Reverse review please : Shannara, the books.

When I was a young adult (late 1970s), I ran across the first Shannara book at my library and read about three chapters before putting it down. I never read the rest of the book or the series.

This was fairly unusual for me. I mostly read Science Fiction, but I don't mind a sword&sorcery book now and then. At the time, I found Sword of Shannara to be a ripoff of Tolkien without the wonderful prose, it was fairly childish, and as I recall, it had way too much backstory.

But I just watched the second season of the Netflix "Shannara" series. That was, as most TV is, rife with social commentary, sexually manipulative, and hopefully, much more fraught with teenage drama than the books. Because the story behind the show, of post-apocalypse mutations making the races, sounds interesting to me, if it is worked out in the book better than in the show.

Which is why I write. Can anyone recommend the books to me? Based on your reading, did I put them down too soon?