The essential authors of science fiction, fantasy & horror — and where to start reading them.
Series Guide
by Terry Brooks
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.
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.
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.