I'm conflicted about Brooks. I read the Shannara books up through
Heritage when I was a kid, and I think I started
Ilse Witch in college, but by that point I was reading a lot of good books, and Brooks' repetitive, melodramatic prose, arbitrary plots and two dimensional characters were intolerable. The same was true of Dean Koontz--I probably read a dozen of his books as a teenager, but trying to pick up his later works as an adult made me cringe.
However, I'm now listening to the whole Shannara audiobook series in order of events (not publication) as a bedtime story. I'm still not sure I could stomach actually reading Brooks' prose, but as an audiobook it's something easy to follow without devoting much attention, and I'm finding mediocre audiobooks work better than sleeping pills
Obviously there's some kind of appeal to the books. One thing he does quite well are big battles, as in armies clashing. Also, while he recycles the same kinds of characters from book to book (all borrowed, mostly from LotR), he does a decent job of following numerous characters and keeping them distinct within a given series.
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Originally Posted by PKFFW
I did love the Word and the Void trilogy and so went on to read the Genesis of Sharanarra series but didn't think much of that.
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I had the exact opposite opinion. I wouldn't recommend W&V to anyone, but found GoS the most original and most fun of the Shannara series. Granted, I'm more fan of sci-fi and post-apocalypse than fantasy in general.
I haven't read much fantasy as an adult, but Greg Bear's one foray into fantasy,
Songs of Earth and Power, is a lot of fun, and his pulpy novella
Hegira has fantasy elements along with being a bit mind-bendy.
As a teenager, I also enjoyed the
Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman at least as much as the Shannara books.