On Suvudu, Shawn Speakman, webmaster for Terry Brooks, reports on the first details about The High Druid’s Blade, the Shannara novel recently completed by Brooks and set for a 2014 release. Speakman says:

The High Druid’s Blade takes place a century after Witch Wraith. It is the first Shannara stand alone novel since 1996’s First King of Shannara. Terry has long been entrenched in long epic series. Instead, with Blade, he is telling a very different tale. Fewer characters being scattered to the winds of the Four Lands. Instead, Terry has crafted a more personal journey, of a hero unable to protect his family unless he unleashes the power of his ancestors.

Brooks also revealed on the tour that the main protagonist of The High Druid’s Blade will be a Leah, a family that has been integral to many novels in the series since The Sword of Shannara. This will, however, mark the first time that a protagonist of a (chronologically) post-The Sword of Shannara novel will feature a sole protagonist that isn’t of Ohmsford blood. The Leah family, thanks to events in The Wishsong of Shannara, are in possession of the Sword of Leah, a sword imbued with the magic of the Druids. Is there a connection here between the High Druid (who’s identity I know, but for fear of spoiling Witch Wraith, Brooks’ upcoming novel, I won’t reveal), and the Leah family? Additionally, Brooks said that the novel will take place in areas of the Southland that have not been explored in previous novels.