Above you will see price and availability details for Straken by Terry Brooks from the leading UK book stores.
To allow you to quickly compare prices, the stores are arranged in order of delivered price, cheapest first. Click on a store name to buy this book or to view further details.
Books Related to Straken Terry Brooks - ISBN: 0743483960
Excellent Reading - Rated
Superb. Could not put it down. It is a stay up 'till 3am to finish a chapter, which turns into many more!!
Loved all 3 in this series.
Bit of a funny ending - Rated
This book i will agree wasnt as good as i expected. I had an imadge of the forboding being more - hostile, violent and dangerous place and i wish there was more exploration there.
I liked the war with the freeborn and the federation but I did get the feeling the ending was rushed although a little bit funny for the demon at the end.
Still I would recommend
what a let down - missed opportunity - Rated
such a great premise - this whole 3 book series (which 20 years ago when Brooks firsts tarted out would have been just one book) revisting the grounds on his greatest tale - Elfstones - in terms of the Forbidding. But no - the scope of the Forbidding is not really explored at all, is inconsistent and just does sit well with what had been previously explained in Elfstones. Not half as Forbidding as it should be. An then the end - it's like he got bored or ran out of coffee - it just gets wrapped up in a bout 10 pages with all the stuff from the Forbidding left unresolved and not mentioned.
A real missed opportunity from an auther that was once great but has since become only above average.
A different style - Rated
Straken has me undecided about it's qualities. It has all the required elements of a magical Terry Brooks read, but it does fail to entrap you in the world of Shannara. It has less of the typical intrigue and emotion and more action and pace. Is that a good thing? There's my dilemma. I love Brooks for the former, and he rarely employs the latter. So, about two thirds through, caught up in terrific pace, you'll not want it to end, pleading that there'll be another book - there seems so much to come, yet so few pages left. I feel that the final third was rushed, there was plenty of scope for more, but this isn't plotted like previous books. Brooks has found a new gusto and it's good, but not expected. So be warned - a well crafted story, but written with a different style. Well wrapped up, but the characters weren't strong enough to pull on your heartstrings as in previous Shannara books. Hopefully you'll still be caught up in a little of the magic.
Could have been so much more! - Rated
Personally I didn't find the book as bad as some of the other reviewers but I can understand their many criticisms. I had expected more to the conclusion of the trilogy and by the time you get halfway through you do get the sense of the story being rushed to a conclusion. Pen possesses an incredible amount of luck and his trip into the forbidding is little more than a wlak in the park with his biggest obstacle being a dragon that is drawn to the darkwand.
The ending was predictable and I doubt that I will be rereading the book again any time soon and I was disapointed in the revelation that the Forbidding was little more than a mirror image of the world in general. Like others I had expected it to be wall to wall with blood hungry demons and yet most were strangely absent as was the Demon Lord who had such high plans for Grianne. The story had a lot of potential that I feel was not developed enough and like others I agree that it is perhaps time for Terry to move away from the Shannara series and concentrate on something else.
