Um.... Interesting? I don't understand the signifigance.

That's a good book. Read it twice already. But forgot most of it. Something about a tree, a barrier, a girl, a guy, and the awesome druid [spoiler]Allanon I think[/spoiler]

I need to read them.

The Furies, are greek in nature and I have a fascination with them, particularly Maegara and Tisiphone

It's actually one of my favorite fantasy books, and (in my opinion) the best that Terry Brooks ever wrote. Though I will admit that Armageddons Children is turning out to be excellent.

I've read them all but I think I read them out of sequence because I don't really remember a lot of it.

I think I read one of the books for a reading program in middle school. O_o

Also, do you mean Furies means 'furries'?

In Greek mythology the Erinyes (???????) or Eumenides (or Furies in Roman mythology) were female personifications of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad (iii.278ff; xix.260ff) invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whoever has sworn a false oath." Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath" (Burkert 1985 p 198). They were usually said to have been born from the blood of Ouranos when Cronus castrated him. According to a variant account, they issued from an even more primordial level—from Nyx, "Night". Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto ("unceasing," who appeared in Virgil's Aeneid), Megaera ("grudging"), and Tisiphone ("avenging murder"). Dante followed Virgil in depicting the same three-charactered triptych of Erinyes. The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpents (compare Gorgon), their eyes dripped with blood, and their whole appearance was horrific and appalling. Sometimes they had the wings of a bat or bird, or the body of a dog.

were they the ones that hounded the son of menalayus for murdering his mother after she murdered their dad?

I was referring to both.

I liked the Sword of Shannara better though. It has more people in it, and more action I think. The wishsong was good but: [spoiler]Allanon dies![/spoiler]<----------Caution: If you want to read the books don't read this!

Still, nobody beats Tay Trefenwyd. He was my favorite. Second place goes to Pe Ell (the dude with the funky knife).

The elf guy?



[spoiler] I like it when he used the black elf stone and murdered a whole entire army[/spoiler]

If I remember correctly, Tey was an elf in the First King of Shannara. I believe it was him that was tasked with finding the Black Elfstone for Bremen. I liked his character, but my personal favorite has always been Stee Jans (and Garet Jax, but there's a good chance they were the same person).

yes
[spoiler]and he died EXACTLY HALFWAY through the book. The end of the middle chapter, on the middlemost page, on the center of that page.[/spoiler]

I personaly liked the dwarf more, he knew kung fu!

That's one of the nice things about Brooks. He's definitely got a spectacular cast of characters with a really wide variety of personalities. Then on the other hand you get someone like David Eddings (Still a great writer) who pretty much just uses the same template of characters and changes their names. Different approaches, but both effective.

Brooks handles angst a lot better than Eddings. It comes across as shallow drama with Eddings.

Of course, for one of my favourite hope-through-pessimism reads, The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson.

What other series pits a hollowed out (emotionally) leper against a being fed by fear and violence and hatred and anger?

Does the Bible count?

{Delete}

Wrong ideal.

Jesus wasn't a leper.

There was that guy who was infested with "Legion"...'sides, anyone who was a leper in Jesus' time had it bad. Getting stoned with bricks off the street for fear of infection? Bad times.

Also, there was the story of Job, where he becomes a hollowed out leper and such...however, if anyone couldn't tell by the winky I meant that post to be sarcastic and not serious. It's rather hard to find a book where a leper is tormented by a being of intense hatred and anger, so I picked about the only one I could think of. However, I have read some that deal quite well with angst and suffering.

In fact, Brooks deals with it quite well in Elfstones. (and with that, we are officially back on subject)

Relevance, it burnssss. It burrrrrnsssssss!