YMMV / Shannara

• Complete Monster: Rimmer Dall; The Morgawr & Cree Bega; Mischa. See those pages for details.
• Growing the Beard: While Sword has a few twists along the way, and plenty of hints that the underlying mythology of the world is very distinct, it distinctly resembles The Lord of the Rings in many respects, to its detriment. Elfstones established that the series could stand on its own as page-turning High Fantasy adventure, and remains perhaps the single most beloved volume for fans.
• Ho Yay: In Sword, the first book, Menion Leah is so obviously head-over-heels in love with Shea Ohmsford. He falls in love with Shirl Ravenlock at the very end of the story, because Shirl doesn't sound anything like Shea.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Ilse Witch's been through hell. She's also an utter bitch to everyone around her. She drops the Jerkass part in the next series, then she goes through hell again, this time sort of literally.
• Never Live It Down: Terry Brooks wrote exactly one book that bore some resemblance to The Lord of the Rings followed by a series of highly original fantasy adventures, but most people who know of him but haven't read his books think he's made a lifelong career out of plagiarism.
• No Yay: There are some serious rape overtones to Rimmer Dall's attempted possession of Par.
• Protection from Editors: Averted; while Brooks meets all the criteria to qualify for it, he has made quite clear that he actually considers his editors a vital part of making his books great.
• Selfish Evil: Morag and Mallenroh do what they want, when they want, to who they want, and damn anyone who gets in their way.
• Strangled by the Red String: Pick one. With a few exceptions, Brooks' romance subplots come across as very forced and tacked on. Especially Logan Tom and Simralin in the Genesis Trilogy. They never meet through the three books, take one look at each other and are suddenly willing to go to the ends of the Earth and DIE to protect the other.
• The Woobie:
  • Tay Trefenwyd Did Not Get the Girl, he has to watch her with his best friend, and finally he dies retrieving the stone. Yeah, he qualifies.
  • Aphenglow Elessedil becomes this through the course of "Dark Legacy," which seems determined to take from her everyone she cares about, from surrogate mother figure Khyber Elessedil, to her lover Bombax, most of her fellow Druids, basically all of her blood relatives, and her Replacement Goldfish for Bombax, Cymrian. Yeah, she loses a lover, and loses the lover who helped support her through the loss of the first! Along with everything else tumbling apart in her life.