Terry Brooks

Terry Brooks is one of modern fantasy's most commercially important authors, best known for The Sword of Shannara (1977), which became the first work of fantasy fiction to appear on the New York Times bestseller list and proved, alongside Tolkien's continuing popularity, that there was a mass commercial audience for epic fantasy. That breakthrough launched the Shannara series, which Brooks has continued expanding across multiple sub-series and prequel trilogies for nearly five decades, building one of the genre's longest-running single continuities. Outside Shannara, Brooks is known for the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, a lighter, more comic fantasy about a burned-out lawyer who buys a magic kingdom from a classified ad, and for writing the novelization of the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which introduced him to an even wider readership. A practicing attorney before turning to writing full-time, Brooks has spoken often about the discipline that legal training gave his working process, and he continues to publish new Shannara material regularly, including recent additions extending the saga's timeline both backward and forward. His Word and Void urban fantasy trilogy, later revealed to share a hidden connection to Shannara's deep future, is considered by many fans and critics to be some of his most distinctive work outside the main series.