First King of Shannara, The by Terry Brooks

After reading the book The Sword of Shannara I was little worried about the story, which outcome was already known to me. But after few pages I was totally enveloped in the tale concerning the last few remaining Druids and their journeys. As in all the authors Shannara books the tale was pretty good and the descriptions of battles fought - where the big armies were in play - were the best of all.

This book was an excellent prequel to the Shannara series. I enjoyed the fact that the character whose name appears as the title isn't as magnificent or fantasic as one might assume, it was quite refreshing. The First King provided the reader with the history one hears about in the other Shannara books and was adequately presented.

After the HERITAGE OF SHANNARA series, I was afraid that Brooks had lost his touch with that world. This book proves otherwise. It tells a story of the past and does it well. Like the first "trilogy", this book gets the reader involved emotionally. You care about the characters...deeply, or at least I did. It tugged on my heartstrings and made my spine tingle throughout. The pacing is also very good. The book starts out quickly and continues at a breakneck pace. Not that there isn't time for introspection...there's a lot of that, but not an overabundance. It's definitely a page turner. I think I would have appreciated it more if it hadn't been so many years since I'd read the other books. There's such a sense of history here and Brooks works in a lot of foreshadowing of the other books. Unfortunately, I didn't remember details enough to fully appreciate all of it. The one thing that bothered me about this book was the lack of a map. I got confused sometimes as to where certain characters were in relation to others. Aside from that, this was a very satisfying read.