The Sword of Shannara

"It's as if Brooks took the Lord of the Rings trilogy and condensed it down to one book. You've got the race of men, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and trolls. There's a big bad guy who is seemingly all powerful and inhuman. There's an unwilling good guy who needs a special talisman to defeat the bad guy. And finally, there's a fellowship of good guys who will help THE good guy get to the right place to defeat the bad guy. It's a good intro to high fantasy if you want to add it to your book collection!"

"A good old-fashioned, adventure, fantasy. You can feel the Tolkien influence throughout while still being it's own story. I look forward to reading the rest of the series. "

"Very similar to LOTR"

"The Sword of Shanara is for all intense purposes identical to The Lord of Rings. Fortunately for those who read The Lord of the Rings, the journey was longer but far more entertaining and vastly better in many aspects. The Sword of Shanara had all of the same races except there were gnomes in Shanara but not in LOTR. Shay was Frodo, Flick was Sammwise Gamgee, Balinor was a mixture of King Theoden and Boromir, Menyen Lee was Aragorn, Cheryl was Arwen, Stenman was mixture of Grima Wormtongue and Saruman, Hendel was Gimli, Duran and Dale were Legolas, and Alanon who distinctly reminded one of Gandalf. The story even had Ringwraiths or Skull Bearers and a Dark Lord called Brona or in LOTR better known as Sauron. The whole Fellowship is present in this retelling of the Lord of the Rings. The only differences is names for wizards which are druids on Shanara and Shay's possession of the Elf Stones. The Elfstones of Shanara is what is rumored to be made into TV show and hopefully holds more promise then the first book in this series. The similarities between The Sword of Shanara and The Lord of the Rings is so close that it is a wonder the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien did not file alawsuitfor copyright infringement on the part of Terry Brooks. It is very hard to appreciate a work that attempts to rehash a far better story written by the King of Fantasy, or J.R.R. Tolkien, but it was atheist interesting enough to finish. The ending did tie up most of the loose ends however it leaves readers wondering what could possibly happen to Shayne following Buchan anticlimactic ending which will not be spoiled here. If at all possible, avoid reading this first installment and read the Cliff Notes, Spark Notes or Wikipage for plot, characters nd settings. Here is to hoping that the following books in the series are more independent of The Lord of The Rings and follows its own path...."

"Good intro to fantasy. Classic but doesn't stand up to more modern fantasy."

"Yea im really getting into son of the black sword trilogy by Larry Correia. Really great read so far. How about you? "

"For the longest time I had so many people recommend this series to me. I finally got around to it and honestly I was expecting to be disappointed. But, On the contrary I rather enjoyed it. There are definitely themes picked up from LOTR, characters and plot lines are similar, however it is still very entertaining. Once you stop comparing it to LOTR (which is an unmatched classic) you will see this for the enjoyable read that it is. Another way of looking it at is that Terry Brooks gave his take on LOTR, and like the saying goes "imitation is the highest form of flattery". Give this a try, don't sell it short you might just be surprised!"