confront the Warlock Lord, the antagonist, with it, while the other shadows Prince Balinor Buckhannah's attempt to oust his insanebrother Palance from the throne of Callahorn while Callahorn and its capital, Tyrsis, come under attack from the armies of the Warlock Lord. Throughout the novel, underlying themes of mundane heroism and nuclear holocaust appear. The novel has received derision from critics who believe that Brooks derived too much of the novel from The Lord of the Rings. Some have accused him of lifting the entire plot and many of his characters directly from Lord of the Rings; others have regarded this more favorably, saying that all new writers, including Brooks, follow in these footsteps.

Background

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Brooks began writing The Sword of Shannara in 1967, when he was twenty-three years old. He started to write the novel as a way to fight what he called an "increasingly rapid descent into terminal boredom" brought on by his entrance into law school, and as a result of being caught up in "the Tolkien tradition". Brooks had been a writer since high school, but he had never found 'his' genre: "I tried my hand at science fiction, westerns, war stories, you name it. All those efforts weren't very good." He eventually found a genre that he knew was for him, when he was starting college. This is when he was given The Lord of the Rings to read for the first time. From then on, Brooks knew that he had found his "home" in "fantasy/adventure". He immediately started work on The Sword of Shannara, but finishing it wasn't easy, as it took seven years; the finished product was "the grand result retaining sanity while studying at Washington & Lee University and practicing law".

Brooks initially submitted his manuscript to DAW Books, whose editor Donald A. Wollheim rejected it and recommended submission to Judy-Lynn del Rey at Ballantine Books instead. Ballantine Books accepted The Sword of Shannara for publication in November 1974. Brooks' editor was Lester del Rey, who used the book to launch Ballantine's new Del Rey Books imprint/subsidiary. Del Rey chose it because he felt that it was "the first long epic fantasy adventure which had any chance of meeting the demands of Tolkien readers for similar pleasures".

In 1977, The Sword of Shannara was simultaneously released as a trade paperback by Ballantine Books and hardback by Random House. They featured illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt. Upon publication, the novel was a commercial success, becoming the first fantasy fiction novel to appear on The New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

The original inspiration for The Sword of Shannara was Brooks' desire to put "Tolkien's magic and fairy creatures the worlds of Walter Scott and Alexander Dumas". Later, other inspirations jumped onto Brooks' bandwagon, joining with these. In all, Brooks was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings and adventure fiction such as Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company and Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

However, Brooks decided not to use historical settings like these works. He instead followed and modified Tolkien's use of a fantasy setting instead:

I would set my adventure story in an imaginary world, a vast, sprawling, mythical world like that of Tolkien, filled with magic that had replaced science and races that had evolved from Man. But I was not Tolkien and did not share his background in academia or his interest in cultural study. So I would eliminate the poetry and songs, the digressions on the ways and habits of types of characters, and the appendices of language and backstory that characterized and informed Tolkien's work. I would write the sort of straightforward adventure story that barreled ahead, picking up speed as it went, compelling a turning of pages until there were no more pages to be turned.

Brooks also made decisions about his novel's characterization and use of magic when composing his work, saying that the magic "couldn't be dependable or simply good or bad".[2] Also, he wanted to blur the distinctions between good and evil, "because life simply [doesn't] work that way."[2] Lastly, he wanted to ensure that readers would identify with his protagonist, Shea, which he accomplished by casting Shea as "a person simply trying to muddle through".


Plot summary

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History

The Sword of Shannara's events take place 2000 years after an apocalypse has occurred: nuclear holocaust has wiped out most of the planet. During this time, Mankind mutated into several distinct races: Men, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Trolls, all named after creatures from "age-old" myths. Also, the Elves begin to emerge after having been in seclusion and hiding for centuries. The warring that caused the holocaust is referred to as the "Great Wars" throughout the novel. These wars rearranged the planet's geographical attributes and wiped out most life forms on Earth. As a result of the Great Wars, most advanced technology has been lost, thus most of the events in the Shannara series take place in a medieval setting. However, magic is also back into the world, rediscovered after the loss of the technology.

1000 years before The Sword of Shannara, an Elf named Galaphile gathered all of the people who still had some knowledge of the old world to Paranor in an attempt to bring peace and order to all of the races. They named themseleves the First Druid Council. However, a rogue Druid named Brona and a few followers left, taking the Ildatch with them; this magical tome had subverted their minds and had brought them under its control. 250 years later, Brona began the First War of the Races when he convinced all Men to attack the other races. He almost succeeded in seizing rule of the Four Lands, but the tide turned, and the war ended with his defeat and subsequent disappearance. The Druids divided the Four Lands among the races to reduce interracial tension, and then became reclusive, withdrawing to Paranor because of their shame at the betrayal by one of their own members.

Two and a half centuries after the First War of the Races, Brona returned as the Warlock Lord, now with Skull Bearers as his servants. Chronicled in the prequel novel First King of Shannara, the Second War of the Races began with the destruction of the Druid Order. A lone Druid, Bremen, then forged a magical talisman for the express purpose of destroying the Warlock Lord; it was given to the Elven King, Jerle Shannara. As it takes the form of a blade, the talisman was named the Sword of Shannara. It succeeded in banishing the Warlock Lord, though he was not killed, while his entire army was subsequently defeated by the combined armies of the Elves and Dwarves. Yet peace came at a high price, as interracial tension was renewed and the Druids had seemingly vanished from the land.

Present

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From Shady Vale to Culhaven

About five centuries later, the Ohmsford family of Shady Vale in the Southland took in the half-Elven child Shea. He took the name Ohmsford and was raised as a brother to the family's son Flick. Becoming inseparable, the brothers helped to run the family inn. The novel begins with Shea as a young man and the mysterious Allanon arriving in the Vale. Tall and dark, his face perpetually shadowed under his hood, he was the last of the Druids. Allanon warned the Ohmsford brothers that the Warlock Lord had returned to the Skull Kingdom in the Northland and was already coming for Shea, as he was the last descendant of Jerle Shannara—and therefore the only one capable of wielding the Sword of Shannara against the Warlock Lord. Allanon departed, leaving Shea three blue stones for protection. He told Shea to flee at the sign of the Skull. A few weeks later, a creature bearing a symbol of

A digital painting by Andy Simmons of Allanon and Flick's first meeting.

a skull showed up; one of the Warlock Lord's "winged black destroyers" Skull Bearer had arrived, and it was searching for Shea. The brothers were forced to flee with the Skull Bearer on their heels. They eventually took refuge in the nearby city of Leah and they found Shea's friend Menion, who was the lazy son of the city's lord. Menion decided to accompany the two, and he was their guide their trip to the Eastland, where they met Allanon in the Dwarf capital of Culhaven.

From Culhaven to Paranor

In Culhaven, Allanon called a council to discuss the Warlock Lord. They decided to send a small party to Paranor, the final resting place of the Sword of Shannara, and acquire this weapon so that it could be used against the Warlock Lord, as this was the only weapon that could kill him. This party consisted of Allanon, Shea, Flick, Menion, Prince Balinor Buckhannah of Callahorn, the Dwarf Hendel, and the Elven brothers Dayel and Durin Elessedil from the Westland.

The party journeyed through the Valley of Shale and the Hadeshorn, and under the Dragon's Teeth mountains through the Hall of Kings. Along the way, Shea was lost after falling off a cliff into a river. Reaching Paranor, the remaining party found it overrun with the Warlock Lord's Gnome soldiers and the Sword missing, as it had already been taken north to the Skull Kingdom. The party split up here, with one part going to help Callahorn in the coming war and the other part going after Shea.


In the Southland

Disguised by Allanon, Flick infiltrated the enemy camp and rescued the captive Elven King, Eventine Elessedil; at the same time, in Kern, Menion saved a woman named Shirl Ravenlock and immediately fell in love with her. Together, they organized an evacuation of Kern before the Northland army reached the city.

Balinor returned to Tyrsis in order to activate the Border Legion, only to find that it had been disbanded. Balinor was then imprisoned by his insane brother Palance Buckhannah, who had taken control of Callahorn's rule. His advisor, Stenmin, had driven Palance insane by drugs fed to him, making him his pawn. With help from Menion, Balinor escaped and confronted both Palance and Stenmin. Practically cornered, Stenmin stabbed Palance as a distraction and fled.

Now commanded by Balinor, Callahorn's reformed Border Legion marched out of Tyrsis and engaged the Northland army at the Mermiddon River, killing many Northlanders before being forced to pull back; the Border Legion used the time gained to retreat to Tyrsis and make preparations for defense. After about three days, the Border Legion was finally beaten back from the Outer Wall of Tyrsis as a result of treachery—the wall fell when the traitors kept the main gate open by jamming its crossbar. At the defenders' last stand on the Bridge of Sendic, the Northlanders abruptly broke and ran.


In the Northland

After being captured by Gnomes as soon as he had gotten out of the river, Shea was rescued by the one-handed thief Panamon Creel and his mute Troll companion Keltset Mallicos. Journeying to the Northland, they reached the Skull Kingdom, where the insane Gnome deserter Orl Fane had carried the Sword of Shannara in his madness. Infiltrating the Warlock Lord's fortress in the Skull Mountain, Shea reached the sword and unsheathed it. He finally learned about its true power, which was its ability to confront those, when touched, with the truth about their lives. The Warlock Lord materialized and tried to destroy Shea, but the youth stood his ground and confronted his enemy with the sword. Although immune to physical weapons, the Warlock Lord vanished after being forced to confront the truth about himself: though he had deluded himself into believing that he was immortal, this is impossible. The Sword forced him to confront this paradox, and it killed him.

In his anger over Orl Fane's refusal to give up the location of the Sword, Panamon physically threatens him while Shea and Keltset look on. (Simmons)

Keltset sacrificed himself to save his companions during the Skull Kingdom's destruction. In the south, the Northland army retreated after the Warlock Lord's downfall. Allanon saved Shea's life and revealed himself as Bremen's centuries-old son, before disappearing to sleep. Peace returned to the Four Lands. Balinor took up his country's rule, while Dayel and Durin returned to the Westland, and Menion returned to Leah with Shirl. Reuniting, Shea and Flick returned to Shady Vale.

Major themes

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"Ordinary men placed in extraordinary circumstances" is a prevalent theme in The Sword of Shannara. Brooks credits Tolkien with introducing this theme of mundane heroism into fantasy literature and influencing his own fiction. "My protagonists are cut from the same bolt of cloth as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. It was Tolkien's genius to reinvent the traditional epic fantasy by making the central character neither God nor hero, but a simple man in search of a way to do the right thing. I was impressed enough by how it had changed the face of epic fantasy that I never gave a second thought to not using it as the cornerstone of my own writing."

The Sword of Shannara is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where chemical and nuclear holocaust devastated the land in the distant past. Due to the numerous references in Sword to this catastrophe, Brooks was asked a question about whether he thought that his 'prediction' might come true. He answered:

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I don't see myself as a negative person, so I don't think I've ever thought we would destroy ourselves. But it does worry me that not only are we capable of nuclear war, but we also flirt with the idea periodically. One mistake, after all . . . Anyway, I used the background in The Sword of Shannara more in a cautionary vein than as a prophecy. Also, it was necessary to destroy civilization in order to take a look at what it would mean to have to build it back up again using magic. A civilization once destroyed by misuse of power is a bit wary the second time out about what new power can do.

Environment plays some sort of role in all of the Shannara novels. Brooks was posed this question from a fan who lives in Seattle, the same city where Brooks lives: "Over the years I have noticed how the environment plays a big role in your stories; not just a "place or setting" but almost a character all to itself. Does the climate and environment here in Seattle play into the environments in the world of Shannara? Now that I've seen this place I feel like I've been reading about it my whole life in your books; walking around here I almost feel like I'm in a forest you've written about." Brooks responded to the fan with this: "Environment is a character in my story and almost always plays a major role in affecting the story's outcome. I have always believed that fantasy, in particular, because it takes place in an imaginary world with at least some imaginary characters, needs to make the reader feel at home in the setting. That means bringing the setting alive for the reader, which is what creating environment as a character is really all about. Stories of mine directly address the question of what happens when the environment is thrown too far off nature's intended course."


Literary significance and reception

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The Sword of Shannara received mixed reviews following its publication. Choice stated that the novel was "exceptionally well-written, very readable...entrance into the genre...that will be accepted by most teenagers." Marshall Tymn thought that Sword was a "problem book" due to its "close imitation of Tolkien". However, he also thought that "the book was basically well-written." Tymn cited some of the differences, such as the use of a postholocaust setting with the races that sprung from that, and the "entertaining conartist, Panamon Creel,...and...an unexpected ending springing from the nature of the sword." Cathi Dunn MacRae assessed all of Brooks' works in her novel that was published in 1998. On The Sword of Shannara, she thought this:

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In this postholocaust world of our future, Brooks parallels the mystic arts...with science, two powers that are not good or evil but become either by the way we use them. Evil is a corruption of truth, erupting from the selfish use of power for one's own ends. Good arises from the insistence on truth, allowing us to realize our indelible bonds with others of all races, and our connection with nature and earth. Anything unnatural is evil, such as the Warlock Lord's immortality, which recalls similar abuse of nature by Le Guin's Cob and by Barbara Hambly's wizard Suraklin.

One of Brooks' strengths is his plot's momentum, maintained through cliffhangers, unexpected twists of fortune, and the dance of many characters' constant movements. This brisk pace alters when characters pause to ruminate, which draws out suspense and reveals motivation. However, first novelist Brooks as puppet master is not always in control of the strings. With no single point of view centered in one character, his focus is diffused, and the anxieties and realizations of each character beg an to sound the same, blurring their identities with repetition.

Literary significance and reception

The Sword of Shannara has drawn extensive criticism from critics who believe that Brooks derived too much of his novel from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In 1978, the influential fantasy editor Lin Carter denounced The Sword of Shannara as "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read". Elaborating on his disapproval of the book, Carter wrote that "Terry Brooks wasn't trying to imitate Tolkien's prose, just steal his story line and complete cast of characters, and Brooks did it with such clumsiness and so heavy-handedly, that he virtually rubbed your nose in it." Roger C. Schlobin was kinder in his assessment, though he still thought that The Sword of Shannara was a disappointment because of its similarities to The Lord of the Rings. Brian Attebery accused The Sword of Shannara of being "undigested Tolkien". He found it "especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" to The Lord of the Rings. In an educational article on writing, the author Orson Scott Card cited The Sword of Shannara as a cautionary example of overly-derivative writing, finding the work "artistically displeasing" for this reason.

Assessing The Sword of Shannara three decades after its publication, the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey agreed with Attebery, as Shippey found that the novel was distinctive for "the dogged way in which it followed Tolkien point for point". Within Brooks' novel, Shippey located "analogues" for Tolkien characters such as Sauron (Brona), Gandalf (Allanon), the Hobbits (Shea and Flick), Aragorn (Menion), Boromir (Balinor), Gimli (Hendel), Legolas (Durin and Dayel), Gollum (Orl Fane), the Barrow-wight (Mist Wraith) and the Nazgûl (Skull Bearers), among others. He also found plot similarities to events in The Lord of the Rings such as the Fellowship of the Ring's formation and adventures, the journeys to Rivendell (Culhaven) and Lothlórien (Storlock), Gandalf's fall in Moria and subsequent reappearance, and the Rohirrim's arrival at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, among others. Avoiding direct commentary on the book's quality, Shippey attributed the book's success to the post-Tolkienian advent of the fantasy genre: "What The Sword of Shannara seems to show is that many readers had developed the taste for heroic fantasy so strongly that if they could not get the real thing they would take any substitute, no matter how diluted."

Terry Brooks has stated that Tolkien's works were a major influence in his writing, though he has also said that Tolkien was not the only influence upon him: other influences included the many different books he had read over his life and Lester del Rey (his editor). Also, mythology and ancient civilizations that he had learned about in school gave him a wealth of knowledge from which he drew from. Many of these influences are reflected in Brooks' works.

In a 2001 Interzone essay, the author Gene Wolfe defended Brooks' derivation of material from Tolkien: "Terry Brooks has often been disparaged for imitating Tolkien, particularly by those reviewers who find his books inferior to Tolkien's own. I can say only that I wish there were more imitators -- we need them -- and that all imitations of so great an original must necessarily be inferior." In a commentary for The New York Times Book Review, the author of the science fiction novel Dune, Frank Herbert, also defended Brooks, saying:

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Don't fault Brooks for entering the world of letters through the Tolkien door. Every writer owes a similar debt to those who have come before. Some will admit it. Tolkien's debt was equally obvious. The classical myth structure is deeply embedded in Western society

That's why you should not be surprised at finding these elements in The Sword of Shannara. Yes, you will find here the young prince in search of his grail; the secret (and not always benign) powers of nature; the magician; the wise old man; the witch mother; the malignant threat from a sorcerer; the holy talisman; the virgin queen; the fool (in the ancient tarot sense of the one who asks the disturbing questions) and all of the other Arthurian trappings.

What Brooks has done is to present a marvelous exposition of why the idea is not the story. Because of the popular assumption (which assumes mythic proportions of its own) that ideas form 99 percent of a story, writers are plagued by that foolish question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Brooks demonstrates that it doesn't matter where you get the idea; what matters is that you tell a rousing story.

Saying that "Brooks revert to his own style ... somewhere around Chapter 20", Herbert remarked upon what Brooks did not take from Tolkien:

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In the last chapters, you get the Brooksian innovations—the Rock Troll [Keltset], who is deep and mute and whose actions, thus, are far more important than any words could be; the Grim Druid, who really changes character in the second half of the book, becoming far more complex and devious (the name Allanon should give you a clue); Balinor, the Prince of Callahorn, whose role breaks with myth tradition; the Warlock Lord, who pretty much fills the traditional role of evil—but that's what you expect of evil and it doesn't blight a good story.

Herbert also praised the characters of evil in the book: "Ah, the monsters in this book. Brooks creates distillations of horror that hark back to childhood's shadows, when the most important thing about a fearful creature was that you didn't know its exact shape and intent. You only knew that it wanted you. The black-winged skull bearer, for instance, is more than a euphemism for death. In a 2001 article for Seattle Weekly, David Massengill also commented upon Brooks' main characters, calling them "idiosyncratic adventurers.


Book impact

The Sword of Shannara sold about 125,000 copies in its first month in print. It was the first work of fiction to ever appear on The New York Times trade paperback bestseller list, and it was there for over five months. This success provided a major boost to the fantasy genre, a fact noted by many critics. Louise J. Winters wrote that, "Until Shannara, no fantasy writer except J. R. R. Tolkien had made such an impression on the general public." The critic David Pringle credited Brooks for "demonstrat in 1977 that the commercial success of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings had not been a fluke, and that fantasy really did have the potential to become a mass-market genre". Together with Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, The Sword of Shannara ushered in "the era of the big commercial fantasy" and helped to make epic fantasy the leading subgenre of fantasy. Later in their life, The Sword of Shannara and its subsequent sequels were one of the inspirations for the later versions Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game.


Possible film adaptation

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The rights to a movie adaptation for all of the Shannara novels have been sold to Warner Bros until 2010. The Elfstones of Shannara, the second book of the Original Shannara Trilogy and the sequel to The Sword of Shannara, is the first planned movie. It will be filmed and directed by Mike Newell, who also directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This movie is expected to start filming in 2008 and finished sometime during 2009. The Elfstones of Shannara will probably be followed by an adaptation of The Sword of Shannara in 2010. The sequence of the movies differs from the sequence of the books, but Terry Brooks believes that this is the best starting place for adapting the Shannara novels.