Book Review: Wards of Faerie

I've been a fan of Terry Brooks for a long time. Elfstones was one of the first books I ever read that I truly loved and it probably started my love of fantasy ever since. I've been generally very happy with Mr. Brooks's Shannara series. There are moments when it begins to feel a bit formulaic and I'm the first to acknowledge that but the world he's created is fascinating and the way he tells the story is fantastic. So it was with great interest I picked up the newest book of his, Wards of Faerie. For those of you unfamiliar with his world, let me give a brief history.

The original trilogy: Sword of Shannara, Elfstones of Shannara and Wishsong of Shannara are a multi-generational set of books following the Ohmsford family and the Druid Allanon. The fantasy world he created is what I would describe as "low-magic". A magical sword is a treasure the likes of which no one has ever seen. Allanon is the only druid left in the world. There are demons and other things that go bump in the night but they're generally rare and stick to their own little corner of the world while magic is slowly dying off.

Since that original trilogy, he has published a prequel to the original set, 4 more trilogies, one 4 book series, and one 2 book series all set in the same world. Two of the trilogies actually preceded the original with one set on modern day earth. He'd dropped hints off and on about the world of Shannara actually being our earth but post-apocalyptic and he confirmed this with these connecting books. So now he's going back and forth, alternating between series that will further the Ohmsford legacy and series that will fill in the blanks and connect the two worlds in more substantial ways.

Wards of Faerie is the former. A book set after the events of the Ilse Wytch trilogy. It takes place about 130 years later and focuses on the dwindling Druid council left behind by Grianne Ohmsford. I found the characters to be engaging. It was nice to finally see an assortment of good Druids with different personalities. We've only ever really been exposed to three druids, Allanon, Walker Boh and Grianne Ohmsford. So it was with some interest that I began to read about the various Druids of the current council. A couple of them we didn't get to learn much about, I hope that in the next book/s we learn more. The story is told primarily from the point of view of two of the Druids as well as from the primary antagonist's point of view. It focused shockingly little on the Ohmsfords despite their alleged importance and their (somewhat predictable) possession of the gift of the wishsong.

There were some story telling failings in a couple points. I've read a lot of Terry Brooks and so some of his stuff has become predictable to me. That wouldn't bother me if he just told me the story. But the fact is that he's clearly trying to "surprise" you with the story telling technique. There were four or five elements of the story that clearly were trying to surprise the reader and fell a bit flat. As a result, there was decidedly little tension in parts of the book that should have had tension. Some things go unexplained as well. In the opening chapter of the book, the primary Druid character we are following, Aphen, finds a book in the Elven archives. She's been their searching for nearly a year at this point. We are very pointedly told that she puts the book in her bag (while alone) and then leaves for the night, intentionally not departing from her normal routine. She's attacked later that night. Now this coincidence could have a lot of explanations. I don't want to get into spoilers but suffice it to say that all of the (many) logical explanations I could come up with failed to materialize. It was as if someone "just knew" she'd discovered something that very night.

On the plus side, the action was fantastic, the characters believable (more so, frankly, then in the past where you had good and bad and nothing really in between). Brooks is absolutely at his best when he's inventing and exploring new creatures/magics etc. A scene late in the book introduces us briefly to "proks". These are one of the most innovative, clever monsters that I've seen in a fantasy book. I don't expect them to make an additional appearance but their brief cameo in this book gave the world a life that was very refreshing. The whole point of the book is a quest for the missing 4 elfstone sets (not a spoiler, you get this in the beginning of the book) and that has the promise for real invention on the part of Mr. Brooks. There are a couple intriguing characters whisked away at the end but clues dropped in the book virtually guaranty that they'll be back (or at least one of them). All in all, I enjoyed the book. It's not nearly as compelling as his two masterpieces, Elfstones and Druid but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I very much hope that Aphen grows into the kind of Allanon / Walker Boh type druid that we've had in past books. Druids should, in my opinion, be enigmatic magical experts with a tendency to obfuscate while simultaneously doing what they unilaterally think is best. Right now, Aphen is plagued by the self-doubt of youth but my expectation is that by the end of the third book, we'll see that begin to melt away.