The Scions of Shannara

Building on the world of Shannara from the author's earlier works, this one is better than before. By “better”, I mean just relative to previous works. It's a nice read, particularly for readers who are new to the fantasy genre, but it isn't a great read. The pacing can be slow at times, but at least the story starts to pull in directions that are not so obviously referenced from other popular works.

As with the previous three volumes, I feel like Brooks spends too much time in the first half of the book just telling us things. It's not until the midpoint that he begins to show and use dialog more effectively.