Last night I finally gave up reading "Sword of Shannarah," as I just couldn't take it any more. It's easy to see how Terry Brooks grew into a solid author, as there are flashes of brilliance, but on the whole it's just bad writing.
When the word choice is so poor it's distracting, there needs to be an intervention. The worst part is you can see what he does right so clearly that the weaknesses are tragic for what they ruin. Brooks has some incredibly original thoughts, and some very clever views of human history. Then he shrouds them in cliches.
I currently have Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" in my car, and listen to it while I drive. I've read it before, but I'll still fund myself shaking my head at her astonishing word selection. It's humbling, to say the least. Combining her diction with the multiple interweaving storylines, we have a modern classic.
Then I go home and see where Brooks named the bad guys "the Skull Kingdom" and their leader "the Warlock King" and I want to slap him all the way back to "Rainbow Lake."
Ugh.
There are too many good books in the world to force yourself to read something anywhere below top quality.
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