Title: Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!
Author: Terry Brooks
Series: Magic Kingdom of Landover, #1
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Still Good?
...meh.
I loved Terry Brooks as a teenager. I ate up the Shannara books. Thank god I haven't re-read them and can remember enough to realize how awful they are. However, there were a couple other Terry Brooks series I read (...there are only two other rather short series Terry Brooks wrote. Shannara = cash cow). I thought this one might have been better, from what I recalled. And it's true! It was. But not a lot better.
Perhaps what sets this series apart from the Shannara books is that Brooks isn't taking himself super serious in these novels. They're meant to be humorous and kind of silly, although they aren't the overt kind of humor you might expect. It's more that it's kind of... light-hearted.
There really isn't a lot of substance. A lawyer with a dead wife buys a magical kingdom out of a catalog. He struggles to adapt. He has to figure out how to keep from dying from evil wizard trap. He has to be true to his heart. The end.
Oh, were those spoilers? I can't be sure because the plot is so fucking predictable.
But it's not terrible. And it's engaging enough to merit three instead of two stars. It's just slightly better than mediocre. So that's something!
Granted, the creepy fetishization of women kind of turns my stomach, but hey, it's Terry Brooks and fantasy. What else can we expect? grumblemutter.
The saddest part, to be honest, is how much could have been done with the premise and wasn't. There's so much to be done with a lawyer that purchases a magical kingdom besides a bunch of repetitive flailing and failing until he makes up his mind and wins. Whevs I guess. Whevs.
Huh. I've convinced myself down to two stars, just writing this review.
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