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Jan. 13th, 2010 11:47 amSometimes, people have inexplicably terrible taste.
Sometimes, um . . . sometimes those people are me.
This story starts - as so many regrettable stories do - at tvtropes.org, where I was wandering idly a few weeks ago and stumbled over the page for Terry Brooks' Shannara series. Of course I read it. I read the whole thing. And suddenly I found myself on NOSTALGIA ALERT.
For those of you unfamiliar: the Shannara series begins with The Sword of Shannara, which has the distinction of being the most unabashed Lord of the Rings ripoff ever to make it onto the New York Times Bestseller list. (Our plucky band ofhobbits Valemen, elves, dwarves, dispossessed princes, and one mysterious wizard Druid travel through marshes and mountains and halls of the dead while chased by wraiths! Seriously, you can compare the plots point-by-point, and it is hilarious.) At age 11, I found this enormous tome buried somewhere in a pile of my dad's old sff novels from the seventies, ate the whole thing up with a spoon, and went looking for more. There are two slightly more original sequels in the first trilogy; the books I really loved, however, were the Heritage of Shannara series. These were set three hundred years after the original book and followed some super-distant descendants of our original Plucky Valeman, as they all simultaneously went out on quests for Magical MacGuffins to save the land from the evils of democracy the evil subjugating and magic-suppressing Federation. I loved these books so much I tried to write myself into them. You are probably thinking "Mary Sues!" here, but no, no; I was not yet that fannishly far advanced. My version was much simpler: I just sat down at a computer and started retyping it out with myself inserted. "They had arrived in Varfleet two weeks earlier, Coll and Par and Becca." IT WAS VERY SATISFYING. (I WAS TWELVE. STOP JUDGING ME. ;_;)
ANYWAY. I am now twice the age I was then and had not thought about Terry Brooks in many years . . . until that fateful day on TVTropes, when all of a sudden I found myself thinking about the Heritage of Shannara books,
( and to make a long story short, NOSTALGIA REREAD AHOY. Spoiler: I still totally love the books. )
And now, a poll, because as always I am curious about other people's formative childhood influences:
[Poll #1511148]
Sometimes, um . . . sometimes those people are me.
This story starts - as so many regrettable stories do - at tvtropes.org, where I was wandering idly a few weeks ago and stumbled over the page for Terry Brooks' Shannara series. Of course I read it. I read the whole thing. And suddenly I found myself on NOSTALGIA ALERT.
For those of you unfamiliar: the Shannara series begins with The Sword of Shannara, which has the distinction of being the most unabashed Lord of the Rings ripoff ever to make it onto the New York Times Bestseller list. (Our plucky band of
ANYWAY. I am now twice the age I was then and had not thought about Terry Brooks in many years . . . until that fateful day on TVTropes, when all of a sudden I found myself thinking about the Heritage of Shannara books,
( and to make a long story short, NOSTALGIA REREAD AHOY. Spoiler: I still totally love the books. ) And now, a poll, because as always I am curious about other people's formative childhood influences:
[Poll #1511148]
