The Elfstones of Shannara
The book where the Shannara saga found its own voice; its tree-rebirth tragedy remains one of commercial fantasy's most affecting endings, and it anchored the MTV adaptation.
Book Entry · Fantasy
The Sword of Shannara
by Terry Brooks · 1977 · Shannara, book 1
What is The Sword of Shannara about?
Half-elven Shea Ohmsford, last heir of the Shannara bloodline, is roused from his Vale village by the druid Allanon: the Warlock Lord has returned, and only the legendary Sword of Shannara — and only Shea's hand on it — can end him. The fellowship, the flight from black-winged hunters, the broken party and the siege all follow Tolkien's blueprint closely enough that critics filed lawsuits-by-review; the Sword's actual power, though — it reveals truth, and the Warlock Lord's unmaking is self-knowledge — is Brooks's own, and the book's engine is honest momentum. Readers voted with thirty-odd million Shannara purchases over the decades that followed.
Why it matters
The first fantasy paperback on the New York Times trade list and the proof that created the post-Tolkien fantasy industry: commercially, among the most consequential genre novels ever published. MTV's The Shannara Chronicles later adapted the sequel.
Where does it sit in the series?
Brooks's multi-era saga of the Four Lands — elves, druids and the Ohmsford bloodline — which is quietly our own world, long after the apocalypse. The series that built the commercial fantasy category.
In the Guide from Shannara:
- The Sword of Shannara (1977)
- The Elfstones of Shannara (1982)
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