The Sword of Shannara

Despite having the reputation of being excessively-inspired by the Lord of the Rings; Terry Brooks'first novel manages to build an interesting world that is quite distinct from Tolkien's and has interesting characters. The author manages to pace the story well enough to avoid the tolkien-like tedium of swamp-walking and to instead remain engaging and interesting.

On the flipside - and mostly due to being Brooks's first novel - the text is sometimes excessively descriptive or too verbose and repetitive. But if you bear with it, you're guaranteed a good time.

I was not expecting much and I was still let down. :)

In my opinion, it's a notch down from the Kingdom for Sale series by the same author.
Maybe it did not age well, or the author had just an awkward beginning, trying to find his marks for the genre/saga.
I'm not sure if I'll go on reading the next books.

The plot is ok, a bit force-spoon fed. Characters motivations are paper thin.
Some scenes are cringe worthy.

I still wanted to know how it ends. More like 1.5 stars, I did not completely dislike it.