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The Dark Legacy of Shannara is a trilogy of Shannara novels by Terry Brooks. Set about a century after the events of the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, the series focuses on the adventures of the twin brothers Railing and Redden Ohmsford and their quest to help Khyber Elessedil, the Ard Rhys of the fourth Druid Order, recover four missing sets of Elfstones that the Elves had lost during the Age of Faerie.
In keeping with the name, The Dark Legacy of Shannara treads familiar ground by intentionally repurposing plot elements from earlier novels but with a look at the “darker” side of those plot elements. An obvious example of this is a return to the Forbidding, the realm of the Demons and the Straken Lord Tael Riverine; this world was last visited in the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, but this time the Forbidding has far more dire consequences for the characters involved than it did for Grianne Ohmsford in High Druid. Grianne herself also returns in Dark Legacy but in a darker incarnation, making this the third trilogy she appears in after The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara and High Druid.
Another clear example of a darker spin on an older tale is the quest of a princess from the House of Elessedil to restore the Ellcrys. Unlike the first Ellcrys quest Brooks wrote about in The Elfstones of Shannara, the one in Dark Legacy features a far heavier focus on the sacrifice required to save the tree. This time around, the nature of the sacrifice is well-known to all those who are striving to save the tree, unlike in Elfstones, and that knowledge casts a shadow over the quest from start to finish.
Synopsis[]
Thousands of years after the destruction of the Great Wars, the fourth Druid Order is in trouble. The Druids are the caretakers of magic in the Four Lands, but magic's influence is waning as most of the Races turn to ever-increasingly dangerous forms of science and technology to advance society. Meanwhile the Elves, the last holdovers from the Age of Faerie, have distanced their society from the other Races. Additionally, only five Druids remain, and the Federation, now led by the sinister Drust Chazhul, has resolved to wipe out the Order and the influence of magic for good.
While poring through the royal archives of Arborlon, the young Druid Aphenglow Elessedil stumbles upon a secret account of young love in the long-forgotten diary of an Elven princess named Aleia Omarosian. During the Age of Faerie, when the power of magic ruled and endless warring was taking place between creatures of the Word and creatures of the Void, the Elfstones protected the Elves, who were servants of the Word. One day Aleia, the sole child of the King of the Elves, fell in love with a young man who served the Void, a Darkling boy named Charis.
Aphenglow learns a shocking truth about the missing Elfstones in Aleia's diary and takes the knowledge with her back to Paranor, where the Druid Order, led by Khyber, resolves to undertake a mission to find and recover the lost Elfstones—not just in order to preserve and protect the magic, but also to secure the Druids' very existence and by extension the balance of power in the Four Lands. To ensure the mission succeeds, Khyber seeks out Railing and Redden Ohmsford, twins who possess the power of the wishsong.
Books[]
- Wards of Faerie (2012)
- Bloodfire Quest (2013)
- Witch Wraith (2013)
From right to left: Skint, Khyber Elessedil, and Crace Coram lead the Druid party through the Fangs, a wall of spiraling rock formations found within a massive fissure in the Breakline. Carrick and Seersha walk behind them, while the twins Railing and Redden Ohmsford and the Trolls of the Druid Guard bring up the rear. Illustration by Todd Lockwood for the first edition of Wards of Faerie.