The Scions of Shannara: (#1) (The Heritage of Shannara, Book 1) (edition 1990)

For The Sword of Shannara Trilogy, author Terry Brooks wrote three separate, but loosely-connected tales. In The Heritage of Shannara, he tells one large, epic tale over the space of four books. It was quite a departure from the pattern of the previous stories, and, if the first book is any indication, this seems to have worked quite well for Brooks.

As the first book, The Scions of Shannara, opens, the world is a radically different place from the world that Brin and Jair Ohmsford inhabited at the end of The Wishsong of Shannara. The Federation, which was once misguided, but still democratic, has become a repressive state that has completely taken over the Southlands through conquest, and has enslaved the Dwarfs, and seem to be intent on driving them to extinction. Magic is outlawed, the elves have disappeared, and a new breed of evil, called the Shadowen, has arisen. Their very presence is causing the Four Lands to sicken and die.

Amidst this situation, the shade of the Druid Allanon enlists the help of former Druid Cogline to persuade the heirs of the Elven House of Shannara to come to the Hadeshorn, where his spirit rests, and hear his requests to them. He has tried to contact these folks before, in their dreams, and they will not respond. Par Ohmsford is afraid, Wren Ohmsford is ambivalent, and Walker Boh (an Ohmsford who took the name of one of his forebears) is outright hostile. All of them, even Par who is the most idealistic about the Druids, share a suspicion of Allanon due to his manipulations of their ancestors centuries ago during the Druid's lifetime.

After much persuasion from Cogline, they eventually go to the Hadeshorn to hear Allanon's spirit talk to them. The shade shows them a horrific future in which the Shadowen rule the lands and the people are mindless cattle to be fed upon and tortured for the amusement of these demonic creatures. He then gives them their tasks – ones that seem impossible to fulfill. But if they don't accomplish these tasks, the land will be plunged into darkness forever.

Terry Brooks really improved his skills as an author in the time between the publication of The Sword of Shannara and Scions. The plotting is tighter, the characterization is actually somewhat in-depth and not the somewhat shallow portrayal of the first book. I love Sword, but I have to be fair on pointing out the problems from which it suffered. Of course, the romantic subplots are still rather sloppily done, with the one in the current book only working because of the length of the time they two characters are mentioned as near each other being longer. Brooks isn't good at writing romances. His attempts could be listed under tvtropes.com's “Strangled by the Red String” index, in which characters are just paired off together with no believable build-up.

For me the best part of Scions was that the characters were more believable. They didn't take up the mission with no qualms, but struggled with it. They have fears, doubts, and uncertainties. In short, they were characters that one can relate to. I appreciated this aspect.

That is not to say that Scions was perfect. To be sure, it had it's problems. Mainly insomuch as that the story dragged in parts. And the explanation about how the Shadowen developed was understandable, but a bit sloppily explained. It's something that you have to think through to get, and have to depend on your knowledge gained from having read the previous trilogy, because it certainly isn't put all that clearly here.

This was a terrific effort by Brooks, and I am already eagerly beginning the second book of the Heritage story, The Druid of Shannara. ( )

Found this book hard to put down after I got into it. Lots of action, lots of characters, lots of travelling. I will miss several of the characters that were thrown away but I thought it was well explained and great leads for the next few books in this series. ( )

SHANNARA

Great addition to a great series. ( )

Not a bad story line but I think Brook’s is a bit wordy almost to the point of stretching out the series. ( )