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A review by perilous1
Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks
3.0
This is my second introduction to Terry Brooks, and to be clear, it was a much better experience that my encounter with Wizard At Large.(NOT my cup o’ fantasy tea, as it turns out.) But I’ve since been told this was a poor choice of entry into the world of Shannara. I’ll have to concur with that, as starting here makes it feel as though I’m missing a LOT of pertinent history.
The book starts out promising enough. An isolated valley of woefully underprepared peoples, a gruesome discovery, a couple of highly skilled youths in way over their heads, and a mysteriously powerful hermit who may be the only hope for an entire population’s survival. The tension runs high for the first 1/4th of the book, and the stakes are sufficiently compelling. Brooks does a good bit of perspective jumping to get the story told, but he does so without jarring the reader. His descriptions are vivid and naturally placed.
I had two main issues that make me hesitant to read further into this series:
1. At the end, this didn’t feel like a book. It felt like half of a book.
And I don’t mean simply the fact it that it left off with a cliffhanger. (It actually left off with LOTS of cliffhangers. Cliffhangers for every main character we’d been following.) It’s the lack of satisfaction that annoyed me. The story seems to stop conveniently at a place where absolutely nothing is resolved for anyone—unless you count untimely character death as a resolution. The plot feels literally at a halfway point when it ends, forcing readers to go straight into the next book if they want to find out what happens with ALL OF THE THINGS.
2. I’m afraid I never really connected with any of the characters. Oh, I had a couple of favorites I HOPED I would grow more attached to. (Prue, Mistral, and Inch being curious personality highlights I found myself looking forward to.) But empathy was only halfway formed by the time this book ended. If I read on though, it will be to discover what happens with their character arcs.
From the get-go, I held a searing dislike for the character of Phryne—the rebellious, self-indulgent Elven princess. Her eventually hanging a self-ware lantern of ‘why-am-I-like-this?’ on it unfortunately did little to change my opinion of her. I spent entirely too much time wishing someone would just stand up to her majesty’s overreaching idiocy.
Bonus points if they would have taken this approach:
While I initially didn’t have any real sense for Panterra, my hope for liking him declined steadily in the second half of the book. His dithering and compromised sense for priorities seemed to morph into a self-pitying angst that countered all previous maturity he’d shown.
So, should go without saying, I’m less than excited about the implied start of a romance between Phryne and Panterra. >.>
I don’t mean to sound like I’m put off completely. I’m not. But I’m on the fence about when and whether I’d like to invest in the missing other half of this book.
Perhaps I’ll hop to Genesis of Shannara first…
The book starts out promising enough. An isolated valley of woefully underprepared peoples, a gruesome discovery, a couple of highly skilled youths in way over their heads, and a mysteriously powerful hermit who may be the only hope for an entire population’s survival. The tension runs high for the first 1/4th of the book, and the stakes are sufficiently compelling. Brooks does a good bit of perspective jumping to get the story told, but he does so without jarring the reader. His descriptions are vivid and naturally placed.
I had two main issues that make me hesitant to read further into this series:
1. At the end, this didn’t feel like a book. It felt like half of a book.
And I don’t mean simply the fact it that it left off with a cliffhanger. (It actually left off with LOTS of cliffhangers. Cliffhangers for every main character we’d been following.) It’s the lack of satisfaction that annoyed me. The story seems to stop conveniently at a place where absolutely nothing is resolved for anyone—unless you count untimely character death as a resolution. The plot feels literally at a halfway point when it ends, forcing readers to go straight into the next book if they want to find out what happens with ALL OF THE THINGS.
2. I’m afraid I never really connected with any of the characters. Oh, I had a couple of favorites I HOPED I would grow more attached to. (Prue, Mistral, and Inch being curious personality highlights I found myself looking forward to.) But empathy was only halfway formed by the time this book ended. If I read on though, it will be to discover what happens with their character arcs.
From the get-go, I held a searing dislike for the character of Phryne—the rebellious, self-indulgent Elven princess. Her eventually hanging a self-ware lantern of ‘why-am-I-like-this?’ on it unfortunately did little to change my opinion of her. I spent entirely too much time wishing someone would just stand up to her majesty’s overreaching idiocy.
Bonus points if they would have taken this approach:
While I initially didn’t have any real sense for Panterra, my hope for liking him declined steadily in the second half of the book. His dithering and compromised sense for priorities seemed to morph into a self-pitying angst that countered all previous maturity he’d shown.
So, should go without saying, I’m less than excited about the implied start of a romance between Phryne and Panterra. >.>
I don’t mean to sound like I’m put off completely. I’m not. But I’m on the fence about when and whether I’d like to invest in the missing other half of this book.
Perhaps I’ll hop to Genesis of Shannara first…