> Well, I'm trying to get through The Sword of Shannara (by Terry Brooks), but I keep getting distracted. I'm mainly reading it thanks to the reccomendation the series got a while ago in the Site Journal, but in all honesty it hasn't been that interesting so far (aside from finding and laughing at the parts that seem to have been blatantly taken from Lord of the Rings). Actually, I haven't even read it at all in like 3 weeks, I've been busy with other stuff...

I have to do my Sword of Shannara spiel now.
Yes, The Sword of Shannara is, on the surface,
a blatant rip off of Lord of the Rings. The key
events follow LotR almost religiously. Where
it diverges is in its spirit. The core values
and themes make a totally different point. The
Shannara universe is a study of power. It's not
inherently good or bad, but it can be used for
either goal. Furthermore, power can lead to
greed and often will ultimately consume its wielder.
The series is about characters who struggle to
cope with power, whether they succeed or fail
and why. Shannara diverges again with respect to its
characters. There is often a one-to-one correlation
between the characters between Sword of Shannara
and LotR in terms of their function in the story.
But the characters themselves are original creations.
Allanon is not Gandalf by any stretch of the
imagination. Nor is Balinor Boromir, Shea Frodo,
or Flick Sam. As for the talismans -- the Sword
vs. the One Ring -- they aren't even similar on
the surface, and I won't go into why because it
would give away one of Sword's most intriguing assets.

My final "usual Shannara spiel" comment is that
Sword of Shannara was Terry Brooks' first book
ever, and one he originally wrote for himself
rather than to publish. (The vast majority of
published authors write several books and have the
benefit of eons of experience before getting
published.) The subsequent entries in the
Shannara series are more original (increasingly
so as it goes on) and better written.

Which is not to say that I personally don't enjoy
Sword. I admit that I may not have become as
entranced by it if it hadn't been one of the first
modern fantasy novels I ever read, but it's still
my favorite modern fantasy series today, and I
still enjoy the books as they come out.