I have a strong nostalgic love for both authors.
Let's face it... they (and Del Rey) played a huge part in bringing modern fantasy novels to the masses back in 1977. And I reveled in it.
Unfortunately, as many fond memories as I have of reading their works then—and even for years to come afterward—neither has written anything in quite a few years that really does much of anything for me. Donaldson's
Gap Cycle was probably the last thing of his that "wowed" me (and it
really wowed me). Brooks... I'd have to go back to his
Heritage series for something I truly "loved".
It's funny that I still consider them among my favorite authors, even though I've been done reading them for quite a while.
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Originally Posted by HarryT
Terry Brooks' early works ("The Sword of Shannara", in particular) struck me when I originally read it as being a very poor LOTR clone.
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To be perfectly fair, this is something that Brooks himself has acknowledged unreservedly. The first one-third of
Sword is a plot-point by plot-point ripoff of LoTR. He took a break from writing it at that point, and when he returned to it... that's when his own style and story started to come shining through. The books that followed were definitely not derivative (except in the way that all writing is derivative). His second book -
The Elfstones of Shannara - is generally considered (by Terry's fans) to be his masterpiece.
Donaldson, however, I never considered derivative.