to protect the world from a horde of malevolent
creatures.
The next set of four Shannara novels, set
some centuries after the events of the first trilogy,
make up one continuous story. The titles are The
Scions of Shannara(1990), The Druid of Shannara
(1991), The Elf Queen of Shannara(1992), and The
Talismans of Shannara (1993). The elves and
dwarves have been driven from the land by the
new rulers of Shannara, and the practice of magic
is outlawed. A fabled sorcerer returns from the
dead as a ghost to challenge them and organizes a
rebellion, The elves are located in their place of
exile and encouraged to help battle the villains,
and a plague is unleashed in a desperate attempt to
suppress the rebellion. Brooks subsequently contin-
ued the story with a sequel, First King of Shannara
(1998), with the forces of good repelling an invad-
ing army of trolls.
A new sequence began with Ilse Witch(1990),
in which a druid and a witch set out on a danger-
ous sea voyage to secure a new and dangerous form
of magic before it can be seized by the wrong
hands. They reach their destination in Morgawr
(2002) and discover that they have misunderstood
the situation from the outset. Jarka Ruus(2003) is
also a quest story, this time following a group of ad-
venturers seeking a missing woman, who is located
and rescued in Tanequil(2004). The Shannara
books are openly derivative, and the early volumes
in particular are often uneven and awkward.
Brooks improved his storytelling skills in the later
volumes, but in this series he never attempted to
break new ground. His other novels, though less
popular, are actually much more interesting.
Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!(1986) launched
the Kingdom of Landover series. A lawyer purchases
an entire kingdom in a magical otherworld, but
once installed in his new property, he discovers that
there are numerous problems besetting him. Low-
key but sometimes genuinely funny consequences
follow. The story continues with The Black Unicorn
(1987), in which the protagonist is magically altered
in appearance so that his friends no longer recognize
him, Wizard at Large(1988), which traps the lawyer
and his magical wife in our world, where she can
exist only for a limited time, and The Tangle Box
(1994), this time pitting the hero against a villain-
ous con man who traps him in a magical maze. The
most recent title in the series is Witches’ Brew
(1995), which is more adventure than humor. The
hero’s daughter has begun to age prematurely
thanks to evil magic just as an army begins an inva-
sion. Although the tone varies considerably from
book to book, and sometimes even within a single
volume, the Landover novels are much more origi-
nal than the Shannara series.
Brooks’s remaining set of three novels is easily
his best work. Running with the Demon(1997) also
straddles two worlds, ours and a magical realm, but
has a much darker tone than the Landover series.
An immortal knight and a disguised demon battle
to shape the future of both realities. The central
character is much more vividly portrayed, and the
writing is more controlled and realistic than in the
author’s other work. The story continues in A
Knight of the Word(1998), with prophetic dreams
warning the knight of dangers to be averted when
he is awake, although the constant turmoil trou-
bles him greatly. He and another wizard finally tri-
umph in the final confrontation in Angel Fire East
(1999). Brooks is potentially a writer of much
greater merit than his published work suggests, but
paradoxically the very success of his Shannara se-
ries has apparently prevented him from consis-
tently moving on to more original efforts.Brust, Steven(1953– )
Most science fiction authors begin with short sto-
ries and move to novels, but most fantasy writers
debut at book length and only write short fiction, if
at all, as an occasional change of pace. That pat-
tern holds true for Steven Brust, whose first pub-
lished fantasy was Jhereg (1983) and whose
subsequent short fiction has been inconsequential.
That novel was the first adventure of Vlad Taltos,
a marginally psychic assassin living in a typical fan-
tasy world who is bonded to a reptilian companion
and has various energetic adventures leavened by
doses of light humor. Brust’s second fantasy novel,
To Reign in Hell(1984), was a retelling of the story
of the war among the angels and is atypical of the
balance of his work.
Taltos returns in Yendi(1984), with Taltos now
confirmed in his position within the professional38 Brust, Steven