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\nAuthor<\/strong> – Terry Brooks<\/a><\/p>\n Hardcover<\/strong> For the sake of full transparency, I would just like my readers to know that I am a moderator at the Official Terry Brooks forum, but that this fact had no impact on the opinions found in the review below.<\/em><\/p>\n Terry Brooks is one of my favourite authors. For this reason, I feel it’s important to hold him to a high standard, a higher standard, perhaps, than other writers. I was disappointed in his previous trilogy, The High Druid of Shannara<\/strong>, and wasn’t afraid to express this disappointment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the writing was too lean, too manufactured. Brooks had the formula for writing that type of story down pat and it felt<\/em> so.<\/p>\n All of my concerns, however, were washed away by the next two novels Brooks produced, Armageddon’s Children<\/strong> and The Elves of Cintra<\/strong>. These novels, the first and second novels in The Genesis of Shannara<\/strong> trilogy, acted as a bridge between Brooks’ ultra-successful Shannara<\/em> series and his under-the-radar-but-totally-amazing Word and Void<\/strong> trilogy, an Urban Fantasy. The staid and by-the-numbers approach found in The High Druid of Shannara<\/strong> was suddenly replaced by a visceral, imaginative take on a post-apocalytpic Earth with humans struggling for survival amongst a world of mutants and demons. Reading the first volumes in The Genesis of Shannara<\/strong> trilogy brought back memories of what drew me to Brooks in the first place.<\/p>\n Then along came The Gypsy Morph<\/strong>, the final volume in the trilogy, and something was lost. That’s not to say The Gypsy Morph<\/strong> isn’t a decent book, it’s still one of the best efforts Brooks has put out in the last several years, but it just isn’t on the level of its two predecessors. So what’s the problem? “It was late in the afternoon, another sultry, miserably hot day on the flats above the Columbia River, another day of sitting around and waiting for something to happen.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This would be a decent opening line, throwing oodles of foreshadowing around and setting the reader up with high expectations for when something would<\/em> happen. Unfortunately this isn’t the opening line, in fact it’s not even in the first chapter. It’s on page 238 of the ARC… over half way through the novel. Add to the fact that this is a trilogy and you have protagonists sitting, 5\/6th of the way through a multi-volume story, sitting around and twiddling their thumbs and waiting for something to happen. This is a problem. In fact, the pacing throughout the first 2\/3rds of the novel suffers. Too much happens in the heads of the characters and at a time when the story should be kicking into overdrive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there is a big demon army roaming the land looking to wipe out the human race, afterall \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we instead have a lackadaisical romp around a This problem stems from the way Brooks has decided to tackle his novels these days. He used to be known for thick, satisfying single-volume novels \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The Sword of Shannara<\/strong>, The Elfstones of Shannara<\/strong>, The First King of Shannara<\/strong>, et al. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but in recent years has shifted production, putting out a novel a year and constructing ‘trilogies’ that are essentially one novel. This would be fine \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it worked out okay for Tolkien… \u00e2\u20ac\u201c except for the fact that Brooks insists on structuring each volume as its own independant novel. When read as a whole, The Genesis of Shannara<\/strong> will have 9 small acts instead of 3 proper acts \u00e2\u20ac\u201c beginning, middle, end, beginning, middle, end, beginning, middle, end \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and this makes reading through the early pages of The Gypsy Morph<\/strong> a bit of a chore as Brooks recounts the events that have occurred in the first two volumes. <\/p>\n The world and conflict that Brooks set up in the first two volumes is still compelling, but some of the character and originality leaks out in the third. The diverse settings from Armageddon’s Children<\/strong> and The Elves of Cintra<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c everything from a war torn Seattle Underground, to the lush verdant forests of the Cintra, to an overwhelmingly depressive town ruled by the mysterious ‘Senator’ \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are replaced by a barren, Mad Max-style wasteland that just isn’t very interesting. As Hawk, the young protagonist of the trilogy leads his band of refugees across this hostile wasteland, I couldn’t help but feel that Steven Erikson did an infinitely better job of the same scenario with his Chain of Dogs<\/em> in Deadhouse Gates<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Many of the same problems that plagued The High Druid of Shannara<\/strong> trilogy also plague The Gypsy Morph<\/strong>. Perhaps the biggest of these is that I couldn’t help but feel that we’d seen it all before.<\/p>\n It’s all been done by Brooks before and did nothing to invigorate me as a reader. In fact, Brooks does little to rock the boat at all: no twists, no turns, no surprises. The Gypsy Morph<\/strong> plays out, besides minor details, exactly<\/em> as I had expected it to. This is a far cry from the first two novels which were full of twists and turns which kept me constantly on my toes. <\/p>\n Something else that bothered me about the story, as someone who lives outside of the United States of America, is that Brooks seems completely blind to the rest of the world. The entire struggle for the entirety of the human race takes place in California, Oregon and Washington State. Where are the rest of the cultures and countries? Even Canada, in close proximity to the major events of the novels is largely ignored. This seems a little short-sighted to me. How cool would it have been if Brooks had weaved multiple story lines, spanning the globe and examining how different countries and cultures dealt with the end of the world? How did Japan fare? Did China with all its military might just fold? What about Europe or South America? Brooks makes small allusions to other battles being fought, but why not bring them to the forefront and really take the concepts he’s throwing around and do them justice? Certainly a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n It wouldn’t be fair to simply point out all the niggling things that brought the novel down without also commending it for the positive parts. The final hundred pages are great, bringing together all of the potential found in the first two novels and slamming it all together into a fantastic ending. He answers some long standing questions had by Shannara<\/em> fans and left me feeling satisfied as a fan of both Shannara<\/em> and Word and Void<\/strong>. There are a few battles near the end of the novel that kept me entertained and Brooks does a commendable job at wrapping up the fates of most of the characters. <\/p>\n Despite the disappointment I felt with The Gypsy Morph<\/strong>, the strong ending and the precluding volumes still raise The Genesis of Shannara<\/strong> trilogy above anything Brooks has written since the original Word and Void<\/strong> trilogy and perhaps only second in quality to that. Even with the weak final volume, I can’t help but recommend The Genesis of Shannara<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c fans are sure to love it, and I think it would be an eye opener for those who write Brooks off as nothing more than a Tolkien rip-off. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Gypsy Morph Author – Terry Brooks Hardcover Pages: 416 pages Publisher: Del Rey Release Date: August 26, 2008 ISBN-10: 0345484142 ISBN-13: 978-0345484147 For the sake of full transparency, I would just like my readers to know that I am a moderator at the Official Terry Brooks forum, but that this fact had no impact… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\nPages:<\/strong> 416 pages
\nPublisher:<\/strong> Del Rey
\nRelease Date:<\/strong> August 26, 2008
\nISBN-10:<\/strong> 0345484142
\nISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0345484147<\/p>\n
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\n<\/p>\nboring<\/del> barren wasteland.<\/p>\n\n