The Four Lands are larger than what we readers know
Over the years, Terry has expanded on the Four Lands, taking his characters—and readers—to new destinations. We have seen the Elves. We have seen the Dwarves. We have seen the Federation with all its deceit. We have even seen the Trolls a few times in the far reaches of the North. And of course, in Ilse Witch, Walker Boh flew us to Parkasia beyond the Blue Divide.
There are two areas that fans write into the website fairly often about, areas that they want to see explored. What exactly exists farther south beyond Arishaig and the Federation cities? And what exists farther east past Culhaven and the dwarves?
It was a big world, obviously. Now that we know the Four Lands are the future of our own world—and the land mass that survived after the Great Wars must be larger than what we’ve seen—it opens today’s poll question:
What area in the Four Lands and/or beyond would you like to see Terry explore more?
North? East? South? West?
And why?
38 responses to “Poll: North, East, South, West?”
West.
So while we have seen throughout the series various elemtns of what could be classified as “old technology” still working in the world of magic wouldn’t it be an interesting idea to see what would happen if such technology was still working and in fact the various races were using it or ensalved to it of some kind?
Assuming the Four Lands is a version of part of the North America of the future, looking eastwards would be interesting… who knows what we would bump into!
Maybe we could combine this with the discovery of people still using “old technology”. Maybe they get as far as Florida and find that they are still trying to figure out voting technology!
Sorry. Had to be done. Moral imperative and all. 🙂
I think these are both interesting ideas.
I’m interested in the east because i want to learn more about the wraiths and mwellrets. The east has always been shadowed in mystery. How did wraiths develop?
I think South… I want to see what is beyond the realm of men! Or what causes men to go North instead of South, aside from the whole conquer bit.
I would really like to find out what the cities Eldwist and Stridegate were before the great wars. Considering that the four lands are what was North America, could they possibly be large cities that we have now? Anyway, it would be nice to maybe get a comparison map of America now and the Four Lands to show the exact differences in Geography and what has changed. I assumed when I read Elf Queen that the Elves had moved to what I presumed at the time was the Hawaii islands. Anyone else’s thoughts?
i havent thought about it much but it would be pretty cool to have a comparison. mainly because after reading the whole series I havent been able to figure out what certain things came from. the genisis helped a little but not all that much.
I think my favorite are was Morrowindl.
i love them all, read them all, and will read any thing that comes out lol, north east west south, it will all be cool!
I agree fully and totally. hopefully we could have some elaboration on the wars between the ELves and the Demons before man.
what I would really like to know is,which four lands location lines up with which present day city/location. I think, for example, eldwist was chicago or at least part of it.
Exactly what I thought and I said as much in my comment but they seem to have not posted it yet. They say it is waiting to be moderated ):
I would like to see east more, possibly the remnants of New York. I think it would be cool if New York got overgrown by like a rain forest or something. Maybe even a second race of Elves that were changed somehow by the wars of the old world.
It’s a hard one…
I guess East and what lies beyond places like Dun Fee Aran, Graymark,… the Mwellrets.
But the final choice is definitely the North, what lies beyond Eldwist
What is Rindge?
The Rindge were red-haired, bronze-skinned people who inhabited Parkasia in the “Voyage of the Jerle Shannara” series.
it be a great ideas to head east some other lost city n ew race or some other tribes that didn’t know about the other end off the world.
To destroy the demon army, the gypsy morph did something deep underground that caused a quake/ chasym. This may have set up a change in geology many thousands of times faster than natural. The net effect is while the Four Lands are probably parth of North America, the continent may be very different from now.
Even so I’d like a sory set outside America, Ireland, Finland, or the desert of Chili to see how the rest of humanity fared. Did other places recover more technology? Have meltdowns of nuclear reactors rendered 90% of the world unliveable. Is the Lady still ‘living’ in a creek in Wales?
But to pick a direction, east.
-I need to hire a new proofreader.- (Firing self)
I agree completely with this! I am really eager to see how other people of the world are rebuilding. This series is never boring and there’s so much more to explore!
I think the hotspot super volcano under yellowstone park could have caused alot. It has eruped every 600000 years or so and is due to erupt right now. one eruption from it could cover the greater part of north america in ash. the mississipi also runs along an old major fault line. new madrid is the name of the fault.
Let’s head East. We’ve been really far West. Semi far north and northeast. Well, I guess either East or South, or perhaps Southeast. It would be interesting if there were simply a huge landmass to the east, perhaps a desert people, perhaps plains and lakes, or something altogether different. I could opine. But I digress. It’s always interesting to see those living in the Four Lands venture out and beyond to uncharted, unfamiliar territory. By virtue of suspense and unknown, this adds a very new flavor to the story.
East for the win! Who knows what (or who) is out there?
East. As has been pointed out here already, I think there are a lot of interesting creatures in the East that could be explored more. A lot of time has been spent in the West, and though the Elves are my favorite of the races, they have gotten lots of air time. I’m less interested in the South – it’s more interesting to have humans going into other lands and learning about other races, in my opinion, since that is what fantasy is all about. The North is interesting and in some ways mysterious, but as the former haunt of Brona, Uhl Belk and the current haunt of the Trolls, I think it too has had a lot of focus. The East is the place with the least development in Brooks’s work – not that that is a criticism, as he has been developing a lot of other directions as well!
By the way, I think it would be cool if Brooks developed an RPG for the Four Lands a la Dungeons and Dragons. It seems to me like there’s a lot of awesome potential there for tabletop quests, but, that’s just an idea. And with new areas opening up like Parkasia and the East, I think there’s a lot of ways a Dungeon Master could take those stories. Just a thought.
I voted East. I saw an earlier post that someone thought Eldwist was Chicago area and that there is a lot of land beyond. Am I completely wrong in thinking that Eldwist is NY City? It’s basically a peninsula on the ocean isn’t it? I thought that Paranor is more in the middle of the country and built in or around Hopewell, IL area. This is just my thoughts.
I always had the impression the Shannara universe was on the West coast, but that is the joy of Terry Brooks. He keeps us guessing! 🙂
Based on the peoples various ground travel times, and map legends not withstanding, I’d guess the four lands is somewhere in the old Pacific NW, and about the size of Colorado. Eldwist could be anywhere if the world geography has changed. Even north may not be the exactly same direction it used to be.
Both food for thought. Thanks.
SOUTH!!! There is so much to be explored in the beginnings of the Federation and, in my opinion, how the Southland is coming 180 degrees and starting to resemble more and more the “old world” … or the world we live in now, with governments and politics and such. That, to me, would be a treat. Maybe not even in story form, but more of a history format. Much like Tolkien’s Silmarillion.
Let’s never forget that the Dwarves lived underground. Who knows what lies beneath the forests of the Eastland.
Shannara appears to be set between the Rockies and the West Coast of the present-day United States. Based on the relatively precise description at the end the Gypsy Morph, the valley the Races settled in after the Great Wars is in the Montana area east of Spokane, north of Missoula, and adjacent to the Flathead National Forest, where there is indeed a valley between the mountains, roughly 50 by 100 miles in size. I have a relative up in Montana and have been to that area – a beautiful place.
It would be interesting to expand the Shannara series East beyond the Rockies to describe what happened to the Eastern United States area, major cities – Chicago, New York, etc. The current geography is less interesting – essentially hundreds of miles of flat plains until you reach the Appalachian mountains or the Great Lakes in the north, but who knows, perhaps this would be different thousands of years in the future.
I had to ultimately go with South; we have seen only a snippet of Shady Vale, and that is really as far south as Terry has even mentioned…again, assuming that the Four Lands is North America, don’t you think it would be interesting to see if Central America – where the Mayan and Aztec cultures had their creepy temples and sacrificial traditions – maybe reverted back to doing stuff like that?
We should go back to Parkasia and find that Walker Boh has been partly reconstructed due his fatel wounds from Antrax…. Did the AI reboot? Did Walker find a way to impose himself in the system?….Oh the possibilities..ok I’ve gone off topic now.
I’d like to see further east in this world. Though south intrigues me as well. It would be exciting to look beyond. I am of the mindset that the nuclear holocaust that begat the Four Lands also released the old magic and the combination changed the landscape but I would hope not on a continental-sized magnitude. I would like to know that north is still north, south is south, South America and other continents didn’t just disappear or move randomly around the globe. I know I’m trying to apply real-world logic to a work of fiction but after 35 years of reading I figure I should at least be allowed to try.
I generally agree that the Four Lands seem to lie somewhere in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific coast of North America. Eldwist as Chicago? Or New York? Not sure about that. They seem pretty far away and geographically out of sync. I’d suggest that Hudson or James Bay somehow expanded(worldwide flooding?) so that Eldwist translates more into Winnipeg?
It can be surmised the trolls are decended from those humans(and lizards) who went into hiding in mountain valleys to the north. Or so it seemed in The Gypsy Morph. Surely others have survived elsewhere? The Andes? Appalachians? Alps? Himalayas? Someone suggested a series of short stories about the rest of our world and I like that. Food for thought Terry?
Running long so a final thought that’s off-topic. The Forbidding seems to be a “cracked” image of the Four Lands? Has it always been so? Did at one time the Forbidding look like our world or did the holocaust that destroyed our world remake it more in the image of The Forbidding what with the release of Old Magic into the mix?
Definitely east! As we found out in the Gypsy Morph and the other books in that series, the Four Lands developed in the American Northwest. What kind of people, if any, survived the Great Wars in the east where I am from? I think Terry could open up whole new worlds and story lines in that direction.
I think east and not just in the “4 lands Continent”, I’m talking about Europe, Africa, middle east, Russia, China…..the worlds is, was and will be a massive planet,. I’d love to see what happened to the Billions of people or the reminents of those peole after the wars. The worls isnt just the US Of A you know.
Were the Rindge really Asians? Cause if they were, then that means that Dwarves are Asians. Remember, they spoke a related language. Perhaps Morrowindl and Parkasia were just California, broken off far into the Pacific, I mean the Blue Divide.