The Gypsy Morph / Terry Brooks

The Gypsy Morph

category: fantasy, author:

Terry Brooks

book 3 of Genesis of Shannara
published by Del Rey, original copyright 2008, read in May 2010

Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10

This is the final novel of the link from The Word and the Void into the various Shannara series. I admire the way that Brooks has linked the books but that does not make this book any better than, readable.

The Word and the Void is generally depressing. No matter that each book ends with some sort of resolution -- bad guys stalled, good guys escaped -- the underlying theme is, that the world is moving inexorably to a miserable end. By linking to Shannara, Brooks is able to tell us that, eventually, the world will regenerate. So that's good.

Then there's this book, the final of the near-future novels. Finally, all the (chief) bad guys are exterminated. Most of the good guys are safe, for the foreseeable future. What else? Nothing much...

Everyone is following Hawk, the Gypsy Morph. His role is to lead them to a safe place. Where is it? When will we get there? He doesn't know... he just goes in the direction which feels right. Then there's Simralin, the elf. She is not able to use elven magic -- until her boyfriend is in mortal danger. How did she know what to do? She just... did.

The whole book is like that: people doing something but not knowing why. People able to save themselves with magic, magic which they just "knew" how to use, at the crucial instant. No-one actually plans to do something, no-one knows what they should do -- until they desperately need to do it. Brooks uses the ignorance of his protagonists as a substitute for suspense.

Yes, the previous book The Elves of Cintra was exactly the same. Morph is just a little weaker, in that the plot is really the last few chapters of a larger novel: wrapping up the loose ends.

Still, it's nice to see the loose ends wrapped up. Now I'll read The Sword of Shannara, just to see if this 2008 prequel does really run smoothly into Brooks' first novel, written back in 1977.

..o0o..

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