The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, Book 1 Terry Brooks Del Rey Fiction, Fantasy/Humor Themes: Demons, Portal Adventures, Wizards ****
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.
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. Fourteen-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 elite 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.
Terry Brooks Del Rey Nonfiction, Autobiography/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.
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.
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