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Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara was pretty badly written. The subsequent books were somewhat better, but I haven't made it past the original trilogy.
Lin Carter wrote in a survey of the fantasy published that year that it was "the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read," and "Brooks wasn't trying to imitate Tolkien's prose, just steal his story line and complete cast of characters, and did it with such clumsiness and so heavy-handedly, that he virtually rubbed your nose in it."
Of course by the 80s we wouldn't even blink at the news of another Tolkien rip-off.
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