The Gypsy Morph: The Genesis Of Shannara: Book Three [Kindle Edition]

In my humble opinion, this is the best trilogy that Terry has ever written, which is saying a lot, and the final book was wonderful, best of a great series. Superb character development and interaction, fabulous plot(s), amazing action, inventive story lines etc., etc. OK, you spotted that I am a die hard TB fan, but, even so, I was utterly enthralled with this final instalment. There will be no spoilers here, as you really do need to read this for yourself.

Much as I love and respect Tolkien, I do think that Terry has taken this genre to the next level and is now clearly, in my opinion, leading the field by a long way.

I really hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

Thanks Terry, very, very much.

Regards.

Paul

"The Gypsy Morph" epitomises what Terry Brooks has consistently done with his last few Shannara series' - they always end poorly, and do not match up to the promise they showed in the earlier books.

The Gypsy Morph is just frightfully dull. We never genuinely get the feeling that this is the end of the world we're dealing with here, and there isn't a single action sequence in the book with any real drive or sense of drama. Brooks has forgotten how to write a good battle scene - the last good ones he wrote were in "First King of Shannara", which was published twelve years ago. These days, he thinks he can write a battle which is three pages long and described only in passing detail and get away with it. Well, he can't.

He also introduces his customary Sucky Assassin Villain. This is the obligatory bad guy he must have who is billed as the most dangerous killer in existence who has never failed at their job - but mysteriously is completely inept once they come into the story. In the "Heritage of Shannara" series it was Pe Ell. In the "High Druid" trilogy it was Aphasia Wye. This time it's the Klee, which was built up in the first two books of this trilogy as an unstoppable killing machine. When we encounter it, it's just useless and bizarrely has to resort to sly tricks when it's supposed to be a lethal brute, and then gets pawned without having done anything befitting its label of the "most dangerous thing ever".

Findo Gask was also a very poor villain. The man does nothing except send others to do his bidding, and scheme and scheme and scheme with no apparent purpose or long-term goal in sight. Brooks or his Internet mouthpiece, Shawn Speakman, would no doubt defend this by suggesting that it represents real "bad guys", such as bin Laden, who sits in a cave and gets others to do his dirty work for him. And that's just great. But it makes for a dreary fantasy story.

If all this sounds pretty harsh for a three-star review, it wouldn't be a surprise. I have great respect for Terry Brooks. I have met him and he's a really nice guy. And it was his books that got me into reading in the first place. And so I always have great hesitation to really slate one of his books. But in my opinion the "Genesis of Shannara" series has not been worth the time he took to write it and the time I took to read it, and this book was a particularly poor representation of a man with much greater talents.

As a fan of all things Brooks I approached the Genesis of Shannara trilogy with more than just a little eagerness. And actually the first two books of the series lived up to my highest expectations: never had I witnessed such a natural blending of the fantasy and post-apocalyptic genres. Mr Brooks made me dream of worlds of magic and epic fights already when I was a kid, and in the pages of said trilogy he is able to make such suggestion even stronger, by drawing up a future which - in its basic outlines - could very well be our own. Needless to say I have been devouring the previous two books page after page and pre-ordered this book months in advance.

...so you can all imagine how bad I feel when confessing it left me with a sour taste in my mouth: the characters the author introduced and painted so well in the previous two books seem just to fade to flat two-dimensional figures: pale ghosts of the "real" persons with feelings, inner struggles, doubts and passions that the author so aptly created in the beginning of the series. The most annoying symptom of this is maybe the love story between two of the main characters (I won't spoil it to you), who just meet and fall in love within the span of a couple of lines. Now, I'm totally in favour of romance as a fundamental part of any novel, but this love story seemed as though it was thrown into the melee at the last moment, without any effort whatsoever to develop it properly (as Mr. Brooks proved to be capable of doing over and over).

In the same way events seem to go on almost randomly, sketched in their essential lines, seemingly happening without a proper reason, with the characters strolling almost aimlessly as badly-motivated actors following the screenplay eager to get it over with.

A shiny example of this is the powers of Hawk, as well as those of another character, which appear and disappear completely on their own, without any explanation at all given or even attempted.

Or the ending of the book, which should have been the link between a world we know well from our everyday life to the world of Shannara we learnt to know from Mr Brooks' books. It's none of that, and if you wanted to know more about what exactly did change or what happened to the powers of the old world (the Word and the Void come to mind) in the Four Lands... well, you will be disappointed (I hope such a transition will be the focus of a new book).

It's like this book was released due to a scheduled deadline, and way before it was properly polished. Don't get me wrong, what I always loved is there: love, drama, interesting plot twists and epic battles (not to mention the fact that I read the whole book in two days)... I just wish there could have been a chance for the author to polish it further in order to make a worthy ending to a spectacular trilogy.