Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed Brooks fan
Review: The third book in the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy, Morgawr is intended to be both ending and beginning. The Ilse Witch, aided by the mortally injured Walker Boh, has taken the Sword of Shannara in hand and had the shocking truth of her early life and the Morgawr's deception send her into a near-catatonic state.Meanwhile, the Morgawr, half-mwellret warlock with an eye towards becoming immortal, has descended upon Parkasia with a fleet of airships crewed by soul-eaten walking dead. He's searching for the Ilse Witch, also known as Grianne Ohmsford, and her brother, Bek. They ambush the Jerle Shannara and the Black Moclips, pursuing them into fog and dangerous mountain ranges. Once again, Terry Brooks has flexed his creative muscle in building a high-jeopardy conclusion to this trilogy, but his prose style is resolutely expository, and causes the story to feel as rushed and hasty as it has from the opening pages of Ilse Witch. Monsters are battled, ships crash, heroics occur, romances bloom, but none of these carry much weight, because the reader can see them coming miles away thanks to Brooks' heavy-handed style. What really threw me for a loop was reading the preview chapter of Jarka Ruus at the back of the paperback copy I have. Quite astoundingly, the writing style is everything I wish the style in Jerle Shannara had been: subtle, dialogue-rich, intriguing, and leaving plenty to be discovered. I've since come to the conclusion that the style in Jerle Shannara is a by-product of the type of story Brooks is trying to tell. He's taken a literary snapshot of the Four Lands in the most unsettled period in it's history since the Shadowen occupation of the Heritage series. There is border war in the southland, Walker is the only druid, there are quirky relations between the rest of the races, and all seems tumultuous and chaotic. All reasons for Walker to attempt to seek the knowledge of science and techology of the past that was guarded on Antrax' hard drives. The story, then, is told as kind of a roguish expedition; fast-paced, with action leading the way rather than introspection and dialogue. The problem with this approach is that the story had so many situations that called for dialogue and subtle writing, I think Brooks was forced to just explain it and get on to the next scene to suit the style he was shooting for. The other problem is, if he had really gone to town and tried to let the characters tell the story through their actions and discourse, the books would have ended up being Jordan-length, and Terry Brooks just doesn't write 850-900 page books these days. I think the story might have been richer and more rewarding, but I do understand the choices he made. Overall, I liked the series, and upon reading that excerpt from Jarka Ruus, I understand Jerle Shannara to be almost a bridge series to get to the High Druid books, which promise to be full of political intrigue and more druidical machinations. I, for one, always thought the world of Shannara was at it's best in the early days, when there were political struggles as well as fighting in the trenches. I'm hopeful that the High Druid series will fulfill that promise. In the meantime, though, you could do worse than read the Jerle Shannara series, and if you're a Shannara addict like me, you're going to do it no matter what.
| 
