The Elfstones of Shannara

by Terry Brooks

Book Overview

Ancient Evil threatens the Elves: The ancient tree created by long-lost Elven magic, is dying. When Wil Ohmsford is summoned to guard the Amberle on a perilous quest to gather a new seed for a new tree, he is faced with the Reaper, the most fearsome of all Demons. And Wil is without power to control them....From the Paperback edition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345285557
• ISBN13: 9780345285553
• Release Date: July 1982
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Length: 469 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Elfstones is a Brooks classic!

Received used first paperback edition. With original cover art. Fast shipping. Very satisfied. 5 stars.

Sterling novel; much better than SWORD OF SHANNARA

Well, lots of people have done a general spread on this sterling novel so let me just list the highlights of what I liked:CONCEPT: It is about 50 years after the Sword of Shannara storyline. A new Evil of Demons and Devils threatens the lands as the barrier which holds them back begins to waver. The only hope is to rejuvenate the Tree of Life, which controls the barrier, and that task falls upon Will omsford, grandson to Shea, and the only remaining servant to the Tree of life; a young reluctant elven woman.MARKETING APPEAL: great epic story of good vs a primordial evil; runs on the bestselling SWORD OF SHANNARA; a weak boyish hero must assist a young girl, the last of the Chosen of the Ellycrys (that keeps the Evil kept captive), to an unexplored land to seek a means to rejuvenating the Ellycrys; Promises great battles, in the usual Brooks style, and the usual LEVEL ONE story telling level of good vs. Evil; SCORING: Superb (A), Excellent (A-), Very good (B+), Good (B) Fairly Good (B-) Above Average (C+), Mediocre (C ), Barely Passable (C-) Pretty Bad (D+), Dismal (D), Waste of Time (D-), Into the Trash (F)DIALOGUE: B+ STRUCTURE: A HISTORY SETTING: B CHARACTERS: B+ EVIL SETUP/ANTAGONISTS: A EMOTIONAL IMPACT: A SURPRISES: A LITTLE THINGS: B MONSTERS: A- PACING: A- OVERALL STYLE: A FLOW OF WORDS: A- CHOICE OF FOCUS: A TRANSITIONS/FLASHBACKS/POV: A COMPLEXITY OF WORDS/SYMBOLISM/THEMES: B+OVERALL GRADE: A - (at the cusp to an A)HISTORY SETTING: Pretty good History; the lands are created after a nuclear holocaust; the Faeries of Old return to the world; the other four races which are created are men, trolls, gnomes and dwarves. Some people claim Brooks is a Tolkien rip off but I don't see this too much. The elves, besides being faerie related, have lost much of their knowledge and magic of old. Furthermore, they aren't like the Tolkien elves as they have to sleep, die at the usual human age and are not gay and happy. Perhaps THE SWORD OF SHANNARA has more comparisons so I can't entirely say. Even the dwarves in this story are different, as they are great engineering types but they fear caves. Gnomes, other than having a group of healers called Storks, are barely introduced. Same goes for the Trolls except when an army of them arrives to drive the Demons back from the capitol. I would say that the History is nothing comparable to Tolkien. It lacks complexity and details. It does, however, deal with simple, focused ideas which get the points across. Fantasy setups don't always have to be terribly detailed to be good, I have found. Paranor, the well of knowledge run by the Druids, as well as the division of the Four Lands was done fairly well, in my opinion. And, needless to say, the fight between Good and Evil Faeries may have been adapted from previous legends but it was illustrated quite well.PACING: The story never let up. Even emotionally, Brooks didn't try to spend too much time on details that would bog the story down and things kept moving forwar

Good read for all

This book was the first of the initial trilogy that I read, and I still think it's the best. It has a near-perfect blend of suspense, intrigue, hierarchal rivalry, and romance. Also, it has one of the most intriguing, exciting, and well written large-scale fantasy war scenes I've ever encountered.This book is NOT a clone of the first book, The Sword of Shannara, as some might be led to believe. True, something goes wrong, then Allanon appears. However, he is not the main character, and with all due respect to him, one large reason he is there is to simply tie in this book with the rest of the series.A note to all people interested in this book but turned off by all references saying it's too much like Tolkien, only worse: people don't realize that the two series are not comparable. The two authors' writing styles are different. Brooks' works tend to focus on the here-and-now, using more dialogue and action. Tolkien tends to focus on the Big Picture, using tons more detail. Neither style is bad. It's the reader's taste.FINAL NOTE: Good literature has no specific demographic. The Elfstones of Shannara is a good read for all. It has plenty of action and intrigue, while maintaining a definite mature atmosphere.

There is no comparison!

I just want to say to those people who are raving fans of Robert Jordan that those books cannot even compare to this. This was the first Brooks book I ever read... me being an all time ultimate fantasy fan... I had been a drooling fan of Tolkien for years, and my Mom picked The Elfstones of Shannara up at a used book sale knowing that I was the fantasy type... I the best book that I ever read. The Characters are extremely well developped as opposed to simply being well described..... there is a difference... The plot is exciting and not drawn out one bit... and in the end of the story there is an actual conclusion, not like in the Eye of the World, in which we don't know any more than we did in the beginning of the story. Since I read this book, I have had many other fantasy author's recommended to me; Goodkind, Jordan, Eddings... and so on. I have started reading them all and have stopped after the first or second book. All those books are simply hyped and only written for money-making purposes. One of the best things I like about the Elfstones of Shannara is that there is heart behind it, and it is proof that it is not the length of a book that decides how good it is. I recommend this book a hundred times over for those who like more intelligent type of Fantasy. I garantee that you will like this.

Simply wonderful

The Elfstones of Shannara is definitely the best book in the Shannara series. I love this book, and have read it over, and over, and over.... For the longest time, I wondered why I liked it so much. Then, I realized that it wasn't like any of the rest of the Shannara series (Sword of Shannara was O.K., but the later books became nothing more than agonizingly slow psychodramas with characters that were constantly struggling to deal with the use of the "magic"- bleh!). This novel, on the other hand, is perfectly balanced, with a somewhat different concept than the standard "Kill the evil wizard/dictator" plot. The Ellcrys, the tree that bars a horde of vengeful demons behind the magic walls of the Forbidding, is dying. Once she is gone, the creatures of darkness will pour in and destroy the world. The only way to stop the terrible events is to sent one of the Chosen to bathe the seed of the Ellcrys in the Bloodfire. This task falls upon Amberle Elessedil, a reluctant former Chosen. Allanon appoints Wil Ohmsford as her protector and sends them off on a mission to save the world. Meanwhile, the forbidding collapses, freeing the demons. It's up to the Elven Army to stop them, aided by the brave men of the Free Corps. Character development is excellent; none of Brooks' other works has any characters that come close to the ones in this book. Stee Jans, Ander, Amberle.... they're all very compelling and all seem very real. The plot is great, too. My personal favorite moment is the battle with the demons at Halys Cut, but the book is chock full of memorable scenes. The first encounter with Cephelo, Allanon's battle with the furies, the witch sisters, and the final agonizing decision itself... All of them will earn a special place in your memory of great fantasy. The only real downside to it all is that this book shows you how creative Brooks can really be. When you see that someone has the ability to write a masterwork like this and then go and read something like "The Wishsong of Shannara," it really disillusions you.

ONE OF THE THE BEST EPIC FANTASIES EVER WRITTEN.

I was impressed with Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara, but he was obviously just warming-up in preparation for his true masterpiece, the Elfstones of Shannara. The Ellcrys tree, created millennia ago by long-lost Elven magic, is the strength behind the Spell of Forbidding, a dimension of imprisonment for ancient evil. In quick succession, the Ellcrys begins dying, the Forbidding starts crumbling, and the demons within break free--and that's only the first dozen pages! Allanon meets his match with the sorcerous Dagda Mor, only one of thousands of unstoppable demons who fear but one thing: a rebirth of the Ellcrys. Oh, I haven't even mentioned the cunning Changeling or the fearsome Reaper--there are enough villains and heroes in these pages to fill a shelful of ordinary books. Since 1982 when I first read this novel, I've returned at least ten times. I feel I've come to know and cherish these characters, like visiting old freinds every once in a while. Of the hundreds of fictional works I've read these past three decades, only a half-dozen have been as absorbing or given me as much enjoyment as the Elfstones of Shannara.