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A review by futuregazer
The Black Elfstone by Terry Brooks
2.0
Aggressively mediocre. Obviously a setup book for bigger stuff, but.....well, for one, I generally tend to prefer series-entries that at least feel like they have some individual identity or resolution, even if they don't stand on their own. I don't mind cliffhanger endings if the story got somewhere with an arc.
But this....it's all setup and nothing else. A very poor showing to my eyes at least. Surely, even if Brooks can only tell the story he wants with all this setup in place first he could have....added some things? Not so much padding as setting - some conversations between Tarsha and locals in her village that are NOT focused on her brother might have given us a sense of the wider world and where Shannara stands today as opposed to how it was in other eras - the feel, not just the tech level. To be honest, all the siblings growing up stuff was HEAVILY, almost exclusively narrated rather than given actual scenes, and it was in some ways odd that it took Tarsha so long into the book to become an ACTUAL viewpoint character.
The timeline was also very odd, starting out at present day and then jumping back into the kids' childhoods with no obvious delineation, though this could have easily been the audiobook for me. Still, it was odd even if it was shown with say, italics, as is sometimes the Brooks way.
Finally, letting the whole book hang on the mystery of who the invaders are is....well, a choice. A dangerous strategy normally, but especially when you don't even pump up their mystery. What we know: they seem to have a foreign language, they can kinda appear and disappear, they are led by mysterious figure A who is a young lady, and at least one of them can talk and act like a normal person for a while. That's not mysterious, that's unknown. Mysterious involves throwing a couple things in that don't seem to fit - yes young lady does not normally fit with our view of invading army leader, but that's just because people are hung up on trends. Give us anything more about the invaders and then the young lady part might have something to not fit with. Right now it just smacks of: "I put a young lady in to be mysterious, and to have plot relevance later, but I'm going to take forever getting to that. Whoooooooo; mystery!" waggles fingers in a silly way. Again, unknown, not mysterious.
Oh, and Shae Ohmsford had really better come back as a Chekov's gun, because I like authors remembering to put ordinary coincidences into books, but that's a ridiculous way to again just go "But who is he? mystery?" While at the same time, doing a callback. Look, I'd love a Shae callback - have a minstrel in a tavern who happens to start singing about the legend of Shae and Flick. Great. Coincidence and homage, but not needless mystery. If you'd like an ordinary coincidence - just resolve it, and have the kid explain in book that he picked it from a legend, after jump scaring the reader. Then, it's still interesting, but not this "Is he going to have relevance to the plot" meta 'mystery' for the the reader.
Hmmm....I thought I was just lightly bored by this book - but apparently I see a lot more problems then I thought at first. Huh.
But this....it's all setup and nothing else. A very poor showing to my eyes at least. Surely, even if Brooks can only tell the story he wants with all this setup in place first he could have....added some things? Not so much padding as setting - some conversations between Tarsha and locals in her village that are NOT focused on her brother might have given us a sense of the wider world and where Shannara stands today as opposed to how it was in other eras - the feel, not just the tech level. To be honest, all the siblings growing up stuff was HEAVILY, almost exclusively narrated rather than given actual scenes, and it was in some ways odd that it took Tarsha so long into the book to become an ACTUAL viewpoint character.
The timeline was also very odd, starting out at present day and then jumping back into the kids' childhoods with no obvious delineation, though this could have easily been the audiobook for me. Still, it was odd even if it was shown with say, italics, as is sometimes the Brooks way.
Finally, letting the whole book hang on the mystery of who the invaders are is....well, a choice. A dangerous strategy normally, but especially when you don't even pump up their mystery. What we know: they seem to have a foreign language, they can kinda appear and disappear, they are led by mysterious figure A who is a young lady, and at least one of them can talk and act like a normal person for a while. That's not mysterious, that's unknown. Mysterious involves throwing a couple things in that don't seem to fit - yes young lady does not normally fit with our view of invading army leader, but that's just because people are hung up on trends. Give us anything more about the invaders and then the young lady part might have something to not fit with. Right now it just smacks of: "I put a young lady in to be mysterious, and to have plot relevance later, but I'm going to take forever getting to that. Whoooooooo; mystery!" waggles fingers in a silly way. Again, unknown, not mysterious.
Oh, and Shae Ohmsford had really better come back as a Chekov's gun, because I like authors remembering to put ordinary coincidences into books, but that's a ridiculous way to again just go "But who is he? mystery?" While at the same time, doing a callback. Look, I'd love a Shae callback - have a minstrel in a tavern who happens to start singing about the legend of Shae and Flick. Great. Coincidence and homage, but not needless mystery. If you'd like an ordinary coincidence - just resolve it, and have the kid explain in book that he picked it from a legend, after jump scaring the reader. Then, it's still interesting, but not this "Is he going to have relevance to the plot" meta 'mystery' for the the reader.
Hmmm....I thought I was just lightly bored by this book - but apparently I see a lot more problems then I thought at first. Huh.