Mild spoilers for The Shannara Chronicles Season 1 (and likely the book series) below! If you want to approach this series with no preconceptions, avoid this blog post.
So I’ll preface this by saying that I haven’t read any of the Shannara Chronicles books by Terry Brooks. I have no idea as to the quality of content that lies within them, or how closely the Netflix show follows them, though from the blurbs of the books it would seem to be quite loosely. As somebody who normally reads the books first, this was actually a welcome change, though I do wonder how much enjoyment I’ll be able to get from reading the books now that I’ve watched the series.
I found this series simply because I was browsing Netflix for something to watch, and I almost passed over it. I’m not saying that it didn’t appeal to me, but show adaptions from novels don’t have the best track record and it was only as a last resort that I decided to give it a try. But from the opening shot, I could tell that the middling 3-star ratings had nothing to do with the budgetary commitments, and that this was a world that at the very least had plenty of care and effort put into it. This was one of my main fears, as a novelist never has to worry about budget or realistic scope of setting and scale, and the scale issue only showed in a few battle scenes… but even the big-name novel adaptions like Game of Thrones have 50 warriors where there are meant to be 50,000.
Season 1 of the Shannara Chronicles is a quest. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings, in a good way, and I’m not even very familiar with LOTR. (I’m working on it!) Having only seen the first two Lord of the Rings movies and having started reading The Fellowship of the Ring last night, it probably says something when I can immediately identify it as a direct influence and continual referral point in the Shannara Chronicles. The world is made up of Humans, Elves, Trolls, Gnomes and the notably absent Dwarves. The latter three races are descendants of humans (or at least that’s what I’ve gathered base on the incredible intro), whilst the existence of elves remains a mystery… at least, to me.
But here’s where it really hooked me. The Shannara Chronicles are an indeterminate (though later specified) few thousands of years after modern mankind’s downfall. So, while you have elves and magic and so forth, you also have decaying fallen skyscrapers and abandoned wastelands that form the backdrop of the series as a grand narrative; humanity is still recovering from this downfall even thousands of years later. The series balances this portrayal of present day society as ancient lore perfectly, making it not a main plot point or even a readily discussed matter, but a background that rarely comes into play and brings a sense of intense wonder and discovery when doing so. It is possibly my favourite part of this narrative. I often have to remind myself that this takes place on a future Earth, and that’s wonderful. I want to learn more about Earth’s fallen civilisations, and I say this in a world which is currently wrought with the same almost idealised apocalypse story over and over.
The series has its flaws, though. Most notably, the pacing takes weird jumps and skates over important developmental issues. Sometimes it’s forgiveable, such as travelling from point A to point B – a travel of weeks – over the course of one single cut. Other times, you have characters entering environments that should make their jaw drop, but they are instead already at home. You have characters lose loved ones and fail to even grieve or be affected by it. And I am 100% certain that this comes down to cut content. But even this is, as worst, merely jarring, and whilst I recall it being particularly bad at around episode two or three, it didn’t come close to deterring me from the series.
I’d also say it was somewhat predictable. Whilst it may be set in a vastly and commendably unique world, the events that take place within it are far from having never been told before. I found myself predicting events which were meant to shock me, and I can’t particularly think of any one moment that felt like a huge revelation or surprise. But perhaps that is simply me being jaded or having a foresight that any writer of the same genre might have themselves.
Just give it a watch. These last two paragraphs have been criticisms, but they’re the only bad things I have to say about an otherwise pleasantly surprising show. I highly anticipate season 2.
Perpetually Perturbed 