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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
The main character was horrible to the sister, and then the author piled on. She was allowed almost no agency by anyone. At least the bad guy also realized that she was only a possession of her brother and not an actual person, so he kept kidnapping her through his mind control magic instead of having her do things directly, which probably would have had him achieving all his aims in the first few chapters of the book.
I enjoyed this trip back to Shannara but it just wasn't long enough. I want more, hopefully Terry Brooks comes back to this storyline and we can have some more adventures with Paxon and Chrys.
I was listening to this book on CD, and on the 3rd CD, it started acting weird, like something was wrong with the file, but I wasn't enjoying the book enough to bother figuring out the problem, so I guess I'm DNFing it.
There was an awful lot of explaining worldbuilding, which really bogs down a book in the beginning. Seems like if you're familiar with the world, you should already know a lot of it, and for someone like me who isn't, it was just so much blablabla druids blablabla elfstones blablabla STOP EXPLAINING AND DO SOMETHING!
The action at the beginning, with the guy rescuing his sister, was good. Except A, it was pretty obvious the bad guy had targeted her for some specific reason, so they were kind of dumb to assume he'd leave her alone, and B, a lot of time following that was spent on boring training scenes.
Also, I didn't like the narrator. He read old people just fine, but he really didn't do well with young people. The young druid Paxon meets, especially, sounds a lot like a wizened old mentor for a guy in his early 20s. It's always distracting to have the book telling you one thing and the narrator's performance telling you something different.
There was an awful lot of explaining worldbuilding, which really bogs down a book in the beginning. Seems like if you're familiar with the world, you should already know a lot of it, and for someone like me who isn't, it was just so much blablabla druids blablabla elfstones blablabla STOP EXPLAINING AND DO SOMETHING!
The action at the beginning, with the guy rescuing his sister, was good. Except A, it was pretty obvious the bad guy had targeted her for some specific reason, so they were kind of dumb to assume he'd leave her alone, and B, a lot of time following that was spent on boring training scenes.
Also, I didn't like the narrator. He read old people just fine, but he really didn't do well with young people. The young druid Paxon meets, especially, sounds a lot like a wizened old mentor for a guy in his early 20s. It's always distracting to have the book telling you one thing and the narrator's performance telling you something different.
Actual Rating: 2.5 stars
Pretty meh all around, but not terrible. Can't say I have any interest in Terry Brooks, though.
Pretty meh all around, but not terrible. Can't say I have any interest in Terry Brooks, though.
An enjoyable and fun book that is done very well in the Audible version. I have skipped many of the intervening story lines since the original trilogy and this one seemed a good re-entry to the story.
4 stars for a fun enjoyable fantasy and recommended for all fans of Terry Brooks.
4 stars for a fun enjoyable fantasy and recommended for all fans of Terry Brooks.
Loved it, of course. I was a bit astonished to realize that I've apparently missed the end of the trilogy I had started, and was taking up after those events, but you can very quickly get acclimated to this story, without having read the previous stories. The characters are intriguing and well written, and enough new characters mixed with the old ones. I think part of this story was very obvious, ie; who the spy was, however, not for the reasons you would expect. Some things apparently occur "offscreen" and you don't know about them until the character reveals it, which is something I'm not a fan of, but for reasons of brevity, I guess its necessary, otherwise you'll have a splitting of books into 2 (ala George RR) All in all, at least 4 stars!
3/5
I didn't hate it and I enjoyed listening to the whole thing but it's not something I want to continue. However for how old it is I really was shocked by the way assaulted women are handled- like it's actually pretty good and handled with care. I enjoyed passively listening to this but nothing more than that really.
I didn't hate it and I enjoyed listening to the whole thing but it's not something I want to continue. However for how old it is I really was shocked by the way assaulted women are handled- like it's actually pretty good and handled with care. I enjoyed passively listening to this but nothing more than that really.
Though I'd heard the name, I'd never read any of Terry Brooks' work before, so I had no idea what to expect when I began reading this novel.
Despite my lack of familiarity, however, what I discovered surprised me -- not in a good way, I'm afraid.
While I can't in honesty describe The High Druid's Blade as a bad novel -- it was competently written, neatly plotted, and tied together nicely -- it didn't spark any enthusiasm.
It felt lifeless, the characters didn't really reach out to me, like it was going through the motions, and I found it quite pedestrian. It didn't quite bore me -- I finished it, after all -- but it failed to enthral me.
I certainly wasn't expecting that.
Despite my lack of familiarity, however, what I discovered surprised me -- not in a good way, I'm afraid.
While I can't in honesty describe The High Druid's Blade as a bad novel -- it was competently written, neatly plotted, and tied together nicely -- it didn't spark any enthusiasm.
It felt lifeless, the characters didn't really reach out to me, like it was going through the motions, and I found it quite pedestrian. It didn't quite bore me -- I finished it, after all -- but it failed to enthral me.
I certainly wasn't expecting that.
This book really doesn't obey the rule of 'show don't tell', and it suffers for it. Unfortunate, because the plot had potential