#3: Terry Brooks, The Annotated Sword of Shannara

[kareila]

I read the first seven Shannara books when I was in high school and thought they were reasonably entertaining if obviously derivative, especially this first book, which absolutely plunders Tolkien - although I do recall that the later Scions series was considerably more original. Anyway, since high school was a long time ago, I decided to pick this up when I saw it at the library, both for a refresher and to see what information was contained in the annotations.

I wouldn't recommend reading the annotated version if you haven't read the story before, since the sidenotes definitely take you out of the story as you are reading. Some of the notes are annoyingly non-specific, things like "I never would have written this book if my parents hadn't made me go to law school," and some talk about the feedback he has received over the years, things like "this character is a fan favorite." There are also some amusingly self-deprecating bits, like "I am so bad at travel sequences that I gave my editors fits." The most helpful notes to me are the ones that say which other book(s) to read for specific parts of the backstory, since I haven't kept up with any of the prequels.