The Slush God offers all-too-typical news:
Today SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Terry Brooks’s latest novel, Armageddon’s Children, which is the first in a series that will connect his Word and the Void trilogy with his Shannara series.
Is there any surer sign that an author has fallen to the Brain Eater than writing books to tie different fictional universes together? It got Heinlein, it got Asimov, and it’s getting Terry Brooks, too.
Heinlein and Asimov were exciting enough to have somewhere to fall to. Brooks has never left the ground state, and thus can’t get any lower.
Did the Brain Eater ever not have Brooks?
(OK, I liked Elfstones, so maybe that’s a low blow… but when one considers Sword of Shannara, isn’t my point proved?)
Inasmuch as the Shannara one’s were originally supposed to be in a far future (which I blessedly cannot remember), what’s described in the linked piece is pretty low on the travesty scale.
_Elfstones_ really is the one Brooks book that people like, isn’t it? It’s kind of remarkable how consistent that reaction is.
FWIW, I think The Tangle Box is his best book.
Of course, it’s the fourth book of a not-very-good series, one that most people wouldn’t have started with, after already giving up on him after Shannara, so only people who were in junior high at the time have read it.
Dylan is right, there were strong hints in Sword that the world of Shannara was ours long after some kind of apocalypse – there’s a scene which takes place in the ruins of a steel-girder building, for example.
Why do I remember this crap when I haven’t read the book in more than 20 years?