Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

Tanequil is the second book in Terry Brooks current series, The High Druid of Shannara. It contains all the elements you'd expect from a Shannara book and yet somehow something is missing.

Our primary villain gets very little face time, yet when he does he comes across as little more than a schoolyard bully. The secondary villains don't actually seem to do anything despite lots of talk. A character who has been built up for a couple of books as dark, dangerous and unstoppable is apparently stopped almost as an afterthought. And the most interesting character in the whole series so far is only introduced half way through this book and gets a grand total of two chapters.

Grianne's situation is incredibly unsatisfactory too. We're told she's being damaged. We're told that she's being forced to revert towards her Ilse Witch persona, but what we actually see her do is nothing of the kind. We won't even get into the issue of the collar and how annoyingly similar that concept is to another popular fantasy series.

There are lots of little logical holes too. How exactly did the Druids suddenly get an army of Mutens and Gnome Hunters in such a short space of time? Just how many ships do they fly? Don't the Freeborn use spies? How could such a big enterprise as the building of that ship by the Federation possibly be kept that secret? Why didn't the King of the Silver River do as he'd promised and warn Bek and Rue?

If the plotting and characters were strong enough I'd just ignore these little details, but thats the heart of the problem. They're not. The book is just very average and in the end unsatisfying.


Buy Tanequil at Amazon.com