The
Shannara books are pretty
repetitive, but having read them all I did
enjoy how subsequent books return to some
locations and
scenarios from previous books and cast different angles on them. I also like how artifacts such as the
elfstones and the
sword show up again in later books.
I enjoyed reading the Heritage of Shannara series the most, as I thought it had the most character development of any of the Shannara stories.
However mid-way through the fourth book, The Talismans of Shannara, I realized that what was going on in the plot was really ridiculous. Each of the main characters (and we're talking four or five main characters) had somehow managed to avoid major death at least four or five times over the course of the story. For me, it was laughable how many times each person would come so close to getting killed and then be saved through some miraculous circumstance. This really hurt my suspension of disbelief. Brooks also seems to rely on a small handful of major plot devices, and just uses them over and over again when faced with which direction the story is going to go. After seven books, it gets tired.