Terry Brooks is best known for his successful Shannara series which, along with Stephen Donaldson, reinvigorated the Epic Fantasy genre back in the late ’70s. Nowadays, The Sword of Shannara gets a bad wrap for being nothing but a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings (which it is, even at the admission of the author), and a not very good one at that (which one could fairly argue, though I don’t agree).
The thing is, most of what Brooks has written outside of The Sword of Shannara has strayed far away from LotR-rip-off territory. His Word and Void trilogy is a masterpiece of dark, Contemporary Fantasy and his Magic Kingdom of Landover series (which has a new volume coming out later this year, A Princess of Landover) is a fun, surprisingly dark series of independent novels.
The first of these novels, Magic Kingdom for Sale – Sold! has just been made available for free download over at the Suvudu Free Library. It might not be for everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised when I gave the series a shot!
You can read/download a PDF of Magic Kingdom for Sale – Sold! HERE. You can also get other versions of the book (Kindle, Sony Reader and Scribd) HERE.
In April 2009 I read my first book by Terry Brooks: The Sword of Shannara. To be honest I enjoyed it.
It is great “old school” epic fantasy.
There are bits and pieces which let you think of Lord of the Rings but it is different!!
I don’t like to read books on a screen but I will download this one and have a look.