The Original Shannara Trilogy

About The Original Shannara Trilogy

Terry Brooks's Original Shannara Trilogy launched one of modern fantasy's longest-running sagas and, on its 1977 publication, became the first fantasy novel to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. The Sword of Shannara introduces Shea Ohmsford, an adopted half-Elven innkeeper's son revealed to be the last descendant of the royal line of Shannara, who must claim the legendary Sword of Shannara -- the only weapon capable of destroying the resurrected Warlock Lord -- while pursued across the Four Lands by the undead Skull Bearers. The Elfstones of Shannara jumps a generation ahead to Shea's adoptive nephew Wil Ohmsford, who must protect the last of the Chosen, Amberle Elessedil, on a quest to renew the magical Ellcrys tree before the Demons it imprisons break free and overrun the Elven kingdom. The Wishsong of Shannara closes the trilogy with Wil's own children, twins Jair and Brin Ohmsford, whose inherited magic -- the wishsong, able to alter reality through music -- becomes both weapon and vulnerability against the Ildatch, an ancient book of dark magic corrupting the Mord Wraiths.

Brooks builds the Four Lands as a far-future Earth transformed by nuclear apocalypse into a world of Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Gnomes, and Men, pairing a classic quest structure in each book with a different Ohmsford-family generation and a different magical threat. Frequently noted for its early debt to Tolkien, the trilogy nonetheless established the core races and the Ohmsford bloodline that would recur across the entire Shannara saga for decades to come.

How to read this series

Read in publication order -- The Sword of Shannara (1977), The Elfstones of Shannara (1982), The Wishsong of Shannara (1985) -- which is also the correct chronological reading order, since each book follows a new generation of the Ohmsford family roughly twenty to thirty years after the last. No prior Shannara reading is required to start here: this is the true beginning of the saga in both publication and internal timeline. If you also want the direct prequel First King of Shannara (1996), which tells the story of the first Sword of Shannara centuries earlier, it's best read either before The Sword of Shannara or after finishing this trilogy, since it was written and published well after all three.