Saturday, December 15, 2007

Apology

Well things haven't been moving as smoothly as I'd like here in blogland. I haven't had nearly the amount of time I'd have liked to read this past month. In fact I've only been able to finish my audiobooks as of late. The good news is that I've had lots of extra time in the car lately so I finished the audio recording of Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon in record time. I'll post my review hopefully tomorrow or Monday. 'Til then...

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Review - The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks






And so my foray into the early works of Terry Brooks comes to an end...


"The Wishsong of Shannara" is the third title in Terry Brooks' Shannara series and I think the best the three.


In "Wishsong" the druid Allanon once again drags the poor Ohmsford family out of the quiet hamlet of Shady Vale on a quest to save the four lands from utter destruction, this time brought about by a magical book.


The tone of Wishsong is decidedly darker than the first two books of the series and there is less of a feeling of the inevitable triumph of good. There is also slightly less of the pervasive self doubt that appears to be a genetic defect in the Ohmsford line. Don't get me wrong it is still there but it comes across less whiny this time. The story is fairly good, and seems pretty well paced. It is a little heavier in tone than the first two books and I might raise my parental warning to PG-13 (or 15).
As for the audio. I really do like Scott Brick reading this novels. He has a pleasant, easily understood voice, and doesn't overact when switching character voices. Let me clarify this last point. He does use different accents and voice timbre to signify changes in speaker giving each a unique voice. He doesn't however engage in my personal audiobook pet peeve and voice female characters in some ridiculous falsetto. Scott Brick is a 9+ in my book. Wishsong....
Rating: 7.9