Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarana
Currently listening to the 4 book epic Heritage of Shannara by Terry Brooks (it's one story). I'm on book 2 - Druid of Shannara. I started a relisten of the Shannara books in anticipation of the final book currently scheduled to be published in June. I won't be able to get the audiobook until I rejoin Audible in November, but I think it will take me until then to get the rest done anyway.
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I actually started my audiobook habit with the Shannara books years back, which also took me back into the fantasy genre, largely abandoned since high school. I hit a wall with Ilse Witch, though: the only version available (still) is an abridged recording with the single worst narrator I've ever encountered. As far as I can tell, he's never had any other work in the industry, and with good reason. It was the first of the very few occasions I've dropped a book because of the narrator. You'd think such a popular and lucrative series would get a new version done, unabridged and with a professional reader.
I did like the Shannara Chronicles TV series that ran a couple seasons a few years ago. It drew a lot of criticism, but I thought the aesthetics were 100% appropriate for the source material. It covers the "Elfstones" trilogy, the second cycle of Shannara books.
Right now, I'm on the last book of The Passage series. The series borrows a lot aesthetically from early Stephen King, but Cronin doesn't have King's writing chops, and characterization is pretty crude/absent. Also, he's very invested in the fatey-watey "Lord's will" shtick. The result is pulp that takes itself rather seriously, lending it an Ed Wood kind of appeal. There is a lot of violence, but rarely much graphic detail, and again sufficient unreality to the whole order of things in Cronin's world that the gore is not too hard to take.
ETA: As I think about it, the Ed Wood comparison is spot-on, even if they have a very different set of delusional aesthetics. Both lean heavily on cliches and other peoples' work and are not creative in a traditional sense, but when the borrowed or repetitious material passes through their deluded mindset, the results have a unique quality. The delusion substitutes for creativity.