Terry Brooks

Is anyone else here into the Terry Brooks novels?

I've been reading all of his books since I discovered the first Shannara novel in the series many years ago when I was looking for something to read in a newsagents to keep me occupied during a long train journey, and I've been hooked on his books ever since.

I've just been looking at the official Terry Brooks site http://www.terrybrooks.net/ and it has a lot of interesting information, including a section for budding writers, which I know some of you are.

I also read with interest on the site that a film is meant to be in production for one of his books. Sadly it isn't based on the Shannara universe, but instead the Landover one. I still enjoyed the Landover series and a film based on the "Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!" novel could still be good, although it does have the danger of ending up a children's film if approached the wrong way.

Personally I've always hoped for a series of films based on the Shannara series as this would make an epic series of films akin to Lord of the Rings. And the Shannara series contains a much more diverse and interesting range of plots and locations than the main LOTR trilogy contain (although the other Tolkien books such as Silmarillion easily expand on that and fill the Middleearch universe out with much more lore and interest).

Can't say i'm a big fan.
The Shanara stuff seems a bit samey.
Also remember the thinking 1st one was a poor mans LOTR and ripped it off a bit.
Liked the Landover series better.
As you say, if not done properly, could end up a bit childish.
Which is great for them I suppose.

You've talked about Terry Brooks' Shannara series before, and I've been meaning to read it. But still never got around to it. I will one day, promise.

Did you start on A Song of Ice and Fire yet though? I remember you promising that! ;)

On the note of making movies out of books, that Song of Ice and Fire is going to be turned into a TV series. And not a miniseries, but full seasons where one season will equal one book. And even then they may have trouble including it all. This one could turn out to be pretty good, and the author promises that it will. The producers are fans of the books apparently, and want to make it very faithful. The author George R R Martin posted about it himself on his newspage.

I would love to see a series of films based on some of the following series of books:-

R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden series of books

David Eddings "The Belgariad"

Stephen King's "Eyes of the Dragon"

and Magician by Raymond E Feist

Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time"

Weiss & Hickman's "Death Gate Cycle"

just as long as they do NOT do the Dragonlance novels (never been a fan of them)


the hard part would be choosing the cast for the books!

That is the problem with many film adaptations of books, and they often pick completely the wrong people to play the characters, and then end up altering the story to fit the actor. The Da Vinci code being a very good example of this. The other danger is they always like to cast a known actor as the lead to gain publicity, when again they don't fit the part. I would much rather have an unknown actor if they were perfect for the part.

I'm interested in giving the Shannara series a try.

I'm almost at the end of fourth book of A Song of Ice and Fire (which I heartily recommend), so I'll be needing a new fantasy novel fix. Hopefully, Shannara won't have quite so many characters as The Wheel of Time does, because that series had me thoroughly confused (gave up reading after the 8th book, I think).

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Originally Posted by Teho

You've talked about Terry Brooks' Shannara series before, and I've been meaning to read it. But still never got around to it. I will one day, promise.

Did you start on A Song of Ice and Fire yet though? I remember you promising that! ;)

On the note of making movies out of books, that Song of Ice and Fire is going to be turned into a TV series. And not a miniseries, but full seasons where one season will equal one book. And even then they may have trouble including it all. This one could turn out to be pretty good, and the author promises that it will. The producers are fans of the books apparently, and want to make it very faithful. The author George R R Martin posted about it himself on his newspage.

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Is there any date for this to arrive?

I haven't heard anything more about it. I follow Martin's blog (not the same as the previous link) but he hasn't mentioned anything about it in a while. But when I posted about it back then, the news was very recent. And at that point they had only just made the deal to make it. He said then that there was now a whole lot of work to be done in pre-production and such, and that it would probably take almost a year before they'd start actually shooting it. So I guess it'll start airing sometime next year at the earliest. IMDb has a page up for it, but you need to be a Pro member there to see the details right now. But the entry is tagged '2008', at least.

It is still being made though, I'm sure. Martin would definitely have talked about it on his blog there if it wasn't.

Lets hope they are continuing with it.

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Originally Posted by Teho

Did you start on A Song of Ice and Fire yet though? I remember you promising that! ;)

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Not yet nope. I've had the first two books in the series for a few years now but I have lots of books still to read that I'm slowly getting through.

The problem was that I joined a Sci-Fi and Fantasy book club a few years ago and took advantage of all of their special offers and multi-buy book sales so I ended up with a lot of books on my shelves I wanted to read. I therefore built up a ready made library to start reading. :)

And to make things worse (well actually even better) a friend I used to work with moved to Australia and was also a member of the same book club and needed all of his books to go to a new home, and on looking through his colection he had a lot that I didn't, so I gladly accepted those (including nearly all Terry Pratchett books ever published). So with my collection and his combined I must have over 100 books still to read. :lol:

I will get to them in the end but currently I'm going through a horror phase, catching up on the James Herbert books I've not yet read. Currently reading 'The Ghosts of Sleath' which is really good and the sequel to his earlier book 'Haunting'.