In fact, fantasy fiction is now required reading at some schools. You look at what Marvel comics has done, and it's staggering.” Everything from gaming to comics, to books to movies to TV – it's all there. 'Every form of entertainment out there is now using fantasy as a platform. 'There was Tolkien, there was the Wizard of Oz, but not anything on a regular commercial fiction basis.

'When I started out, fantasy was not in favor,” he explained, stating that the form as we know it today simply didn't exist. 'It was very freeing, and I think that was a lot of where my imagination developed.”Īfter publishing The Sword of Shannara in 1977, Brooks published two more novels before quitting his job as a lawyer to write full time. In those days, we were just kicked out the door and told to go play and stay out of trouble.” 'I tell people all the time - especially young people - that what they don't have, that I had, was freedom. Growing up in a small Midwestern town had plenty of advantages for an imaginative child. 'I've been writing steadily all that time.” I thought – I bet I could do this! And it turned out I could.” 'I had a teacher tell me that I was a really good writer. Add your contacts.īefore he was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, before he had more than 21 million books in print, Brooks was a fourth grade student in Sterling, Illinois, just off Highway 30. You will begin to receive our weekly Hoopla Events updates. 'That was always where I was headed, and I took four books to bring that to what I thought was a satisfactory conclusion.”

What happens in that situation after all these hundreds of years of having magic as the dominant force and science being essentially gone? What would happen at the very end, when the two of them came up against each other?” 'And when that happened, then a new science would arise, and the new science would become the thing in favor. 'The ol' what goes around comes around kind of thing.” So while magic found favor in the beginning, it, too, would eventually go the way of science. And so what would happen? Well, something fills the void, and in this case, I decided it was going to be magic.”īut life is cyclical, Brooks explained. 'This started out as positing that we have a world in which science fell out of favor, and also that the background information on it and the knowledge about it was destroyed in a kind of cataclysm so that the few people who survived really didn't know much about science.

He'll read from 'The Stiehl Assassin,” the third book in the four-part Shannara conclusion, which comes out on May 28.įor those not among the millions of readers who have devoured Brooks' New York Times best-selling novels, he offers a succinct summary of the Shannara series. Wednesday, June 5, at the Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids. While readers will have to wait to read the final installment, they can meet Terry Brooks in person at 7 p.m.

The sword of shannara barnes and noble