I haven’t read a Terry Brooks novel in a long time.
By the time I first encountered The Sword of Shannara, I had already read Tolkien. Even at a young age, I could recognize the similarities—and I didn’t view them favorably. That was unusual for me. When you’re young, you tend to accept what you’re given. You like the book simply because you’re reading it, the movie because it’s playing. It takes a while before taste sharpens into discernment. Brooks, though, triggered that shift for me. I could feel something was off—even if I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to say why.
But my opinion of Brooks isn’t that simple.
In later years, as I began writing about books—sometimes to some success—I carried that early impression with me. I did what so many online do: I used what I didn’t like as a platform to elevate what I did. I positioned Brooks as a foil to what I considered better fantasy. In retrospect, that stance was not only unfair to Brooks—it was unfair to my own reading experience.
The Lord of the Rings is enshrined. It’s a literary classic, fixed and timeless. Shannara isn’t and never will be that. But Shannara was something else entirely—and something no less important. It was a commercial triumph. It was visible. It was one of the early fantasy franchises that found mainstream success, and in doing so, helped shape the modern fantasy book market. Terry Brooks wrote bestsellers—again and again. And while that may draw scoffs from some quarters, the impact cannot be overstated. He opened doors.
I’ve written before—most recently in a post about Dune—that I was a kid who, early on, read far more classics than most children my age. But once I finished Tolkien, fantasy novels weren’t easy to find. This was before the internet. I was a kid under ten. The world was shaped by what you happened to physically run into.
At my local public library, there were three chest-level shelves positioned at the entrance. On top of them sat new releases—usually reserved for household names. These were often literary or mainstream novels; rarely genre, and almost never fantasy or science fiction. One of the few exceptions was Terry Brooks. New York Times bestsellers had that kind of clout, I suppose. His books were among the few fantasy titles that were given prime display, and their covers—depending on your disposition—either repelled or thrilled. For the uninitiated, they looked like something out of another world. For readers like me, they were exactly the thing I was hoping to find.
There was a time in my life when every trip to the library was a quiet hope that a new Terry Brooks book had arrived. Those were the doors he opened—not just metaphorically, but quite literally. When a new Heritage of Shannara title didn’t appear, I still stepped through that library entrance, drawn by the possibility. And when disappointment came, I turned to the shelves and discovered other authors who would go on to shape my late childhood—George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, and others. But it was Brooks who got me there.
Today, I’m in Hawaii, and in my hands is a new Terry Brooks novel—Child of Light. I’m about a hundred pages in. Terry is, incidentally, a neighbor of mine now, though we’ve never met. But reading this book stirred something. Two observations have come to mind.
First: Brooks’ greatest strength has always been comfort. Even now, I can remember how his Shannara novels begin: often with movement, a journey already underway—Flick, Shea, Allanon—always someone walking into a new chapter. Brooks doesn’t disorient. He ushers you in. He’s done this since The Sword of Shannara, well before I was born. In Child of Light, the story opens in the midst of a prison break involving gun-toting goblins who imprison, enslave, and consume human children. And yet, we feel entirely at ease. There’s no confusion. We’re grounded from the first sentence. That’s not the result of formulaic repetition—it’s instinct. It’s voice. It’s control.
The term “comfort food” is often used derisively in conversations about entertainment and art. But if your back catalog is comfort food, then you retire in Hawaii. Comfort is not a flaw—it’s a skill. It’s a kind of welcome. Brooks made fantasy inviting. He took what could have been overwrought or embarrassing, and made it readable—approachable—at scale. His fantasy was never niche. It was never obscure. It was mass market, and proudly so.
Unlike many who followed, Brooks rarely performed authorship. He let the work speak for him. And for a time, he was the undisputed king. We didn’t know there was a throne yet, but he held it. And when writers came along who would expand, deepen, and elevate epic fantasy into something more literary or radical, it was Brooks who had prepared the ground.
Terry Brooks was the entry point for an entire generation of readers. The Lord of the Rings, much like Dune, doesn’t lend itself easily to children. It happens, yes—I was one of them—but it’s rare. Most readers don’t go from Diary of a Wimpy Kid to Tolkien in the same year. For those kids—walking into libraries like mine, browsing narrow bookstore shelves—the fantasy pickings were slim. But there, reliably, were the paperbacks of Terry Brooks. He was present. And presence matters.
My second observation about Child of Light is more specific. The novel is taking its time getting somewhere that, frankly, most readers already know it’s heading. The book’s official synopsis could easily stand in for the first 80 pages. One could almost skip them without losing much. My concern is that the summary might also cover the final 50. Still, I’ve stuck with it. Because it’s been a long time, and giving a new Brooks novel a chance feels like the very least I can do—for the writer who once made sure his fantasy titles sat next to Grisham and Danielle Steel, who kept Tolkien from being the only name on the genre shelf.
When zeitgeist titles like Memoirs of a Geisha or The Bridges of Madison County came out, Brooks ensured a big, bold fantasy novel—with a Keith Parkinson or Darrell K. Sweet cover—was seated at the same table. That may not seem extraordinary now, but it was. The enormity of that moment should never be taken for granted.
If there’s a critique of Brooks, it’s that he was never a dangerous writer. But maybe that was never the point. Maybe it’s enough to say he reopened the gates. Maybe Tyrion Lannister never pisses off the Wall if Allanon hadn’t first come for Shea Ohmsford—reminding us, once again, of our magical heritage.