Best known for his successful Shannara line of novels, Terry Brooks is also the author of several other novels and series often overlooked by his fans. An under appreciated gem in Brooks’ library, the Magic Kingdom of Landover books successfully juxtapose humour and dark fantasy into short, blazingly fast novels.
In preparation for the next volume in the series, A Princess of Landover, Del Rey are releasing the earlier volumes in two omnibus edition. The cover of the first has just been revealed and it’s a beautiful thing, indeed!
From Brooks’ web site:
Magic Kingdom For Sale—Sold! began a new bestselling series for Terry in 1986. The novel was a vast departure from the three sprawling epic fantasies he had written before it, the story of Chicago lawyer Ben Holiday and his purchasing of a real magic kingdom. Right from the start Terry told his readers Ben Holiday was an alter ego of sorts, as Terry used the fictional character to discuss his transition from lawyer to full-time writer. Terry wrote five volumes about Ben Holiday, his magic kingdom of Landover, and a whole cast of unique characters—the last novel, Witches’ Brew, published in 1995.
After 14 years, Terry has returned to the Magic Kingdom of Landover series with the forthcoming novel, A Princess of Landover!
To celebrate Terry’s August 2009 return to The Magic Kingdom of Landover, Del Rey Books asked artist Steve Stone to create two new pieces of artwork to be used on collected omnibuses of the first five books in the series. The first omnibus, The Magic Kingdom of Landover: Volume I, contains the three novels Magic Kingdom For Sale—Sold!, The Black Unicorn and Wizard At Large. Volume II contains the two novels The Tangle Box and Witches’ Brew.
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On April 1st, Del Rey Books and I will send out the first of a new series of monthly Terry Brooks newsletters. The April newsletter will include the covers to Volume II and the new book, A Princess of Landover. Additional newsletters will contain more information, interviews with Terry, several fun contests, excerpts from all the books—and some other surprises!
Good timing, considering The Tangle Box (the fourth volume in the series) is the next novel on my pile of books to be read!
I read some of these books back when I was still a Brooks fan (before reading LotR). Even back then I thought they were absolutely terrible. Maybe because I’d been introduced to fantasy by Pratchett, I found the funniest of these books to be still utterly appalling compared to the weakest Pratchett novels. I think only a few writers can do genre comedy novels (Pratchett, Rankin, Rob Grant, Harry Harrison) and Brooks sadly isn’t one of them.
I’ll give you the fact that the early Landover books come off as an attempt at genre comedy novels, and the series in its entirety has some silly constants, but I was surprised to find they almost work better as Dark Fantasy. Having never read Pratchett (or any of the other genre comedy authors you mentioned) I can’t really compare how Brooks holds up to them – with Landover, though, I found that I came for the comedy, but stayed for the other elements of the story.
That all being said, I’m a big Brooks’ fan and don’t find many others around the blogosphere who seem to agree with me on his works.
Landover isn’t supposed to be a funny book. haha That’s funny all by itself! :) Landover is light fantasy, not comedic fantasy. Huge difference.
I started to discover the world of Terry Brooks.
My first read is The Sword of Shannara.
I’m no fan of Terry Pratchett.
After reading the comments I’m indecisive whether to read Landover or not. I will try tofind an excerpt.