History Literature / TheSwordOfShannaraTrilogy

* BadassGrandpa: Eventine Elessedil. The man's in his eighties and he manages to lead his army into combat, and kill the [[spoiler:freakin' Changeling]].

* ObfuscatingInsanity: Seemingly the only explanation for Cogline's behavior in this book versus the ''Heritage'' trilogy (and actually stated in-universe by Kimber). Also makes for a huge number of SugarWiki/FunnyMoments, a rarity in this sort of HighFantasy. According to WordOfGod, however, he really was insane, courtesy of a screw-up with the Druid Sleep. By the time ''Heritage'' rolls around, he's back to normal and considers that time period his OldShame[=/=]NeverLiveItDown moment. Makes it even funnier in a way.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The Mord Wraiths summon a Kraken to help them take Capaal. Garet Jax kills it. With a spear.

* ObfuscatingInsanity: Seemingly the only explanation for Cogline's behavior in this book versus the ''Heritage'' trilogy (and actually stated in-universe by Kimber). Also makes for a huge number of [[CrowningMomentOfFunny Crowning Moments Of Funny]], a rarity in this sort of HighFantasy. According to WordOfGod, however, he really was insane, courtesy of a screw-up with the Druid Sleep. By the time ''Heritage'' rolls around, he's back to normal and considers that time period his OldShame[=/=]NeverLiveItDown moment. Makes it even funnier in a way.

* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: [[IThoughtItMeant Not Amberle]], but the Bloodfire--the group finds the room within Safehold where the Bloodfire is supposed to be, only it's empty. [[SubvertedTrope But then]] Amberle senses its magic, pushes aside a boulder, and suddenly the flames burst upward and turn red.

* KillAndReplace: The Changeling's M.O., naturally. It does this first the gardener Went, then [[spoiler:Eventine's trusted wolfhound, Manx]].

* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: Palance Buckhannah, Hendel, Stenmin (good riddance), Orl Fane, Brona, Keltset]].

* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: The Chosen, Arion Elessedil, Kael Pindannon Cephelo and his band, [[MutualKill Morag and Mallenroh]], The Changeling, The Reaper, The Dagda Mor, Eventine Elessedil]].

* BadassNormal: Garet Jax may well have been Franchise/{{Batman}} in another life. Helt is also a tank, briefly holding his own against a most of the Gnomes in Greymark.

*** TheChick: Kimber Boh, who is there to be Brin's friend and little else.

* KillEmAll: Not quite, but the last half of the book makes a valiant effort. [[spoiler:Stythyss, Helt, Edain Elessedil, Elb Foraker, Garet Jax, Allanon]], and pretty much every other named character bite the dust.
* KilledOffForReal: See KillEmAll.

On their way to Paranor, home of the Druids, disaster strikes. Shea is separated from the group. Forced to team with thieves [[BadAss Panamon Creel]] and [[GeniusBruiser Keltset]], Shea sets off to recover the sword on his own, while his friends attempt to avert Brona's conquest of the Four Lands. Many adventures and one Hell of a twist ending later, Shea recovers the Sword and puts Brona in his grave permanently.

Meanwhile, her brother Jair, who possesses a lesser version of the Wishsong, is told by [[DungeonMaster The King of The Silver River]] that Brin will fail if he does not go to her aid. Alongside reluctant Gnome Tracker [[TheLancer Slanter]], and uber-BadAss Garet Jax, as well as numerous others, Jair goes after Brin. In the end, Brin is saved, and the Ildatch destroyed, albeit at tremendous cost. TheMagicGoesAway...at least until the next series.

* BadAss: Allanon, Hendel, Balinor, and Panamon Creel are the standouts. Menion Leah especially.
** BadassNormal: Panamon Creel, Balinor and Hendel. Menion Leah above all.

* BadAss: Allanon again, Stee Jans (Commander of the Border Legion Free Corps), and [[BadassGrandpa Eventine]]. Ander doesn't do too badly either.
** BadassArmy: The Legion Free Corps is made up entirely of men who would rather that their pasts not be questioned too closely. In exchange they serve as a sort of expendable unit of desperate fighters. Then there's the Trolls, the Elves, and yes, the [[TheLegionsOfHell Demons]]. Not a lot of un-Badass armies in this book actually.
** BadassGrandpa: Eventine Elessedil. The man's in his eighties and he manages to lead his army into combat, and kill the [[spoiler:freakin' Changeling]].
** BadassNormal: Stee Jans, the leader of the Border Legion Free Corps.

* BadAss: Allanon (noticing a pattern here?), and of course Garet Jax.
** BadassNormal: Garet Jax may well have been Franchise/{{Batman}} in another life. Helt is also a tank, briefly holding his own against a most of the Gnomes in Greymark.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The Mord Wraiths summon a Kraken to help them take Capaal. Garet Jax kills it. With a spear. BadAss!

* PantheraAwesome: Whisper, Cogline and Kimber Boh's moor cat, who attacks the Mord Wraiths and their monsters with only his teeth and claws. He may be more BadAss than any of the human characters.

On their way to Paranor, home of the Druids, disaster strikes. Shea is separated from the group. Forced to team with thieves [[BadAss Panamon Creel]] and [[GeniusBruiser Keltset]], Shea sets off to recover the sword on his own, while his friends attempt to avert Brona's conquest of the Four Lands. Many adventures, and one Hell of a twist ending, later, Shea recovers the Sword and puts Brona in his grave permanently.

* LoveTriangle: Of a sort between Menion, Shirl, and Palance. Made more complicated by Menion saving Shirl's life (and [[RescueRomance falling for her]]) while also becoming Palance's (only) friend. The triangle is actually based solely on Shirl having been promised to Palance as part of an ArrangedMarriage, since Shirl only feels affection and sympathy for the prince and by the time the reader meets Palance any genuine feelings he may once have had have turned into borderline obsession. Revealing this is part of how Stenmin tries to turn Palance against Menion, but in the end a dying Palance ends up [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy giving them his blessing]], to the tears of both.

* TheMole: Stenmin, who not only succeeds in drugging and manipulating the weak-willed Palance into disbanding the Legion and leaving Callahorn defenseless but actually lets the army of the Warlock Lord in through the sewers and tunnels beneath the city, directly into the basement of the palace.

* NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Several times characters are thought to be dead due to the circumstances, only for them to turn out to be very much alive--Allanon, falling off the catwalk into the Paranor furnace with the Skull Bearer (he caught hold of the railing out of Flick's sight, and the latter couldn't hear him yelling because of the sound of the flames), Shea falling off the Dragon's Crease into a raging river, and Hendel seemingly torn apart by Gnomes in the Pass of Jade. The second one is immediately subverted however since Allanon uses Bremen's prophecy to prove Shea is still alive, and Hendel turns up alive while the party is waiting at the Valley of Shale. [[spoiler:Hendel doesn't make it the second time his life is in danger, however.]]

* ProphecyTwist: When Allanon first learns from Bremen that one of the party will not make it to Paranor, the others think this must mean Hendel, since he was presumed killed by the Gnomes at the Pass of Jade. [[spoiler:But then Hendel shows up alive, and it ends up being Shea who falls off the Dragon's Crease.]]

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Shirl Ravenlock is almost literally the only female character to appear in the novel.

* ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimself: Believing this is why Brin uses the wishsong to trick Kimber and the others into going a different direction in the sewers of Graymark so she can go into the Maelmord alone (although Allanon's shade implies, and Brin does not deny, that some part of her also knew [[spoiler:what the Ildatch was doing to her]] and so was just trying to protect her friends from herself, not just the Mord Wraiths.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewers: Beneath Graymark. Although the fortress was originally built by Gnomes at the order of the Mwellrets, who are Troll relatives, the latter are not hugely larger than the other Races the way regular Trolls are, so such size being needed seems a bit excessive. Then again, it is [[{{Pride}} the Mwellrets]].

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The vision/dream the King of the Silver River gives to Wil and Amberle respectively: [[spoiler:he finds himself in a gorgeous garden, but when he turns to show it to Amberle she is nowhere to be found; she finds herself standing in an empty darkness, desperately calling out to Wil, but he in unable to see or hear her]].

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Allanon disguises Flick as a Gnome and sends him to infiltrate Brona's army in hopes of getting some information; he ends freeing the captured Elven king, Eventine, a sequence which is both hysterically funny, and very awesome.

* OffWithHisHead: Stenmin's fate.

* TheAlliance: The army arrayed against the Demons ultimately includes the Elven Army, [[OneManArmy Allanon]], the Wing Riders (Sky Elves), the Border Legion (Men), numerous Dwarven engineers and sappers, and 1500 Kershalt Trolls.

* CainAndAbel: Morag and Mallenroh, the twin witches of the Wilderun.

* PowerNullifier/ BroughtDownToNormal: The Ellcrys equips the Elves with a staff that both renders the Demons mortal, and turns off their innate powers. Only [[EvilSorceror The Dagda Mor]] is left with any workable magic. Sadly it doesn't do anything about their physical advantages (eg, armoured hides, [[SuperStrength superstrength]], sheer size and bulk).

* CassandraTruth: None of the Dwarven Council of Culhaven believes Jair's story thanks to a bit of ArbitrarySkepticism (yes, Allanon hasn't been seen in twenty years but they know as a Druid and practitioner of magic he is long-lived, and legends of the King of the Silver River have been around for a very long time) and Allanon taking Rone and Brin a different route. It takes a demonstration of Jair's magic, revealing that he has seen Allanon's image, to prove he is telling the truth.

* DwindlingParty: Jair's party is reduced to [[spoiler: him and Slanter]] by the end. Played with at first, however--Brooks makes it look like each of the party members have died fighting the Kraken or the Gnomes at Capaal, thus [[InTheEndYouAreOnYourOwn leaving Jair alone]] as he ends up captured by Stythys and taken to Dun Fee Aran. Then [[SubvertedTrope all of them show up alive]] to break him out of prison. It isn't until the final assault on Graymark that the trope is DoubleSubverted.

* FiveManBand: Jair's protectors form one:
** TheHero: Garet Jax. TheLeader, and a WalkingArmoury, Jax can handle most situations, makes the group's decisions, and saves them all time and again.
** TheLancer: Elb Foraker, an experienced Dwarf fighter, and one of the few people Garet Jax trusts fully.
** TheBigGuy: Helt, a giant Borderman, armed with a long pike, who serves as the muscle and regularly holds the line against great odds.
** TheSmartGuy: Slanter the Gnome Tracker, who knows the terrain, is fully aware of how screwed they are, and is the quickest thinker around.
** TheChick: Edain Elessedil, the least experienced member of the group, whose main role is to be Jair's friend.
** {{Protectorate}}: Jair Ohmsford.
*** Brin's group also forms one on the journey to Heaven's Well.

In ''Sword Of Shannara'', Allanon arrives in the sleepy hamlet of Shady Vale with the news that [[BigBad The Warlock Lord]], [[FallenHero Brona]], an evil former Druid, has returned to life. Only the fabled (and titular) Sword of Shannara can rid the world of his threat for good, and only a member of the House of Shannara can wield the sword. As it turns out, [[TheHero Shea Ohmsford]] is the last living heir of the house. Along with his brother Flick, their friend Menion Leah, and diverse others, Shea and Allanon set out to look for the Sword.

* McGuffin: The titular Sword, which obsesses most of the characters for the duration of the book.

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Allanon disguises Flick as a Gnome and sends him to infiltrate Brona's army and free the captured Elven king, Eventine. The results are both hysterically funny, and very awesome.

Often referred to as the "classic trilogy" or simply the "Shannara trilogy", these three loosely-linked {{Doorstopper}} HighFantasy novels launched Terry Brooks' writing career. Set in Brooks' now famous {{Shannara}} universe, the three novels deal with three different generations of the Ohmsford family, their ties to the Elven House of Shannara and its magic, and their relationship with the enigmatic Druid, Allanon.

* RealityWarper: Brin's Wishsong allows her to force the world around her to comply with how she wants it to be. See the [[{{Shannara}} main page]] for more details.

* BigBadassWolf/ {{Hellhound}}s: The Demon Wolves. The Dagda Mor uses them as scouts for his army.

While the first book has been criticised for being too similar to ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', the later books are generally regarded as better, and the trilogy as a whole was very successful. It's best described as good quality pop-fantasy. There are now a number of short stories set within, just before, or just after the books in the trilogy. They include ''Allanon's Quest'', ''The Weapon Master's Choice'', ''The Black Irix'', ''Indomitable'', and the graphic novel ''Dark Wraith of Shannara''.

** BadassNormal: Garet Jax may well have been Franchise/{{Batman}} in another life.

* DarkestHour: Things look pretty bleak about mid-book. On the one hand, Allanon has been killed, the Sword of Leah has been lost, and Brin is left alone trying to nurse the poisoned and dying Rone back to health. On the other hand, Capaal falls to the Gnomes thanks to the Mord Wraiths calling a Kraken (which seems to kill Garet Jax); Foraker, Edain, and Helt all seem to die; Jair gets separated from Slanter, who seems to abandon him; and [[InTheEndYouAreOnYourOwn he's captured by Stythys and taken to the prisons at Dun Fee Aran]]. The latter is subverted, however, when all the party members turn up alive and rescue Jair, and even Brin is able to heal Rone, then get her quest back on track by finding Cogline and Kimber Boh.

**** TheSmartGuy: Cogline, whose knowledge of Old World science and the land around them makes him invaluable.