Book Review: Jarka Ruus

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Jarka Ruus     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Terry Brooks
Class/Genre:   Fantasy
Series: High Druid of Shannara # 1
Del Ray, Sept 2003, $27.95, 416 pp.

It’s been twenty years since the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara and the Ilse Witch was transformed back into Grianne Ohmsford. Now she is the Ard Rhys of the Third Druid Council, the High Druid of Paranor who seeks peace in the Four Lands. She is not very well liked or trusted in the halls of Paranor because of her past evil deeds and there are those who plot against her, hungry for the power she has.

A small but powerful Cabal of Druids are able to take Grianne by surprise and send her into the Forbidding, an alternate universe where all the dark creatures of fairie were banished eons ago. Her nephew Pen is made aware of her predicament and he sets out with a trusted group of allies to rescue her but the new Ard Rhys and her allies are determined to stop them.

Fans of the various Shannara series will find this first installment in a new trilogy well written, action-packed and exciting. The scenes of Grianne in the Forbidding are very imaginative and colorful and engage the reader’s sympathy for the Ard Rhys’s plight. Terry Brooks has created an interesting protagonist in Pen, an untested young man who grows stronger with each attempt made on his life.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner