Jarka Ruus Review
typecast:
1: cast repeatedly in the same kind of role
2: identify as belonging to a certain type;
The word of course is used to describe actors who are stuck playing the same parts again and again. But authors can find themselves in a very similar situation. After reading Jarka Ruus, it strikes me that that is exactly the situation Terry Brooks finds himself in.
Brooks first book, The Sword of Shannara, was a huge success. Its one of the small number of books which cemented fantasy as a best-selling book genre. Sword was really quite a forumlaic book as were the sequels which followed, Elfstones of Shannara and Wishsong of Shannara. For all that they were enjoyable fantasy adventures and they sold in large numbers.
At that point Brooks moved on to other works, looking no doubt to explore a wider range of stories. Of course it was just a matter of time, and sure enough eventually he returned to Shannara. So far Brooks has written 13 Shannara books, with at least one more to come.
But Shannara isn’t what it used to be. Something’s changed. The setting is still essentially the same, but the sort of stories that Brooks wants to tell have changed. And in order to tell these stories, the nature of the world of Shannara has subtly altered.
You still have the elements you’d expect to see. The Elfstones are there, Druids, the Hadeshorn, Paranor, the Forbidding, the Wishsong, the Ohmsfords. They all get their mentions. At times it feels like we’re slipping into a greatest hits of Shannara medly as the inevitable Rover character is introduced and we get a scene where our lead meets the King of the Silver River.
And yet isn’t that inevitable? There are certain things that the readership expect from Shannara books at this point. If the author doesn’t provide those things, they’re going to be unhappy with the book. So how does the author cover new ground and tell the stories he’s interested in while still giving his audience what they expect?
Brooks answer seems to be to gradually move the books in a new direction. In this book were get to see what it looks like inside the Forbidding for the first time. And it turns out to be nothing like I’d imagined at all when reading The Elfstone’s of Shannara. Thats a little disapointing. We also get lots more time aboard an airship (a concept introduced in the previous trilogy) and some insight into the nature of the new Druid Council.
The end result unfortunately is a disconnect between these books and the original Shannara books. While Jarka Ruus flows on pretty smoothly from The Voyage of Jerle Shannara, it doesn’t seem to connect to Sword of Shannara or Elfstones of Shannara very comfortably.
The Forbidding doesn’t live up to expectations. The power source of the airships (and the uses to which that power is put) move the sci-fi elements, which have always been in the margins of the stories, firmly to the forefront and raise questions that would probably be better off not raised. The Druid Council comes across like a bickering political body with all the mystery and darkness of a town council meeting, very different to the images inspired by Allanon’s references to the earlier body.
At the end of the book I can’t get away from a nagging feeling that I’d actually have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t read the original trilogy.
And thats a shame because its a perfectly well written book. The characters are pleasant enough. There’s plenty of action and the plot effectively draws you in so that you want to know how things turn out. In that respect at least its very like the original books.
I plan to read the next two books. I already have Tanequil. But I can’t quite get rid of that nagging feeling.
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