The charges that the shade of Allanon placed on the Ohmsford’s have now all been complete. Wren has brought the elves back to the four lands and become their queen. Walker Boh has restored the druid’s lost citadel of Paranor and become the first of a new lines of druids and Par has recovered what he believes to be the Sword of Shannara. Despite all this they are far from safe. Rimmer Dall, leader of the Shadowen, has tailor made traps for each of the Ohmsfords to ensure they cannot pool the talismans they have painstakingly obtained.
After having really enjoyed the focus of the previous two novels in the series I was curious to see how well Brooks would handle bringing all the branching storylines back together. Unfortunately he couldn't quite pull it off as well as I’d hoped and left me feeling a little disappointed. Almost every major character gets captured at some point during the story and this becomes really old really quickly as plot device to draw characters together. Also I felt that the passages with Wren and the elves didn’t quite fit with the rest of the story seeming very out of place.
One thing though I was very impressed with was the character development of Wren and Walker Boh. Walker especially had some inspired scenes where he seemed to hint at falling back to his ‘angry young man’ persona despite all he learned and grown almost like the struggles of a smoker who has just recently given up cigarettes.
While far from a bad book Talisman's fails to deliver on the promise of the previous two novels. 7/10.
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