When I was a child I was relatively obsessed with epic fantasy fiction. I had read The Hobbit, but found The Lord of the Rings too slow and full of interminable descriptions of mountain ranges and Middle Earth pre-history. I read a lot of the popular series of the time, enjoying some more than others, but the books I really embraced and grew to adore were Terry Brooks' Shannara novels. At the time there were three: The Sword of Shannara, which was a brazen Lord of the Rings remake styled for short-attention-span readers like myself, its sequel The Elfstones of Shannara, and the third volume The Wishsong of Shannara. I always wished that someone would adapt the novels into a movie or TV series. Now, decades later, Elfstones has received a screen adaptation in the shape of MTV's television drama The Shannara Chronicles. Ten year-old me would be tremendously excited. Forty year-old me is a little more cautious. MTV making a fantasy drama? What on Earth would that be like?
