Discount Price: $7.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780345314253
ISBN number: 0345314255
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 736
Printing Date: July 12, 1983
Publishing house: Del Rey
Release Date: July 12, 1983
Sale Popularity Level: 15627
Studio: Del Rey
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Living in peaceful Shady Vale, Shea Ohmsford knew little of the troubles that plagued the rest of the world. Then the giant, forbidding Allanon revaled that the supposedly dead Warlock Lord was plotting to destory the world. The sole weapon against this Power of Darkness was the Sword of Shannara, which could only be used by a true heir of Shannara--Shea being the last of the bloodline, upon whom all hope rested. Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of Evil, flew into the Vale, seeking to destroy Shea. To save the Vale, Shea fled, drawing the Skull Bearer after him....
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
The people who are giving this book 5 stars either read it when it very first came out in the 1970's or are shills for the author/publisher. Five stars for this nonsense? I'm glad I got this book for free. LOL.
Rated by buyers 
-
I read this book 20 years ago, and could not put it down!!! It's that GOOD! I loved the book "The lord of the rings", and with that said, I liked this one better. Fun from beginning to end. Forgive Terry Brooks for being brilliant!!!
Rated by buyers -
The popularity of this title seems to have waned considerably since the last time I looked it up on Amazon.com. Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara is arguably the novel most obviously derivative of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in terms of both characters and events in the plot, but come on, guys. Three and a half stars? While I can't justify Brooks extending this series to the length it has eventually grown to (I had to stop reading after the beleaguering original seven) The Sword of Shannara is still a classic of the genre, and it deserves an appreciative nod from fantasy fans. After all, without mindless knock-offs of Tolkien, where would the mass-market world of seven-hundred-page sword-and-sorcery novels be today? Not in the hearts and minds of all of us, that's for sure. In that sense, Brooks should be seen as a bold pioneer.
All joking aside, I have fond memories of staying up late to finish this book, even though at fifteen I could easily spot the parallels between this novel and The Lord of the Rings. Two stars for originality. Five stars for entertainment value. But five stars overall because this classic does not deserve to be languishing at a caustic three and a half stars! Come on people, help me out!!!
Rated by buyers -
I dont know what's wrong with all you people who didnt like this book. Why dont you just read it and stop comparing it to other books. If you read a book like Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, and then later read the Sword of Shannara, of course you're going to see similarities. As another reader mentioned, wizards and evil bad guys arent just in Tolkiens books. There are heros in the Bible (i.e., King David, various other profits and of course Jesus Christ) and an evil guy (the devil) but you dont compare books that have hero's and evil guys to that. Its an age old concept to have heros and evil guys in books. You should just read the book. When I read it, I couldnt put it down. I wanted to find out what was going to happen to the characters. I never even thought about any other book. I couldnt wait to get to the subsequent book. If you're so f**king critical you're going to find faults everywhere.
Rated by buyers 
-
The Sword of Shannara was a very popular book back in the 70s right after the huge sucess of The Lord of the Rings when everyone wanted to read more fantasy. I wasn't old enough to read it back then, so I came to it much later. I read part of the very first book and, knowing how popular it had been, and feeling like it was a classic, I was prepared to enjoy it. About half way through I gave it to my ten year old son.
The weird thing is, it's so like The Lord of the Rings, at the same time that it's not. I don't mind a few common fantasy elements (especially in works written before they were cliché), but Brooks' plot and characters come almost straight out of Tolkien. This may have been acceptable if the writing had come straight out of Tolkien, too, but Brooks' style is clunky, wordy, and awkward. Adjectives and adverbs are used without restraint. I mean there are constant repetitive superfluous unnecessary redundant profligate excessive numbers of adjectives. And did I mention the weirdly-placed adverbs which are used unsparingly, unrestrainedly, extravagantly, and immoderately? And annoyingly? . . . When I couldn't care less whether Shea and Flick (they're the hobbits-- I mean the heroes) live or die, then the characterization is weak. Actually, I was kind of hoping that they would die. If they died, the book would have to end, right?
Conclusion: These are fine for kids (at least this one is, I can't say if all of the later Shannara books are -- probably not). But, do you really want to teach them to write like that? If not, give them C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Susan Cooper, and Lloyd Alexander. To be fair: This series is wildly popular. Perhaps the writing gets better (it has been 30 years, after all). I have heard that only the very first book is too much like Tolkien. But I'll never know for sure because I can't make it through the very first one. --FanLit.net
Find other books like this one:
