A Black Spot

I'm a bit behind in my reading, and haven't yet had a chance to read the latest fantasy novel by Terry Brooks. (I'm used to him publishing once a year, and he's on a once-every-six-months pace with his newest trilogy.) But I did find an hour to read his newest short story, The Black Irix. This is the third entry in his Paladins of Shannara series of short stories, revisiting characters from his very first trilogy published decades ago. But compared to the prior entries, Allanon's Quest and The Weapon Master's Choice, this one was unfortunately a disappointment.

The story picks up after Brooks' original novel, The Sword of Shannara, and focuses on the young brothers at the heart of that story, Shea and Flick Ohmsford. When they became separated during that novel, Shea teamed up with a roguish character named Panamon Creel, who now returns in this short story to recruit Shea for one more adventure. He wants to steal a precious item that was a token of their mutual friend, which has now fallen into someone else's hands. Flick doesn't want Shea to go, but Shea feels a debt to both Panamon and their fallen friend, so all three set off on this smaller quest together.

In The Sword of Shannara, a novel that has been criticized by some for following too closely the plot structure and character sketches of The Lord of the Rings, Panamon Creel was one of Brooks' more original inventions. Basing a tale around his character seems like a natural choice for this series of short stories. But unfortunately, the tale is told entirely from the point of view of the Ohmsford brothers. It's not that they're bad characters. It's even an understandable choice, given that The Sword of Shannara had no sections written from Panamon's perspective. But it doesn't do justice to the content of this story.

Panamon Creel is the driving character here. He's the one who sets the quests; he's the one who has the plan on how to pull off the theft, and he does not fill the brothers in on what he's thinking. Consequently, the "main characters" of this story, the ones whose eyes we see it through, don't really affect the story. They bob around, caught up in the tide, and when the biggest moments come, we don't even actually get to witness them. Panamon is away, out of the brothers' sight, and only returns later to fill us in on everything that happened. It deflates any possibility of tension from the story, and resolves everything in a rather unsatisfying way.

Brooks' writing technique itself -- word choice, illumination of character through inner monologue, and so forth -- is still on display, so the short story is brisk and fun to read on that level. But the plot is just an enormous letdown, a real "why bother?" of a story that could have been far more compelling if told from another perspective. I think you'd have to be a longtime Terry Brooks fan with a powerful nostalgia for his first book to enjoy this story. I'm the former, though I don't have the latter. (I've always felt that Brooks became a much better writer in later books, as he stepped out from Tolkien's shadow.)

The Black Irix gets a C in my opinion. It's only $1, and quite short, so you won't be out much money or time if you do decide to pick it up. But I nevertheless can't recommend you do so.