High Druid of Shannara is a trilogy of Shannara novels by Terry Brooks. Set twenty years after the events of The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy, the series chronicles the adventures of Pen Ohmsford as he seeks to rescue his aunt Grianne Ohmsford, the Ard Rhys, or High Druid, of Paranor.
Synopsis[]
In High Druid of Shannara, Grianne struggles to survive a mutiny within the third Druid Order, which she established and leads. The mutinous faction, led by Shadea a'Ru, uses a powerful magic known as liquid night to banish her to the Forbidding.
Grianne's personal aide Tagwen flees Paranor and seeks out Grianne's brother Bek Ohmsford in Patch Run in the hopes that Bek would be able to find the Ard Rhys; however, he finds Bek's son Pen instead. Pen and Tagwen find the Elven Druid Ahren Elessedil and his niece Khyber, and eventually the group commandeers a Rover airship to fly deep into the Northland to try and find a way to save Grianne. In the meantime, Grianne does her best to stay alive in the Forbidding, a place that teems with Demons.
High Druid of Shannara expands the Shannara world by featuring places in the Northland that were never mentioned in previous novels or shown on previous maps of the Four Lands, such as the community of Anatcherae, a lake called the Lazareen, and Stridegate, the Old World city found in the Valley of the Inkrim. The Forbidding is also expanded in that it is revealed to be not just a dark, amorphous limbo world as was described in The Elfstones of Shannara, but also an alternate world that could be considered a “dark mirror” of the Four Lands. The trilogy also introduces the tanequil, a tree from the Age of Faerie that, similar to the Ellcrys, has magical properties related to the Forbidding.
Books[]
- Jarka Ruus (2003)
- Tanequil (2004)
- Straken (2005)