Wow.
So I just got the Del Rey Internet Newsletter in my mailbox, and the big promo is for THE ELVES OF CINTRA, the latest in the Shannara series and part of the trilogy that I gather ties the Void books together with the Shannara books. There's an interview in the newsletter, and in it, the King of the Silver River is mentioned.
My God. I had not thought of that character in...years. I had forgotten how very much I *loved* that character until I read his name, and then it came back to me on an actual visceral level. I actually lost my breath for a moment, just at the sheer wonder of rememberance. It wasn't having a crush on the character (I've had plenty of literary crushes, but that wasn't one of them). It was simply *loving* him. And he's what, really only in the one scene, right? In the original trilogy, and I can't even remember which book (Wikipedia tells me he's in SWORD and WISHSONG, so I would have encountered him first in WISHSONG), but it had one of the most beautiful descriptive scenes I ever remember reading. I read that scene (and the biscuit scene from SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH) for a Drama, Debate & Forensics competition my junior year of high school, because I thought it was simply so very gorgeous. (In retrospect, God, they probably thought I was very, very weird.)
I have no idea if that scene, or those books, hold up to the test of time, although the original trilogy would, I suspect, fall under the "I don't care if it's good, it has huge nostalgic value" heading for me (rather like the original Guardians of the Flame books). And apparently the Shannara prequels go into quite a lot of detail about the King of the Silver River, and now I am struck with the wish to read _all_ of them, which is actually a rather daunting task. I think I'll wait until the bridging trilogy is finished and then do just that. The idea kind of fills me with childish delight.
(Note: this paragraph contains a spoiler for the original Shannara trilogy. If you're reading this blog, I cannot imagine it would actually be a spoiler to you, but just in case, I'm telling you so you can skip it if you want. :) The original Shannara trilogy changed my reading habits forever, as I bought WISHSONG at age 12 at the beginning of a long drive up the California coast. My parents said, "Find the biggest book you can," and WISHSONG was both extremely thick and also trade paperback, so it was quite literally the biggest book I could find. (They said, "Jesus, that's really big!", and I said, "*Well*!") I read it and, to my vast embarrassment, cried over Allanon's death (every time I read the book for years afterward, too), finished it, turned it over, and saw on the back cover, "Don't miss the first two books in this exciting trilogy!" AGH. So for more than twenty years I've been obsessive about reading books in order, because AGH! *AGH*!)
Wow. I'm just gonna sit here for a while smiling foolishly, because I don't remember ever having a love affair come back to me quite that strongly before. :)
On a completely different topic, pbray has a rather cool post about Life After The Trilogy up at SF Novelists.com, with further discussion on the topic going on at her blog. And I'm not linking to her because she plugged me in her post, although that was very cool of her, but rather because it's really interesting (and probably, in fact, bears some relevance to the entire topic of the innumerable Shannara books mentioned above). :)
My God. I had not thought of that character in...years. I had forgotten how very much I *loved* that character until I read his name, and then it came back to me on an actual visceral level. I actually lost my breath for a moment, just at the sheer wonder of rememberance. It wasn't having a crush on the character (I've had plenty of literary crushes, but that wasn't one of them). It was simply *loving* him. And he's what, really only in the one scene, right? In the original trilogy, and I can't even remember which book (Wikipedia tells me he's in SWORD and WISHSONG, so I would have encountered him first in WISHSONG), but it had one of the most beautiful descriptive scenes I ever remember reading. I read that scene (and the biscuit scene from SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH) for a Drama, Debate & Forensics competition my junior year of high school, because I thought it was simply so very gorgeous. (In retrospect, God, they probably thought I was very, very weird.)
I have no idea if that scene, or those books, hold up to the test of time, although the original trilogy would, I suspect, fall under the "I don't care if it's good, it has huge nostalgic value" heading for me (rather like the original Guardians of the Flame books). And apparently the Shannara prequels go into quite a lot of detail about the King of the Silver River, and now I am struck with the wish to read _all_ of them, which is actually a rather daunting task. I think I'll wait until the bridging trilogy is finished and then do just that. The idea kind of fills me with childish delight.
(Note: this paragraph contains a spoiler for the original Shannara trilogy. If you're reading this blog, I cannot imagine it would actually be a spoiler to you, but just in case, I'm telling you so you can skip it if you want. :) The original Shannara trilogy changed my reading habits forever, as I bought WISHSONG at age 12 at the beginning of a long drive up the California coast. My parents said, "Find the biggest book you can," and WISHSONG was both extremely thick and also trade paperback, so it was quite literally the biggest book I could find. (They said, "Jesus, that's really big!", and I said, "*Well*!") I read it and, to my vast embarrassment, cried over Allanon's death (every time I read the book for years afterward, too), finished it, turned it over, and saw on the back cover, "Don't miss the first two books in this exciting trilogy!" AGH. So for more than twenty years I've been obsessive about reading books in order, because AGH! *AGH*!)
Wow. I'm just gonna sit here for a while smiling foolishly, because I don't remember ever having a love affair come back to me quite that strongly before. :)
On a completely different topic, pbray has a rather cool post about Life After The Trilogy up at SF Novelists.com, with further discussion on the topic going on at her blog. And I'm not linking to her because she plugged me in her post, although that was very cool of her, but rather because it's really interesting (and probably, in fact, bears some relevance to the entire topic of the innumerable Shannara books mentioned above). :)