Armageddon's Children (Genesis Of Shannara Book 1)

To be absolutely honest about this book, I have not read it as of this date. Terry Brooks has been and remains one of my favorite authors ever since I read his Sword of Shannara and Elfstones of Shannara books. I am anticipating feeling the same about Armageddon's Children as I feel about the two books I mentioned. From my particular standpoint, I will read just about anything that Terry Brooks writes.

Fascinating characters, fast paced, great concept, and very hard to predict where it's going. Terry Brooks is a great at describing the settings, moods, and interior landscapes of the characters dealing with the unbelievable. Loved it.

I have enjoyed these works for several years and have read just about everything in the Shannara and Knight series. Maybe I am expecting a lot of this book, but it did keep me interested and wanting the next book right away. It is interesting to see the two worlds merging and I can't imagine how this will end.

IMHO, very entertaining if you're into this kind of thing.

Another great novel from Terry Brooks.I wait in anticipation for every book from this author.sometime even go back and read the book from before and never get bored.if you like the likes of terry Pratchett you will love this writer AAA+++

Terry Brookes paints a very detailed (and frighteningly possible) picture of a post apocalyptic world. The characterisations are equally detailed and the book builds to a suspenseful ending that left me wanting more.

Absolutely one of my favorite books that Terry has written. I love how he has the ability to make me into the future 80 years and make me believe how we have destroyed mankind and mutants and demons have taken over America. I love how he makes me root for the Knight of the Word and Bearer of the Staff. The children ate cunning and brave that believe in The Gypsy Morph and risk everything to find him. An absolute must read, but not until you read the others in this series that ate before this book as this is book number 4.

I abslolutely loved, Running with the Demon and the other 2. This book brings me back ina good way. I always wanted to know what happened with the gypsy morph,Nest Freemark, and although there is lots missing,i throughly enjoyed it. I'm just now ordering the Elves of Cintra and have fingers and toes crossed :},that the next one is not far off!

Mr. Brooks really knows how to flesh out his characters and bring them to life. Now we get to know and live in the time just before the Druids came along. This was a wonderful beginning to the telling of that time.

An entertaining but implausable story with multiple plot lines. The "over the cliff " ending reminds one of the days when picture theatres had serials that had ludicrous "hanging " endings designed to bring you back next week. This technique , perfected by Spielberg, is now just annoying .

I have really enjoyed finding out were the Shannara characters came from - but it is hard to tell what order to read the books. In order to get the most out of the books - you need to start with the Word and the Void books, and then continue on the the Genesis of Shannara. They really capture you !!!

I see the mastery of Terry Brooks' skills coming out in this book. He is finally taking all of the hidden nuggets he installed in the Shannara series and brought the story to its beginnings. Finding out that it all ties together so nicely is as much fun as reading the story itself. If you read the first series of Word and Void, then this will mature the entire story. You'll love it.

An interesting twist on the Shanarra story...another author's look at what happens in the aftermath of destruction...the "destructuring" and restructuring of society as well as the development of forces related to good and evil...a good read!

The Trilogy is pretty good, first book was kinda slow starting but was a good read, I was disappointed with the reseller that I bought the book from because there was NOT a dust cover for the hardback book.....

Apparently, for Terry Brooks, every path leads back to Shannara, for in Armageddon's Children, he bridges the gap between the fantasy series he began approximately 35 years ago, and his more recent Word and the Void trilogy, set in a contemporary United States. 100 years after the closing of the Angel Fire East, the Void has managed to gain the upper hand. The entire infrastructure of the world's governments has collapsed, much of the land is unpopulated, those humans left gathered in compounds or even more rarely trying to survive in the poisoned world outside these compounds. Once men and mutants are an ever present danger, along with the Demons. Few are left to protect the humans, with possibly only two Knights of the Word left. The Lady has sent each of them on two separate but vital missions. Logan Tom is charged with finding and protecting the Gypsy Morph, while Angel Perez must help the Elves, who have been hiding in their forests for centuries, find the Elfstones and save the Ellcrys.

There is a lot going on in this book. We're introduced not only to Logan and Angel, but also Hawk and his tribe of children, and the Elves. While I enjoyed the story, I found it be a very frustrating read. It is clearly nothing more than a set-up novel. When the book ends, three of the four storylines are left as major cliffhangers, while the fourth is still clearly not resolved, though less dramatic. Further, I really feel that our introduction to the Elves, which comprised only a small part of the storyline, could have waited until the next book. In addition, there were a lot of typos throughout my copy, which was really annoying. Despite these issues, I'll keep reading, just because I'm curious to see where it goes. Hopefully the other books are less aggravating or I might just quit. That would be a shame, because Terry Brooks and Shannara was my initial gateway into fantasy, and I'll always have a soft spot for his books.

My introduction to Terry Brooks was in the "Magic Kingdom" series. They were entertaining enough, so I picked up the first Shannara novel (in terms of publication order) to see if his master series was any good. And it wasn't for me. No harm, no foul.

When I found "Armageddon's Children" in the bargain section, I decided to give it a chance specifically because (a) it bore no mention of Shannara, and (b) was mentioned in the text as a good introduction to Terry Brooks for someone who hasn't read Shannara.

Only when I finished the book (with an ending that felt more like a stopping place than a conclusion) did I realize that (a) it was part of a series, and (b) that the series was entitled "Genesis of Shannara." In other words, a story that had originally appeared to be a standalone, post apocalyptic novel without any relationship to Shannara turned out to be a mere prequel.

And let me say, it is no place for the uninitiated. Too many characters and concepts are introduced without making the reader care about them. Perhaps in other novels that came before, we are told what is at stake and why we should care, but it is conspicuously absent from this volume.

I gave the book two stars instead of one because I can't blame Brooks for the way the book was marketed. I gave it two stars instead of five because the book was poorly written.

I'm sure there are those for whom Brooks' style is intended, but it is not for those with any attention to detail. Foreshadowing is layered in heavily, and when it pays off, it is done so with a giant finger pointing backward to the setup. It is as if the author has no faith in the ability of the reader to remember something that happened even a few pages back.

The plot was trite, the characters one-dimensional archetypes with no personality of their own, and the introduction of elves halfway through led me to abandon the book for months, before forcing my way to the end.

If you're a Terry Brooks fan, then this review only made you mad. If you're not, let it stand as a warning--if you want to be a Terry Brooks fan, this is simply not a good place to start.

Terry Brooks revisits the world of his greatest work: The Word and the Void. That original trilogy was set in a modern day United States where there are demons working for the Void trying to turn humans to acts of evil to twist the world to be a more violent, dangerous, and lost place. John Ross, a Knight of the Word, fought daily against visions of the future that he had to try to prevent. Ross's visions were of events that could happen in his own lifetime and for all of Ross's success, all he did was delay the inevitable. Armageddon's Children is set some eighty years after Angel Fire East and the world is a ruined place and things are only fixing to get worse. Pollution is out of control, a nuclear war occurred, the humans which are "safe" live in compounds (like Seattle's Safeco Field) warded off against the outside world. Those compounds are all under siege and they are falling day by day until there will be nowhere left to run or hide. In Seattle there are gangs of children calling themselves Tribes. Adults have failed them and street children are not allowed in Compounds so they must survive by becoming their own families and looking out for each other. Humans who had been caught outside for too long and who somehow survived drinking radioactive water and eating off of the poisoned land have mutated. This is our world, only broken. This could be our future.

Terry Brooks works on four storylines in Armageddon's Children. One storyline is of a Tribe of children in Seattle called the Ghosts. The Ghosts are led by an older boy named Hawk who is just trying to keep his family alive. It is through Hawk's eyes that we see what his world and our world has become. Two storylines have to do with the two known remaining Knights of the Word: Logan Tom and Angel Perez. Logan Tom has been sent by The Lady to find the Gypsy Morph somewhere in the Northwest. The Gypsy Morph is a being of great power and magic and which we know was somehow born to Nest Freemark after Angel Fire East. Before I mention the last two storylines I need to mention what had been previously rumor and conjecture. Up until the announced publication of this novel it was suggested that the Word / Void Trilogy could be the world before The Great Wars that ruined the world and slowly evolved into the Four Lands that we know in the Shannara novels. This was always a great theory. In interviews before the publication of Armageddon's Children Terry Brooks finally admitted that this was true. That in his next trilogy he would start bridging Word / Void with Shannara. So, that brings us to storyline number three: Angel Perez. Angel Perez is another Knight of the Word who has been fighting to rescue as many children as possible before compounds are overrun by the demons and Once-Men. She is given a new mission: to find the Elves and to help them find some Elfstones. Now, elves have nothing to do with Word / Void, but have everything to do with Shannara. And that brings us to storyline number four: The Elves. We actually find out about the elves before we find out about Angel Perez and when they appear and they mention the Ellcrys, longtime readers of Terry Brooks knows without question that the two series have now been linked. The Ellcrys has given one of the Chosen a mission: to find the seeking elfstones to located the Loden Elfstone to carry the Ellcrys out of the Oregon woods whole. This may not make sense to readers who have not read Elfstones of Shannara or The Elf Queen of Shannara, but Brooks makes these concepts fairly clear even to newer readers of the series.

So, that's what Armageddon's Children is about. Is it any good? Yes. The more Brooks stays to the feeling of Word / Void the better the book is. I know that we're bridging to a more traditional fantasy series, but he gives better description and characterization and storytelling when he is working in the more natural setting of Word / Void. There are references a plenty to the previous trilogy and several references to things we know from Shannara and even an explanation of why there are demons walking the land considering the nature of what we know of the Ellcrys. The primary complaint is that this is the first book of a trilogy so Brooks spends 350 pages setting stuff up and giving us some action and storytelling, but nothing is resolved. He ends with a cliffhanger (almost literally) and rolls right into Volume Two of this trilogy. Brooks does not tell a complete story. Let me contrast this with his four book Heritage of Shannara series. Each book told a complete story while still building to the larger story of the series. That is what is missing here. It is not a book that can stand alone, but because of the ties to the excellent Word / Void series it is a harkening back to when Terry Brooks was writing strong fantasy with solid description. Brooks intentionally stepped away from that, publishing a book a year and desiring to write faster, more action packed novels rather than longer works of greater quality. He sacrificed quality for quantity even though his sales did not decrease. This is a step back towards some of that quality, though I know that is because he is forced to be more descriptive about the world as it has changed from Angel Fire East and is nothing like The Four Lands. This book is designed as a book where new readers can step in and not feel lost because they haven't read 20 books on both sides of the timeline but will also reward longtime readers. Armageddon's Children is a success in for both groups of readers and while not perfect it is a strong work in the catalog of Terry Brooks.

-Joe Sherry

The nightmares that John Ross had in the series "The word and the Void" have become reality. The United States and the world have gone from what we currently know to an apocalyptic future in which the side of evil has won and the world has gone mad. Bands of once-men are lead by demons that go around the countryside killing and enslaving humankind and taking their children and converting them to demons, while the poisons that were unleashed in humanity's unbridled fall are causing various mutations to take place and bizarre creatures roam the cities and the lands.

However, not all is lost and bad. There are still Knights of the Word around and in this initial novel of a three piece set, we meet two of them. They are each sent on missions by the Lady which are intended to support the movement of a small group of humans from this awful reality that they are in, to the future world where the side of good will have the upper hand. If you thought (like I did) that the Word and the Void series ended up unfinished, this new series takes the author's concepts forward and continue the movement towards the fantasy of Shannara which were the earlier books in Brooks's body of work. As an example, the Gypsy Morph was a major element of the previous storyline, yet we did not find out what happened to it. In this book, we move forward about 100 years and find out what its purpose appears to be.

As is normal with Terry Brooks, this initial book in the trilogy introduces us to the characters and sets the stage in which they operate. In this case we meet Logan Tom who is a Knight of the Word - interesting that he always introduces himself as Logan Tom, never referring to himself as Logan! - who was rescued as a young child by a band of human fighters from the demons. He is now travelling the countryside destroying the slave camps where humans are kept and their children subjected to horrifying experiments intended to breed demons. Logan Tom has demons of his own which we learn about during the course of the book. We also meet Angel Perez, another Knight of the Word who saves the children when she can from the armies of demons. She also has some emotional baggage that she wrestles with. We meet a band of street kids who have come together in the streets of what used to be Seattle to scratch out a living by hiding in the ruins of the city. My favorite demon from the Word and the Void returns to lead armies of once-men, and finally, the elves from Shannara turn out to be living in Oregon in some very well hidden forests and they have their own issues, but they are already guarding their special tree.

This last twist of plotting was one that I did not life. Not that I mind elves, but it was a bit too much of a suspension of the imagination to believe that a whole race of faerie creatures are living for millennia in the world, and they do not do anything to stop the rise of the evil that now surrounds them and will likely consume them. I was tempted to take one star off of this review for that reason, but decided not to, as I am sure that the author was struggling with the problem of how to introduce the elves into the world that he is evolving, and this was his ultimate choice. So, while I disagree with it, it is his book, and his series. Thankfully, the parts devoted to the elves in this volume are pretty small and so they do not detract too much from the rest of the developing storyline.

If you've read other Terry Brooks novels, then the general arc of this trilogy will be familiar to you and you know what to expect in the next two books. I will not spoil it for those of you who perhaps have not read him before. However, it should be noted that this trilogy is part of the author's efforts to tie together our world with his Shannara world and the whole set of his books (with the exception of the Landover series) are falling into a sequence that should probably be read in order. In other words, you should read the Word and the Void series before starting on this one. Several characters that are key characters in this book, are introduced and their stories told in that other series. That is the reason that I did take one star off of this book. It is definitely not a standalone novel, nor should it be read first, and that is not indicated anywhere on the cover. Otherwise, this is a typical Terry Brooks book with his imagination, writing style, and characterizations as we all know and like them. Enjoy!

Not sure why some reviewers have an issue with this book, but whatever. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I respect that. I have been a fan for many many moons. I have read everything by Brooks so far (with the exception of books 2 and 3 in this series and the new Landover) and absolutely love it. Not sure how big a fan of bridging this with Shannara I am, but I'll figure that out after I finish the series. I don't know that I would make this the first Brooks novel I read. I would recommend at least Sword of Shannara and the Word and Void trilogy before wrapping an eye around this. Elfstones and Wishsong would be recommended as well, or at least Sword and Elfstones before starting the Word and Void. It would just help clarify certain things. I think you can come in not having read any of the books and like it, pick up some of it, etc, but if you're familiar with at least the idea of the Elfstones and maybe the Ellcrys, things will make more sense as to why they are mentioned. The Knight of the Word concept is easily picked up as there is a certain amount of rehash; that was probably done for those who are maybe coming in cold.
To be honest, when I saw "genesis of shannara" I almost cringed. It's sorta akin to Tolkien having done "genesis of middle earth." And maybe he did; I'm not a huge Tolkien fan. I mean, I read the Hobbit and LotR, but didn't ever get into the expanded universe stuff. LotR didn't capture me enough to want to go deeper. And yet I loved Sword of Shannara, which is in some respects a retelling of LotR. There are a lot of comparisons anyway. But I digress a little. I wasn't sure about bridging the W&V series, which is a great series in its own right, with Shannara. I don't know, it may end up being a "chocolate in my peanut butter" moment (if you are old enough to remember those commercials, I say HUZZAH!!), so we'll see.
Any rate, we pick up after we've royally screwed ourselves over. And the KotW are still trying to keep us normals safe from the boogeymen. Enter the gypsy morph who is our charge. At this point, I am not venturing a guess how the series is going to turn out despite the fact I know what happens several centuries or so down the timeline. It will be interesting to see the Ellcrys's full role in this as she in theory is already holding back the demons in the Forbidding. Are the rest getting thrown into the Forbidding when she gets moved? I do vaguely get the feeling we will be changing Ellcrys's in the series, could be wrong though.
So, is this worthy of Brooks's other stuff? Yes. I think so anyway. A lot of his fans, or maybe those who aren't too familiar with his work, forget that his subsequent Shannara series (after the first three) have their stories spread out over three or four books. Each book in the series isn't really meant to be one encapsulated story. The original three Shannara novels were spread out. There was a generation or two between stories. By their nature they had to be self-contained stories and have their resolution by the end of the book. The Word and Void series was like that as well to an extent. There was a passage of time, be it a few months or a few years, between stories, yet they were all part of the same overall story.
In the end, I thought the story was just paced just about right. You got what you were supposed to get out of the book. And "part 1 of..." storys don't always have the character depth everyone likes. I think Brooks goes at it this way: you don't need to know the entire life story of a character, only what is relevant for the story at hand. You get the character fleshed out as he needs too, so that at the end of the overall story, you know the character. I don't like knowing the character better than I know me when I first meet them. It makes their actions too predictable. You know they are going to do this or that. Even when you don't know much about the character, there is a certain predictability because you know what their job is and by extension what they are going to do.
So now that this review has pretty well rambled on about both everything and nothing, this was a good read start to finish and I cannot wait to get started on part 2.

I have always enjoyed Terry Brooks's work. I fell in love with the original Shannara trilogy and then made my way through The Heritage of Shannara series in pretty short order. When the Genesis of Shannara series came out (this book was released in 2006), I was so busy and I had lost track of Mr. Brooks' writing, sadly enough. But now I'm going back through and reading all of his novels.

Armageddon's Children is the First of the Genesis of Shannara series and was released in 2006. The setting is the United States, specifically the Pacific Northwest, in a post-apocalyptic world that had been ravaged by nuclear war and plague. Demons and their once-men underlings roam the earth enslaving any and all healthy humans, in order to run tests on them and eventually convert them into their once men slaves. The nuclear fall out has also created mutants that aren't demons but aren't really humans either - Moles (who live underground), Spiders (who have long limbs), Lizards and Croaks (which are zombies that roam the earth). The majority of humans have walled themselves into compounds, usually stadiums, but also apartment complexes, isolating themselves from the demons. A few, mostly tribes of children, live on the streets.

The Ghosts are one such a tribe and is lead by Hawk, who has talents that range from visions to magic (albeit uncontrolled). The book also focuses on two knights of the word - which are akin to the druids that we all hear so much about in Shannara books. Logan Tom is one of them. Initially, his charge is to go around helping compounds but then he is charged with finding a gypsy morph - which is a powerful magic born in the form of a child that doesn't age. Angel is the other Kinght of the Word. She is pursued by demons, who target her. After narrowly escaping death, she is told of the existence of the elves and she is charged with searching with an Elfstone that will guarantee the continued existence of the Elves.

The Elves of course, and the Ellcrys tree, also make an appearance in this book - although it's a brief one. The Ellcrys, a sentient tree that ensures that all evil beings remain behind a forcefield so to speak, is afraid of impending demon domination and telepathically communciates with two of her Chosen -- Kirisin and his cousin Erish -- and charges them with finding three seeking Elfstones to use them to find a Loden Elfstone. Once all of these Elfstones are found, the Ellcrys tree can be sealed within and can remain safe.

I was honestly disappointed by this novel. I felt like the action was repetitive and boring, even though the premise was really cool and had lots of potential. There were a few pointless flashbacks. Perhaps I would like it more if I had read the Word and the Void Series first because then, I would at least know what he was bridging FROM. That being said, I still love Terry Brooks' writing style. I would kill to be able to write like him one day (and, did you know that he was a lawyer before he started writing?!).

This is a book that I will probably re-read later on, after I have done the Word and Void Trilogy and would only recommend this to die hard Shannara/Brooks fans.

Best known for his expansive "Shannara" series set in a typical fantasy-realm of swords and sorcery, Terry Brooks is also the author of the "Word and the Void" trilogy, an urban-fantasy concerning the entropy of our world fought against by Knights of the Word. Although both series seemed unconnected (despite a few hints that the world of Shannara was set thousands of years into the future, a world built on the foundations of our own, and the common use of the phrase "the Word" in both series) this new trilogy builds a bridge between the two of them. Aptly called "the Genesis of Shannara" the trilogy purports to act as a sequel to Angel Fire East (The Word and the Void Trilogy, Book 3) (the final book in the Word and the Void trilogy) and the prequel to the first book in the Shannara series: First King of Shannara (Shannara Trilogy, Prequel) - which is in itself a prequel to the first Shannara book ever written: The Sword of Shannara. Confused yet?

Combining elements from both series, in "Armageddon's Children" the world as we know it is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The Knights of the Word (as they appeared in the original trilogy) have failed in their mission to halt the demons' mission of chaos and entropy. Now demons roam the landscape, feeding off humans caught in concentration camps or still holding out in fortified compounds. Strange mutant creatures known as Lizards, Moles and Spiders (which will no doubt evolve into the various species of the "Shannara" series) lurk in the cities, and humanity seems destined for extinction. Certainly, there is no salvaging this world.

Brooks juggles four separate storylines (that will no doubt meet up as the trilogy goes on) as the Armageddon bears down on all of humanity, and the survivors prepare to cut their losses, gather together, and embark into a `brave new world.' Like the "Star Wars" prequels, the best part of this trilogy is seeing the two series link up: because this trilogy is in the unique position of being both a sequel and a prequel, there is plenty of enjoyment to be found in recognizing familiar elements of both series, and Brooks takes great pleasure in building up his already-extensive history and mythology of the "Shannara" world.

Logan Tom is a Knight of the Word, his family murdered by a demon, and led by dreams to Hopewell, the setting of Running With the Demon (The Word and the Void Trilogy, Book 1). He is given the task to find the legendary gypsy morph (a concept introduced in Angel Fire East (The Word and the Void Trilogy, Book 3) in which Nest Freemark - the protagonist of the previous trilogy - found herself impregnated by magic) who is destined to lead the people into the new world. Of course, he is not the only one hunting the gypsy morph, as Findo Gask (the demon who had hunted it in "Angel Fire East") has once again taken up the quest to eliminate the morph - or to turn it to evil. The only problem is - no one knows who the child of Nest Freemark actually *is*.

Hawk is the leader of the Ghosts, a group of feral children who has strange visions of leading his people out of the darkness and into a strange new world. He lives with several others in an abandoned building, and the only thing holding him back from following his visions is his girlfriend Tessa, who lives in one of the compounds and is reluctant to leave her family.

Meanwhile, the third sub-plot is one directly lifted from "Shannara", involving the Elves and the Ellcrys - a magical tree created from the life of an Elf who keeps the Elven people safe. Kirisin is a young Elf who helps keep the tree healthy, but is distraught when he begins receiving messages from the tree warning him of impending doom and the need for the Elves to relocate to a new land. The problem is trying to convince his fellow-Elves of the legitimacy of his claims. The presence of the Elves is a little off-putting, simply because there was no mention of them in the "Word and Void" trilogy. One would assume that they were there in the world all along, hiding away, but it's still a little strange to have them inserted so suddenly into the narrative.

Finally, a second Knight of the Word named Angel Perez is given the task to find an Elfstone known as the Loden (used extensively many books later in The Elf Queen of Shannara (Heritage of Shannara, Book 3)) in order to keep the Elves safe during their exodus.

As you can see, it's a fairly big set-up, and I guess it's fairly obvious that you can't begin reading Terry Brooks with this installment! You'll either have to start with the very first published book The Sword of Shannara or Running With the Demon (The Word and the Void Trilogy, Book 1). If you're serious about embarking on Brooks's work, I suggest the former, and following the rest of the series in publishing order.

As usual, Brooks' writing suffers from his usual long-windedness of sentence structure (he's of the opinion that nothing is properly understood by the reader unless it's been stated at least three time is slightly differing ways), but the story itself is reasonably fast-paced. There are a few needless flashbacks, and it does ultimately feel like one big introduction to the rest of the trilogy, but on the whole the story flows well.

Brooks manages to include a wide range of familiar faces and places from the rest of his work, including Owain Glyndower, Two Bears, Findo Gask, the Lady, tatterdemalions, the Elfstones, the Ellcrys, and even finds an intriguing - if somewhat grisly - way to include Nest Freemark. I'm looking forward to what else Brooks will incorporate in the coming books (I've got my fingers crossed for back-story on the Druid Council and the Ildatch from The Wishsong of Shannara). The story picks up again in The Elves of Cintra (The Genesis of Shannara, Book 2).