I finished Dark Legacy not long ago. That was just terrible. It felt like Brooks completely lost the plot for a while there. It starts out as an epic quest type of thing - Let's Find the Lost Elfstones, Yay! - but quickly gets derailed into Let's All Die Because We're Stupid. Seriously, it felt like Brooks was just trying to come up with ways to make the main characters walk blindly to their deaths while acting with a little common sense as possible. This is definitely my least favorite entry in the series. The body count was crazy and I hated what he did with Grianne at the end. I don't even like Grianne, but that was a lousy way to treat one of his most used characters.
I didn't like the way the Elfstones of Shannara rehash was handled, either. It was basically a side story to a lousy main story, which is a severe under utilization of the concept. That whole aspect should have been the focus of the books instead of the Doomed Elfstones quest. The introduction of airships a few books back seems like it would cut into that, but Brooks handily solved that by introducing an airship to the journey and then
having it crash and killing the entire crew almost immediately. The whole changeling subplot from Elfstones was even repeated.
