Hopefully he will get back to this era at some point as there’s a lot of story to still reveal to us readers! Terry Brooks has said in his online Q & A’s that he wants to get back to this era of the overall story, but needs to take a break from Shannara for awhile.

My biggest complaint is that it’s only two books in this era and with these characters! I was left wanting more story! But then the Saga jumps ahead thousands of years to The First King of Shannara. I thoroughly enjoyed this two book series and only had a couple of gripes about the overall story and the characters. Again as in previous books, Terry Brooks does a good job of introducing new and interesting characters and then breaking our hearts as we read about their highs and lows and we grow to love them just as much as past characters in previous novels. Terry Brooks has done a good job of tying back to the previous stories, but yet forging ahead with a new story and characters in this series. The Bellaruus family that we read about and followed their journey in the last trilogy, we hear about them in this story and find out that they are still around but no longer royalty.

The Elves are back and are flourishing in this new story. We also get to see the blue Elfstones in action again and we find out what has happened to them over the years. While we get to revisit Arborlon again, we don’t see the Ellcrys in this series. We also get an update on the Loden, the Elfstone that allowed the Elven City of Arborlon and the Ellcrys to be transported to a new location. We see that things have changed for the Knights and that they are no longer directly connected to the Word. We get a glimpse of how things have evolved for the Knights and their Black Staff’s over the previous hundreds of years. It gives some follow up to the Knights of the Word, not only for the actual office of Knight of the Word, but also to the two Knights that we grew to love in the previous trilogy - The Genesis of Shannara. I enjoyed this first book of a duology (a two book series) that is still set way before the events of the original Shannara Trilogy. The descendants of the Elves of Cinta, Hawk and his followers, and the others who followed them have settled the Valley and have created a self sufficient world and they have lived in peace for centuries. This first book picks up the story 500 years after the climactic events of Genesis of Shannara: The Gypsy Morph. This is the start of another great Shannara story with new characters and new situations.

Download shannara black staff