Terry Brooks

Terence Dean Brooks (born January 8, 1944) is an American writer of fantasy fiction. He writes mainly epic fantasy, and has also written two film novelizations. He has written 23 New York Times bestsellers during his writing career, and has sold over 25 million copies of his books in print. He is one of the biggest-selling living fantasy writers.

Brooks had been a writer since high school, writing mainly in the genres of science fiction, western, fiction, and non-fiction. One day, in his early college life, he was given a copy of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which inspired him to write in one genre. While Tolkien inspired the genre, Brooks stated during his TEDxRainier talk "Why I Write about Elves", as well as at the Charlotte Literary Festival that he credits the inspiration of his style of writing to William Faulkner's works. With this inspiration, he then made his debut in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara.

After finishing two sequels to The Sword of Shannara, Brooks moved on to the series which would become known as the Landover novels. Brooks then wrote a four-book series titled The Heritage of Shannara. For the next fourteen years, he wrote more Landover books, then went on to write The Word and Void trilogy. Continuing the Shannara series, Brooks wrote the prequel to The Sword of Shannara, titled First King of Shannara. He then wrote two series, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara and High Druid of Shannara and finished a third, Genesis of Shannara, a trilogy bridging his Word and Void and Shannara series. The sixth book in the Landover series, A Princess of Landover, was released in August 2009. Returning to Shannara, a duology, Legends of Shannara, taking place after the events of Genesis of Shannara, was written next. The first book, entitled Bearers of the Black Staff, was released in August 2010 and the second, The Measure of the Magic, was released in August 2011. He next completed a trilogy entitled The Dark Legacy of Shannara. The three books are; Wards of Faerie (Feb 2013), Bloodfire Quest (June 2013), and Witch Wraith (Dec 2013). He followed this with the trilogy Defenders of Shannara, which include The High Druid's Blade (July 2014), The Darkling Child (June 2015), and The Sorcerer's Daughter (May 24, 2016). According to his website, he is currently working on the final and concluding tetralogy of the Shannara series known as The Fall of Shannara. The first book in the tetralogy is The Black Elfstone and was released on June 13, 2017. The second book in the series is The Skaar Invasion released on June 19, 2018. The third book in the series is The Stiehl Assassin published on May 28, 2019. The fourth and final book in the tetralogy is The Last Druid, scheduled for publication on October 20, 2020.