The Scions of Shannara

This book is the start of the Heritage tetralogy and is therefore used to setup the world and plot points for the next three books. This results in the beginning feeling a bit slow whilst Brooks puts everything in place to take you through that long journey. The midpoint of the book is the encounter with Allanon's shade and the story starts to pick up speed a few chapters before then as there's a ramp up in action and narrative until that meeting. Once that takes place, the author manages a good flow all the way to the end of the book. So don't get discouraged and stick around until then.

The story features more mature themes than the previous series, helped by some of the protagonists being older and the world in general being much more broken. This gives us heroes that have more faults and more issues to overcome and that's a good thing. Even though the world is still very familiar and there is not much new as far as what the main characters need to do in this story, Brooks still manages to keep it fresh and introduce new challenges and new ways for the characters to overcome their difficulties. We finally get a better glance into the magic system and what the druids are about thanks to a more mature and magically able protagonist and this develops Brook's world quite a bit.

Overall I found this book enjoyable and would recommend it for anyone who also enjoyed the Sword of Shannara trilogy.