August books: Still 3/6 (also in the middle of 3, because I am a mess)
(Also as a note, I read the last book in this a year ago. May need to speed things up a bit.)
If you’re new ’round these parts, let me tell you about the Shannara series. This is a high fantasy-esque series of many books, and was my introduction to the fantasy genre through The Wishsong of Shannara. And here we are, 30 years later, still hanging out in fantastic waters. The original trilogy of Sword (1977), Elfstones (1982), and Wishsong (1985) is very much high fantasy, but the world is actually ours, after some unspecified apocalypse.
Terry Brooks, the author, has completed the story (in theory–I feel like every time I check there’s something else out) (oh good lord he put out a new book in MARCH)–okay, he’s NOT completed the story but we’re slowly working our way through it anyway.
(…he’s also apparently handed the series off to a younger author. I may need to rethink this whole thing. TERRY WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME)
ANYWAY.
Angel Fire East (published 1999) is the last of the Word and the Void trilogy (the other two books being Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word), which are interesting because while they are now included in the Shannara chronology, they were not intended to be when they were written. As such they don’t really match any of the later books, and the magic systems in place here do not make for an easy progression into the magic in the later Shannara books. I am hoping that as we get a little farther into the series, especially the next few books, Armageddon’s Children and the Genesis of Shannara series (both written after the Word and Void trilogy), that everything will be come clear, or at least make some sort of sense.
The whole trilogy is a much quieter fantasy trilogy than many, with explorations of trauma, grief, homelessness, addiction, and family, on top of the occasional demon battle and magic and that sort of thing. Like the other two books in the series, Angel Fire East follows Nest Freemark and John Ross, now ten years after the events of A Knight of the Word. Nest has returned to her hometown of Hopewell (fictional, but somewhere in Illinois) after quitting her Olympic and world-record setting running career, afraid that she is losing control of her magic. John Ross has managed to catch a gypsy morph, some sort of wild magic, that might be able to turn the tide in the never-ending war between the Word (good) and the Void (evil).
I will say that the story does not feel finished, at the end of Book 3 here. There’s throughlines that would make sense had the original plan been to write a second Word and Void trilogy. I wonder where exactly, between Angel Fire East (1999) and Armageddon’s Children (2006), the decision happened to move the books into the Shannara universe, and what the impetus was. (As of 2003, when Mr. Brooks wrote his Sometimes the Magic Works memoir, they were still separate.) I hope that those throughlines are addressed in Armageddon’s Children or I will be annoyed. But also interesting is the lingering cloud of the apocalypse. The book itself implies that, perhaps (though maybe unlikely) it can be warded off, as it has been since the beginning of humanity, but since I’ve read some of the later (chronological) books, I know it happens.
If nothing else, the Shannara series is an interesting look at how a universe can evolve. From basic high fantasy in the original trilogy to a millennia-sweeping dystopian epic. He tends to write in 3s and 4s, jumping back and forth across the chronology. As a fantasy author myself, that sounds like a bit of nightmare, always having to retcon things to make them work, or invalidating bits of earlier stories. But I can also see the appeal. You’ve already put all the work into the world–why not play in it as much as you can?
I’m sure there’s a marketing element to it as well. Terry Brooks has written other series, but Shannara is what he is known for, and what people keep coming back for.
So! I wonder if I would have enjoyed these books better if I hadn’t been trying to tie them into the rest of the Shannara mythology. Or maybe I wouldn’t have read them at all. They’re not my normal types of fantasy, though I did enjoy each of them.
Next is Armaggedon’s Children, whenever I get to it. Hopefully sooner than a year.
Read the Shannara books, squiders? Any thoughts?
