Quote:
Originally Posted by Khai
Will check it out. I have a phobia for authors with the name 'Terry'. I tried Terry Brooks' "Sword of Shannara" series and I found it incredibly dry and boring. 
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I read the original Sword of Shannara book when I was in high school and loved it. Years later, I read Terry Brooks' memoir on writing (
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life) and loved it. In that book, he admits that the first book was filled with lots of newbie writing errors. I reread Sword of Shannara, and boy, he wasn't kidding.

It took a while before I got into it because that darn druid could go on and on... But once the story (and the characters) got moving, phew! However, since then, I haven't been able to get into one of his books, and I keep meaning to do so. I do have the omnibus e-book edition of Brooks' first three Landover books, and those seem promising. Or maybe I'll just read his memoir again as it's much shorter.
For a completely different style of writing, I recently bought an anthology of Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy stories. It's available in multiformat from Prime Books on Fictionwise. However, his writing style is supposed to be baroque, so I don't know if i'll be able to get into it. Or maybe I'll "Go for Baroque" after all.