All those events you hear Allanon talking about - well here's the first hand look into the life of Bremen, the fall of the Druids and the first battle with Brona. Seeing the events unfold all together as a single story was a lot of fun. You pick up on the various parts of the legends and the histories that you hear in bits and pieces throughout the series. As such, it can easily be read as a stand alone and you will still get a lot of enjoyment out of it. In fact, you may get more enjoyment out of it. I found I had learned a little too much about the events and characters, and when they didn't live up to my expectations, especially Jerle Shannara, who I found to be very un-heroic and a little whiny at times. The druid Bremen, on the other hand, was great. I loved his tenacity and his sorrow that he wasn't able to make people (like the Druids) change their mind about how they would react to events. Overall the adventure was a little predictable (but I already knew what was going to happen), and the hero was a little too underwhelming, but it was still fun.

The story of Bremen and the origin of Allanon and the Sword were nice and fill in the mythology of his series. I found myself stopping in the midst of reading due to frequently misspelled words, grammatical errors, and incorrect character names in several cases. Unfortunately this lack of quality and polish is quite common with his ebook titles.

Terry Brooks is turning into one of my favorite writers! This book is a great starter in emerging yourself into the wonderful world he has created.

I had read others of Terry Brook's writings. It was interesting to go back to one of his earlier works. You could see him forming his style, and his Pattern related to quests for Shannara. Later he polished his style up, kept the same pattern, but always made it interesting. There were surprises as well in this one. Not everything ends happily. I believe you'll enjoy it if you like fantasy.