March to Other Worlds day 15: The Elfstones of Shanara by Terry Brooks

Day 15 The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks

Like so many fantasy novels, there is a lot of marching in the Shannara series, so for the fifteenth day of the month I’ve decided to focus on The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks in honor of my father-in-law who ultimately sacrificed his life for his country when agent-orange-created-cancer finally killed him eleven years ago today.

 

The sequel to Terry Brooks’ famous Sword of Shannara, Elfstones is all about sacrifice. A mystical tree called the Ellcrys is responsible for holding demons away from the earth. After millennia of guarding the planet, the Ellcrys is dying and as a result all of civilization is threatened by a return of the demonic hordes. The only possible hope is for a young woman named Amberle, the only surviving chosen of the Ellcrys, to bathe a seed from the tree in the bloodfire and then return to her kingdom to replant the tree before the demons over run it. On the one hand we have a classic quest while on the other a powerful military campaign striving to keep the Ellcrys from being destroyed before Amberle can return to start a new one.

 

More than thirty years after first reading this novel, Amberle remains one of my favorite fantasy characters although frankly she does very little by modern standards to make their quest successful. The other principle female character, Eretria, is tougher, more physically courageous, and frankly smarter than the other characters in the novel. But Amberle is the only person who can save the world and when the choice is finally forced upon her she embraces a fate I found worse than death so that millions of people she would never meet could go on living.

 

That’s a pretty powerful story and we haven’t even taken into account the huge military clash which features another of Terry Brooks most memorable characters, Stee Jans, The Iron Man, and his army fighting to give Amberle time to complete her quest to save them. No wonder I’ve remembered it so vividly across the decades.

 

If you have fond memories of Elfstones of Shannara or are thinking about reading it, why not join the conversation at https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...