Thursday, November 6, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Gypsy Morph's fate is finally revealed.
Sorry folks. I typed this a couple weeks ago and never posted it.
First of all, let me preface this by saying that Terry Brooks is my favorite author. I will continue to read his books even if he starts writing Harlequin romances. (OK, maybe not. I would probably have to lose my temper at him for wasting his talent.) I preface this entry that way because I'm going to complain a bit about some of his recent books, and I don't want anyone to doubt that he is still my favorite author.
I love the fact that he comes out with a new book every fall, instead of making us wait for several years for the next installment in whichever series he happens to be writing. It's become a tradition for me to receive his latest book as a birthday present every year. I would hate for that tradition to stop. Though sometimes I get the same book two years in a row, even though I specify to my wife the name of the latest book. She claims that "They all look alike. How am I supposed to keep track of which ones you already have?" I don't exactly get this when I wrote down the name of the book I want. All she has to do is go to the fantasy section, seek out Terry Brooks (it's in the B's) and find the book that matches the title that I wrote down on the piece of paper. How hard could that be!?! But, I digress.
I love the fact that I can look forward to a new Brooks book every year; yet I feel that the quality and complexity of the books may have suffered as a result of my man Terry pumping them out so fast. His latest,Gypsy Morph, which concludes the GENESIS OF SHANNARA series is a perfect example.
I love this idea of connecting the WORD/VOID trilogy with the Shannara series. For the most part, I have very few complaints about the first two books: Armageddon's Children and Elves of the Cintra. (If you haven't read those books; put down this blog and go read them!) But Gypsy Morph disappointed me. There were scenes where the Ghosts were traveling along with the narrator describing a particular scene and then would suddenly tell us "Oh, by the way, This character and that one left the group a couple days ago." It seemed like this happened a lot in Gypsy Morph. Rather than take the time to tell the full story, he would mention, almost casually, that certain events had taken place previous to the current scene. "Just thought you should know."
Instead of taking the time to give us the details of these events, he just added them as an afterthougt in the middle of a scene that he deemed worthy of narrating. I wonder if Terry was getting close to his deadline to complete the novel and just had to cut scenes in order to get things done in time.
Having said all that, overall I enjoyed this novel. It did not end in the way I expected at all. I am curious to see which direction he goes in when he returns to the Genesis of Shannara series in a couple of years.
First of all, let me preface this by saying that Terry Brooks is my favorite author. I will continue to read his books even if he starts writing Harlequin romances. (OK, maybe not. I would probably have to lose my temper at him for wasting his talent.) I preface this entry that way because I'm going to complain a bit about some of his recent books, and I don't want anyone to doubt that he is still my favorite author.
I love the fact that he comes out with a new book every fall, instead of making us wait for several years for the next installment in whichever series he happens to be writing. It's become a tradition for me to receive his latest book as a birthday present every year. I would hate for that tradition to stop. Though sometimes I get the same book two years in a row, even though I specify to my wife the name of the latest book. She claims that "They all look alike. How am I supposed to keep track of which ones you already have?" I don't exactly get this when I wrote down the name of the book I want. All she has to do is go to the fantasy section, seek out Terry Brooks (it's in the B's) and find the book that matches the title that I wrote down on the piece of paper. How hard could that be!?! But, I digress.
I love the fact that I can look forward to a new Brooks book every year; yet I feel that the quality and complexity of the books may have suffered as a result of my man Terry pumping them out so fast. His latest,Gypsy Morph, which concludes the GENESIS OF SHANNARA series is a perfect example.
I love this idea of connecting the WORD/VOID trilogy with the Shannara series. For the most part, I have very few complaints about the first two books: Armageddon's Children and Elves of the Cintra. (If you haven't read those books; put down this blog and go read them!) But Gypsy Morph disappointed me. There were scenes where the Ghosts were traveling along with the narrator describing a particular scene and then would suddenly tell us "Oh, by the way, This character and that one left the group a couple days ago." It seemed like this happened a lot in Gypsy Morph. Rather than take the time to tell the full story, he would mention, almost casually, that certain events had taken place previous to the current scene. "Just thought you should know."
Instead of taking the time to give us the details of these events, he just added them as an afterthougt in the middle of a scene that he deemed worthy of narrating. I wonder if Terry was getting close to his deadline to complete the novel and just had to cut scenes in order to get things done in time.
Having said all that, overall I enjoyed this novel. It did not end in the way I expected at all. I am curious to see which direction he goes in when he returns to the Genesis of Shannara series in a couple of years.
Score: 4 out of 5 Cheesedoodles (yeah, I know. It's weird to use cheesedoodles as a scoring tool. Too bad!)
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