Welcome to my Mini-reviews! Though I would want to devote myself to going all-in with every book, I can't. But because I love books, and I love analyzing them, I wanted to make a smaller excerpt of what I think would be this book in a nutshell. Without further ado, let's dive in!
I got my hands on this novel by a recommendation from a close person to me (albeit at the time this wasn’t the case at all, but whatever) without really being sure of this person’s taste in books entirely. I hadn’t read the blurb or any other comments about it, so when I first started reading it, I expected nothing at all. Not anything good, not anything bad. I felt I had to forge an opinion of it by myself and not get biased by any other comments I would bump into online.
As I see it, this was a good thing; I would follow my intuition on this one and pay closer attention to everything I felt while reading it.
So, when the story started as a bunch of men deciding on the realm’s future and entangling themselves with the problems of the world and the methods to save it—without any woman showing up—I was instantly hesitant. I can be a stubborn feminist at times, meaning this wasn’t the best start to a book.
Then the first female character came, and my opinion of the story changed in a way I wouldn’t have predicted. It wasn’t as if the book had transformed drastically, it wasn’t as if my feminist needs had been satisfied entirely, it was a simple internal shift of my perception of the story. Environments got more vivid, character relationships took on another color, and the quest felt more compelling. Perhaps it was a feeling that told me this book had something else going on under the surface and I had to be patient to find it.
Though it may sound like I had to endure my passage through the book, I didn’t. Sure, at first glance, this book looks like the typical fantasy book—the formula of the Hero’s journey evident in every paragraph— but as it progressed, I found out that it had a surprise element to it, not to mention, a flow within the story that made it easy to follow and natural to see unfold—something not seen in many recent books, by the way.
Spoiler: The story did manage to surprise me by the end when some of the things I thought would happen—all related to Amberle, the female character I mentioned— didn’t happen exactly as I pictured, and ultimately gave me a greater reason to grin at the end. Eretria, the second female character of importance, was the best choice for the main character. Without her, this book wouldn’t have been the same. End of spoiler.
In other words, the book made the ride seem nice—with an exception of those war-ridden scenes that lost me for bits and pieces at times— while letting me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long while when reading a book.
What was it, you ask?
Hope.
Theme-wise, this book made me feel it. Sure, a hope based on an optimistic side of life that could be muddled by naivety, but hope nonetheless. It spoke of community, care, and a great sense of responsibility. Of environmental conscience, and of a union between men and the land in a way I hadn’t read about in so long.
My only complaint about the theme was the sense of naïveté; mostly about the lack of questioning behind the issues that make evil be evil, but no matter how much I think about it, the positives outweigh the negatives.
The most important thing was this:
The Elfstones of Shannara made me feel there is still hope for change; hope to remember what it felt like being close to a community, of caring for each other, of caring for the land that gave us life... Hope in every sense of the word.
In the end, I think this book will have a special meaning to me for more than one reason.
In summary:
Was it Good? ✔ Was it Critical? ✔ Did it Challenge norms? ❌
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