Wards of Faerie

• Book One of The Dark Legacy of Shannara
• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Published: (August 21, 2012)

Seven years after the conclusion of the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks at last revisits one of the most popular eras in the legendary epic fantasy series that has spellbound readers for more than three decades.

When the world was young, and its name was Faerie, the power of magic ruled—and the Elfstones warded the race of Elves and their lands, keeping evil at bay. But when an Elven girl fell hopelessly in love with a Darkling boy of the Void, he carried away more than her heart.

Thousands of years later, tumultuous times are upon the world now known as the Four Lands. Users of magic are in conflict with proponents of science. Elves have distanced their society from the other races. The dwindling Druid order and its teachings are threatened with extinction. A sinister politician has used treachery and murder to rise as prime minister of the mighty Federation. Meanwhile, poring through a long-forgotten diary, the young Druid Aphenglow Elessedil has stumbled upon the secret account of an Elven girl’s heartbreak and the shocking truth about the vanished Elfstones. But never has a little knowledge been so very dangerous—as Aphenglow quickly learns when she’s set upon by assassins.

Yet there can be no turning back from the road to which fate has steered her. For whoever captures the Elfstones and their untold powers will surely hold the advantage in the devastating clash to come. But Aphenglow and her allies—Druids, Elves, and humans alike—remember the monstrous history of the Demon War, and they know that the Four Lands will never survive another reign of darkness. But whether they themselves can survive the attempt to stem that tide is another question entirely.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly – Publishers Weekly
Celebrating the 35th anniversary of The Sword of Shannara, which launched a 20-volume bestselling saga, Brooks sets this dual-heroine quest immediately following the events of the High Druid of Shannara trilogy. After Elf-turned-Druid Aphenglow Elessedil discovers an ancient diary recording the theft of the magical Elfstones, Brooks places his familiar Four Lands at a crucial crossroads. The science-dominated Federation led by malignant Prime Minister Drust Chazhul plots to eliminate the Druids, caretakers of the world’s magic, and raze their city of Paranor. The Druids’ Ard Rhys, Aphen’s relative Khyber Elessedil, awakens from her magical Druid Sleep to gather a familiar multiracial fantasy-quest team and seek the missing Elfstones, while Aphen remains to face Chazhul’s assaults and her own romantic crisis. This opening salvo in Brooks’s Dark Legacy of Shannara trilogy is Tolkien-derivative, but suitably rousing and occasionally touchingly sentimental.

Library Journal – Library Journal
Researching magic in the books and scrolls housed below the palace, young Elven Druid Aphenglow Elessedil discovers a diary that recounts a forbidden romance between an Elven girl and a Darkling boy and hints at the fate of the long-vanished Elfstones. As troubled times return to the Four Lands and a tyrannical human-centered Federation seeks to dominate the other Races, Aphenglow sets herself a dangerous task—to follow the clues left in the diary and uncover magic that might save her people and her world. Set in a time after magic has given way to science, the latest addition to the best-selling Shannara series marks Brooks’s return to that setting after a seven-year hiatus. VERDICT In time for the 35th anniversary of The Sword of Shannara (first published in 1977), Brooks opens up a new avenue for more tales of magic and epic adventure. His many fans will want this.

Excerpt: Chapter One

It was almost one year to the day after she began her search of the Elven histories that Aphenglow Elessedil found the diary.

She was deep in the underground levels of the palace, sitting alone at the same table she occupied each day, surrounded by candles to combat the darkness and wrapped in her heavy cloak to ward off the chill. Carefully she read each document, letter, or memoir in what had taken on the attributes of a never- ending slog. It was late and her eyes were burning with fatigue and dust, her concentration beginning to wane, and her longing for bed to grow. She had been reading each day, all day, for so long that she was beginning to think she might never see Paranor and her fellow Druids again.

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Excerpt: Chapter Six