Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!
(The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, Book 1)
Terry Brooks
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: Attorney Ben Holiday's life ended two years ago with the sudden death of his wife Annie. Now, he lives as a virtual recluse, increasingly
disenchanted with the legal profession and increasingly resistant to the efforts of his last remaining friend to draw him back into the social world. One evening,
he finds an unlikely chance at salvation in the pages of a high-end catalog's Christmas Wishbook: for a mere million dollars, he can purchase a magic kingdom and
rule as King. Dragons, knights, fairies, chivalry... Landover promises all this, and more. It has to be a trick. At the very least, it's a waste of good money.
But something about that ad pulls at Ben, and he can't come up with a good reason to walk away. After all, he's been living like a dead man in this world - why not
try for something better in another?
Advertizing, Ben quickly discovers, is not always accurate. The magical kingdom of Landover is a fixer-upper if ever there was one. The magic that sustains it has
been slowly draining away since the last true King died twenty years ago. The human lords squabble and backstab amongst themselves, a dreadful dragon stalks
the skies, and demons roam freely through the land, putting many a would-be ruler to a gruesome death. Even the Paladin, legendary defender of Landover, has seemingly
vanished from the world. In fact, the only allies left to the throne are a half-baked wizard who can never seem to find the right spells, a court scribe who was turned
into a dog, and a pair of kobolds who don't even speak human tongues. Worse, the demon lord known as the Iron Mark challenges Ben's fledgeling attempts at rulership, a
challenge no mortal can hope to survive.
As a lawyer, Ben has faced many difficult trials. Convincing the people of Landover to accept an offworld king - and living long enough to actually rule - will quickly
become the trial of his life.
REVIEW: A fun book, it moves decently, if not necessarily at a breakneck pace. Landover has all the trappings of a typical fairy-tale kingdom, and while it may not be startlingly original at least it's nicely described. Likewise, Ben's new advisors lean on standard fantasy formulas, but have some traces of true and distinctive personalities. More than one plot twist relies on other people knowing something Ben doesn't and choosing not to tell him about it until sufficiently pressed, which grew a bit irritating. The ending leaves plenty of openings for sequels, which evidently comprise the rest of the Landover series. All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, though I can't say I feel a need to read any further.
You might also enjoy:
Dragon Companion (Don Callander, Fiction - A librarian suddenly finds himself in a world of elves and dragons)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A wizard from another world summons a Silicon Valley programmer to stop evil magicians)
The Dragon and the George (George R. Dickson, Fiction - A man, seeking his lost wife, is transported to a medieval world of wizards and knights and dragons)
Eccentric Circles (Rebecca Lickiss, Fiction - A woman inherits her grandmother's cottage, complete with a doorway to a fairy realm)
Fablehaven (Brandon Mull, YA Fiction - Kids discover fairies and a magical sanctuary at their grandparents' farm)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man is taken to the world of faeries, where magic parallels technology)
The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Tad Williams and Deborah Beale, YA Fiction - Two kids find very unusual animals on their great-uncle's farm, with even more unusual origins)
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Running with the Demon
(The Word and the Void trilogy, Book 1)
Terry Brooks
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: Hopewell, Indiana is a typical Midwestern American town, falling into hard times with the strike-induced closure of the local steel plant. Sinnissippi
Park is about the only place not feeling the effects of the strike, a place of deep forests, unexplored bayous, and ancient magic. The 14-year-old Nest Freemark is one of the
few who knows of the park's magical nature, being gifted herself. She was long ago enlisted by Pick, a diminutive sylvan who guards the forests, to help keep the balance of
power stable in the park. Her mother and grandmother served before her, though her grandfather is willfully ignorant of magic and her own father disappeared before she was a
year old. Lately, powers have been shifting beyond their abilities to control. The shadowy feeders, invisible to all but the gifted, have grown exponentially more numerous,
feeding on the dark emotions of a town full of desperate people. They are just a symptom of a larger problem that not even Pick can identify. A far greater darkness is waiting
to be unleashed here, but Nest has no idea what face it will wear, or where it will strike first.
John Ross is a Knight of the Word, one of the very few enlisted in the crusade against the dark Void that seeks to destroy civilization and life as we know it. His dreams show
him the haunted, apocalyptic future that awaits him should he fail in his quest, hunting demons and preventing the Void from gaining a foothold in America. He comes to Hopewell
for two reasons. First, he has tracked a particularly elusive demon here. The second reason is a girl who figures as a pivotal role in all his nightmares, whose fate will
determine whether the Word or the Void will reign in the coming years: none other than the young Nest Freemark.
REVIEW: A while back, I stumbled across the sequel to this tale, A Knight of the Word, which began my quest to find this book. (I refuse to read a series out of order if I can help it.) Having at last read it, I am mostly satisfied with the story, and may track down the second book eventually. The characters were well written and realistic, for the most part, without being stupid for the sake of the plot. My main objection was the number of side-stories that didn't quite pay off in the end, stories which seemed to be there mainly to boost the page count. They were distracting and bogged down the plot. Other than that, I liked this story.
You might also enjoy:
The Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher, Fiction - A civilization uses their gifts to control furies, elemental beings, and survive in a hostile world)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A wizard from another world summons a Silicon Valley programmer to stop evil magicians)
The Dragon Quartet (Marjorie Kellogg, Fiction - Elemental dragons and their human companions time-travel to save Earth)
The Gunslinger (Stephen King, Fiction - A man from a dying world seeks a dark tower from which it may be saved)
The Fire Rose and The Serpent's Shadow (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - Master mages secretly control elementals and their magic in late-1800's Earth)
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Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
Terry Brooks
Del Rey
Nonfiction, Writing
*****
DESCRIPTION: A successful fantasy writer for over 20 years, Terry Brooks offers insights and advice from his life and career.
REVIEW: This is an extremely rare find: a good book from the Book Warehouse discount book store. I was intrigued by the title (and the author, and the fact that it was only six bucks), and I figured I’d kick myself if I didn’t buy it, so I gave it a try. This is an excellent book for wannabe fantasy writers such as myself, short and sweet and to the point. Inspirational and entertaining.
You might also enjoy:
How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) (Julia Cameron, Art - Common obstacles we place to our own creativity)
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (Orson Scott Card, Writing - Advice on writing sci-fi and fantasy stories, from idea generation to publication and beyond)
Writing Down the Bones (Natalie Goldberg, Writing - Advice on writing)
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (Crawford Kilian, Writing - How to write sci-fi/fantasy stories that sell)
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott, Writing - Anecdotes on writing)
Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly (Gail Carson Levine, YA Writing - Great advice and inspiration for writers of all ages)
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The Sword of Shannara
(Shannara series: Shannara trilogy, Book 1)
Terry Brooks
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
***+
DESCRIPTION: Some two thousand years ago, a great and terrible war brought the world to the brink of destruction. In the aftermath, a new civilization slowly rebuilt
itself on the ashes of its failed predecessor, in a new world where the races of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes vie for power and knowledge left over from the elder
days is all but vanished. In these dark times, an ancient Druid unlocked the dark secrets of sorcery, using it to prolong his mortal life and create a dark kingdom in the
forbidding Northlands. He was almost destroyed once by the elf-king Jerle Shannara wielding the powerful blade known as the Sword of Shannara, and many thought him gone forever,
those who believed he had existed at all, but the Warlock Lord is far from dead. Indeed, he is poised to fulfill his dark dream of conquering all known races and lands, and it
seems nobody in these divided times can stop him.
Shea Ohmsford, half-Elven man from sleepy Shady Vale, never thought much of the rest of the world; like most of humanity, he sees isolation as the one sure way to prevent a third
interracial war. Thus far, he has been content to stay home at his father's inn or, on occasion, visit his adventurous friend Menion, prince of nearby Leah. He doesn't even
accompany his full-human cousin Flick, with whom he was raises as a brother, on his occasional forays to the far reaches of the Vale. One day, a dark stranger appears in the
valley, and Shea and Flick's pastoral existence and its illusion of safety comes to an abrupt end. The strange traveler Allanon tells Shea of his obscure descent from Jerle,
which makes him perhaps the last being alive capable of wielding the Sword of Shannara against the returning Warlock Lord. Shea and Flick soon find themselves on a grand
adventure against impossible odds, with strange allies and terrible enemies.
This edition features illustrations by the brothers Hildebrandt.
REVIEW: Brooks serves up a nice, if somewhat typical (by modern standards), fantasy epic, with the requisite history lessons, humanoid races, maps of terrain from desert to swampland, and Hidden Agendas woven into the heroes' travels. Originally published in 1977, it was the first major story since Tolkien to enter the field of epic fantasy, so the books I'm comparing it to likely took their cues from Brooks rather than the other way around. Still, there's a certain epic fantasy formula already in evidence. The tale moves at a decent clip, though it hits some lulls as the plot goes on and felt, on the whole, about a hundred or two hundred pages too long. He offers more than a few nods to Tolkien, to the point where I pretty much guessed some characters' functions and the gist of their personal Hidden Agendas at first glance just based on their similarity to Lord of the Rings. I also felt, on more than one occasion, an obscure, insane desire to whack Brooks over the head with a thesaurus when he kept using the same exact words over and over again to describe almost everybody and everything. (Does everyone, when sneaking, have to be "cat-like"? Does "Valeman" almost always have to be accompanied by "little"?) Like so many fantasy epics, this is a tale of Men having Manly Adventures to save Mankind; lip service is given to wives and children back home (though I give Brooks credit for not making mention of a waiting sweetheart an automatic death sentence for the beloved adventurer), and the only female character is introduced roughly two-thirds in, for the sole purpose of having someone fall in love with her. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but there are women who do read fantasy, out here. Must it always be the guys who get all the glory while the women, invariably beautiful and sweet, pine away helplessly on the doorstep? On the brothers Hildebrandt illustrations... I've seen their work. I know it is vibrant and beautiful. It is also in color, and seeing black bloblike shapes stuck into a black-and-white book just doesn't do their images, if images they were and not some peculiar, page-sized printing errors, justice. Overall, I can't say I regret reading this book, though I don't feel compelled to follow the series any further.
You might also enjoy:
Green Rider (Kristen Britain, Fiction - A girl finds a dying royal messenger, and must agree to take his final missive to the imperiled king)
The Vlad Taltos series (Stephen Brust, Fiction - A finely crafted world serves as the backdrop for stories of a clever assassin and his dragonlike familiar)
The Crown of Stars series (Kate Elliot, Fiction - Political unrest and inhuman raiders presage a greater evil)
The Sword of Truth series (Terry Goodkind, Fiction - A cranky wizard, a woodland guide, and a mysterious woman face terrible dark forces)
Any of Elizabeth Haydon's works (Elizabeth Haydon, YA Fiction and Fiction - Epic fantasy and adventure in a well-realized fantasy world)
Dune (Frank Herbert, Fiction - The interstellar human civilization relies on life-extending spice from desert Arrakis)
Any of Robin Hobb's fantasy series (Robin Hobb, Fiction - Well-crafted fantasy tales in well-crafted worlds)
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Diana Wynne Jones, Fiction - A humorous tour guide to epic fantasy worlds)
The Wheel of Time series (Robert Jordan, Fiction - Evil awakes and threatens a peaceful realm)
A Song of Ice and Fire series (George R. R. Martin, Fiction - World-spanning epic tale of wars and kings, good and evil, and a few dragons for good measure)
Tortall quartets (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - Tales of adventure in a magical world)
The Sword-Dancer Saga (Jennifer Roberson, Fiction - A slave-turned-swordfighter of the Southron deserts helps a determined northern woman seek justice)
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (J. R. R. Tolkien, Fiction - The classic epic tale of Hobbits, Elves, Men, wizards, and Middle-Earth)
The Death Gate Cycle (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Fiction - An epic fantasy spanning seven worlds)
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (Tad Williams, Fiction - The magical land of Osten Ard faces an ancient evil)
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