Terry Brooks – The Elves of Cintra

Island

The Elves of Cintra (The Genesis of Shannara, Book 2)

Brooks’ writing formula takes a pretty mundane turn in The Elves of Cintra, the second book of his Genesis of Shannara trilogy. As I said before, I found the characters introduced in the first book to be just interesting enough to warrant continuing on in the series, but The Elves of Cintra does its very best to strain my resolve to learn the fate of these tragic characters. There are a couple of bright spots in the novel, such as Logan’s conflict with the renegade Knight of the Word, but overall, it was anticlimatic at best. The story never unfolds, it just goes from point A, to point B, and so on. Ultimately, it was no more than a bridge to the third book and couldn’t stand on its own if you gave it crutches.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆


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This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 7:37 pmand is filed under What I've Read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Terry Brooks – The Elves of Cintra”

  • Jon Vawter Says:
    January 31st, 2009 at 6:21 am

     Jon Vawter at 6:21am January 31
    Well put – have you read alot of the Terry Brooks books? Personally, I look forward to every September when he puts out his new ones. Not sure what he's going to do this year since he would up the latest trilogy.

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  • Island Richards Says:
    February 1st, 2009 at 1:30 am

     Island Richards at 1:30am February 1
    Yes, I've read a lot of his books, and sadly, this has been the most disappointing so far. To be fair, I haven't read all of the trilogy yet. In some of his early works, though, by now in my reading I would have been completely vested in the characters, feeling their pain, sharing their joy, and anticipating, even dreading, their ends. Not so with the Genesis trilogy — the Jerle Shannara and the High Druid trilogies were only a little better. The Word and The Void trilogy at least introduced us to a new mythos located in our familiar world, but even that was diluted with the Genesis trilogy.

    I keep reading, mostly out of nostalgia for the original Shannara series and the follow-up Heritage series. My daughter's middle name is Shea, taken straight from the novels! I even cried when I foreshadowed Amberle's fait to sacrifice herself to "save" the Elcryss. No such heartfelt outpourings anymore though. These days, I'm struggling just to finish each book.

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