How Does The Sword Of Shannara Compare To Lord Of The Rings?

Question

I've read Lord of the Rings and just started The Sword of Shannara. Does the Shannara trilogy share the same epic fantasy journey feel or is it very different?

Pontus Gustafsson · Answer

While The Sword of Shannara relies heavily on the same basic quest framework and many of the same archetypes as Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings (such as the classic hero’s journey), it can often read today like an overly calculated and derivative retread of familiar ground. In contrast, the Lord of the Rings broke vast new ground in world building and in magicked-up mythic depth. If you’re interested in a more recently written ‘epic quest’ sort of story with a much more focused magical artifact at its center, you might enjoy Rings of the Realms, a 420 page quest where three distinct magical rings Somehow Cause a Cold War between the three nations they’re tied to to suddenly and catastrophically spiral out of control.

Violet · Answer

While The Sword of Shannara may be heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings (it’s often referred to as Tolkien lite), it’s not a poor copy of the esteemed work. Rather it’s a catchy folk song compared to a grand symphony. Brooks has created a fantasy world with Elves, Dwarves, and magic swords but his treatment of them is lighter and the story moves at a faster pace than in The Lord of the Rings. I devoured Shannara as a teen and it was just the kind of thing to read when I didn’t feel like wading through Tolkien’s more dense passages. While it wasn’t Tolkien in terms of linguistic craftsmanship, it was pure, pulpy fun and I reveled in it for the weekend reads it was. Middle-earth, on the other hand, is a place that lingers long after you’ve finished reading about it.

Natalie · Answer

Reading the first Shannara book, The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks immediately after the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien was an interesting experience for me. While The Sword of Shannara is its own unique work, it is clearly influenced by Tolkien’s masterpiece. For one thing, there is a quest. An evil is trying to return. And a group of diverse heroes must travel to prevent it. But whereas the Lord of the Rings is a very rich and detailed work of myth, The Sword of Shannara is much more of a straightforward adventure story. The writing is simpler, the goals of the characters are not as complex or much to risk, and there is not as much background to the world that they are in. But this is not to say that The Sword of Shannara is a bad book. No, it is more of a “gateway” fantasy for people who are not ready to jump into the dense and detailed world of the Lord of the Rings just yet.

One of the things I really love about The Sword of Shannara is that it’s managed to carve out its own little niche in the world of fantasy. Even with all of the elements that clearly borrowed from Tolkien, the post-apocalyptic twist on the typical fantasy world is unique. Yes, the characters aren’t quite as well developed as those found in The Lord of the Rings, but Allanon is sort of a cool, more mysterious Gandalf figure. It’s just a really cozy and nostalgic read that I think would be perfect for late-night reading sessions while curled up under a blanket with a pile of other classic fantasy novels. It’s sort of like the difference between a campfire story and an ancient legend – both have their own unique brand of magic.

poket Nais-od · Answer

Note the night-and-day difference in prose style between Tolkien’s poetry/epic and Brooks’ functional narrative. Much of Tolkien’s work sets out to transport the reader to another world and to convey the sense of a long history. All of this is achieved by his long descriptions of landscapes, etc. The first book of Brooks’ Shannara series aims to get the reader from one end of the book to the other. Therefore, what is described is necessary for the plot to move. I know of people who, engrossed in the Tolkien books, fall asleep whilst reading descriptions of hills and mountains, but enjoy the others when they return to them. And conversely there are people who do not find the Shannara books more than dull, aching for more of the poetic style of Tolkien. The difference is the most immediate thing that you notice when reading page by page.

yah ehg · Answer

Fans matter here too. The Tolkien fandom has a scholarly and preservationist bent: they debate the language and the timeline, treat the text with utmost respect. The Shannara fandom has a totally different feel to it: most fans of Shannara just love the adventure, the characters, and the ever-expanding universe at book’s end. All one can do in Tolkien fandom is study like a society of historians; in Shannara fandom, one can attend like a club of travelers excitedly to read the next book. Neither is better than the other. And while I wouldn’t expect a Shannara fan to write a thesis on the Troll languages (all of them), of equal unlikelyhood would be a Tolkien fan who writes on the Ohmsfords and spends most of his time deciding which of them was coolest with magic. Such reading cultivates certain modes of engagement.

Samantha D · Answer

Tolkien developed the concept of ‘the enemy’ in The Lord of the Rings. While Sauron is the main antagonist, there is also Saruman’s treachery, the squabbles among the orcs, men’s avarice, and the elves’ indifference. The concept of evil is therefore fractal. Unlike Tolkien’s evil is not centrally located in the character of the Warlock Lord and his servants in The Sword of Shannara. Rather, there is less complexity and interior life granted the antagonists than the protagonists. As a result, there is a clear distinction between good and evil. The reader knows who to like and who to dislike. Tolkien’s portrayal of good and evil as running through every human heart to create the conflicts we deal with in the real world is far more complex but also more valuable.

You can't give what you don't have · Answer

This brings me back to a question that I hadn’t thought about before: was the length of The Sword of Shannara affected by the publishing context? In other words, was LOTR published in three volumes due to post-war paper shortages, but conceived as a single long work? In contrast, The Sword of Shannara was a single massive work of fantasy at a time when most fantasy was thin. The size of the book was part of the experience of reading it and I think told potential readers that this was an epic on the scale of Tolkien. The physical experience of reading the book was in some sense the comparison to other books that readers would have experienced. And I think that comparison was not just textual but also physical and commercial – the thick paperback was part of the promise of a long, immersive experience.

jessicacarillo12 · Answer

I think there's a big difference between how the two series treat travel. The journey in LOTR is grueling. You feel every mile of the characters' travel. The mud, the hunger, the changing weather, the feeling of being lost for long stretches of time. In Shannara, the long journeys are more of a montage. The characters travel long distances but the focus is on what happens along the way. The long hard journey itself is not that interesting to Tolkien. The sequence of adventures and encounters along the way are. So in reading Shannara, it feels like a series of connected episodes or books. In reading LOTR, it feels like one very long, hard journey.

Liz Mathyssen · Answer

It’s also fascinating to look at The Sword of Shannara from a historical publishing perspective. After Tolkien, the publishers were eager for the next big fantasy and The Sword of Shannara became the first of the so-called “doorstopper” fantasy novels which were huge and not just copies of the Conan stories. They helped to create the modern fantasy publishing scene and the comparison to LOTR was used as both a critical observation and as a marketing tool to tell potential readers that if they liked one then they would like the other. And it worked. So although there are obvious textual similarities between the two works, their cultural roles are quite different: one a genre-defining masterpiece and the other a genre-popularizing blockbuster. You cannot understand 70s/80s fantasy without acknowledging the impact of both works.

Maribel Rocha · Answer

Observations on trying to read The Sword of Shannara by this approach are a bit like watching a decent cover band play all your favorite classic songs on guitar rather than the original instruments. There is the standard hero’s journey, the ancient and evil and powerful thing, the varied and quirky group of friends, the long and arduous journey to the place of quest’s end. Where it diverges is in the fleshing out of the world, the feel and texture of same, and the nature and mechanics of the magic employed therein. And here again there is a strong contrast to The Lord of the Rings. Middle-earth has a deep, and profoundly melancholy, history, and that comes across in fine detail. Shannara, and particularly this first book, feels more like a stage for the play of the adventure than a fully realized world in and of itself. The writing is light and fast and straightforward and really doesn’t have the same sort of mythological weight as Tolkien’s work, which can be good or bad depending on one’s preferences. It makes for a great gateway drug for younger readers, or for those who for whatever reason couldn’t connect with The Lord of the Rings, but for a true fan of Tolkien’s work it’s all just a bit too derivative, a bit too much of a shadow of a better book. As a foundational work in commercial fantasy it certainly earns its due.

How Does The Sword Of Shannara Compare To Lord Of The Rings?

10 Answers

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