Magic Kingdom for Sale

This book is just fun. The concept of a bored lawyer responding to an ad in the paper, offering an entire magical kingdom for only a million dollars, is pure entertainment. You can’t even buy a good house for that these days.

It’s one of the best fish-out-of-water tales I’ve read and filled with just ridiculous and hilarious fantasy tropes. Terry Brooks isn’t afraid to make fun of his own genre and does it masterfully with the world of Landover.

As a reader, I was on the slow side. I tended to analyze the text too much, I think.

By the time I came across the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, I still shied away from the giant fantasy tomes because I was intimidated that they were too long, and it would take me too long to get through them. I looked for smaller fantasy books and I came across Terry Brooks. I was intrigued by his Sword of Shanara series, but I settled on the Magic Kingdom of Landover instead.

These books are about a lawyer who buys a… show more.

I’d already read the first few Shannara books when I stumbled across this book in the library. Again, the idea of a parallel world—where you can just buy an entire magical kingdom—was too good for me to pass up.

This was the first “quirky” fantasy I’d ever read. Most of them had comical moments, but still took their story seriously. This book—and series—is not what I would call a laugh-fest, but it’s definitely much lighter in tone than most fantasy novels, and showed me that you can inject a lot of humor and absurdity into a fantasy book—something I employ… show more.

This story is just plain fun. It’s full of magic and adventure and if you’re a science fiction fantasy lover, or aren’t quite sure, this is a great story to start on. There is a host of fun characters, the required evil plot to destroy anything and everything good, a dragon and unexpected twists and turns that will leave you wanting more. It’s lighthearted and not as heavy or dark as some science fiction can be. Pull up a chair, a blanket, some popcorn, and jump into the Landover Kingdom for some fun.

No, this has nothing to do with Walt Disney and Disneyland. It’s also the only work of fiction I am including in the lineup and it is the first book in Brooks' magical Landover series. I am including it because it’s all about leaps of faith. The hero of the story, a widowed lawyer, named Ben Holiday, finds he has come into possession of a mystical kingdom that has fallen into perilous times. The easy way out would be to simply relinquish the medallion bestowed on him and go back to his well-paying desk job. I think there’s a powerful… show more.

I like the way Brooks orchestrates his characters to produce both conflict and entertainment—from the deadpan sarcasm of Abernathy to Ben Holiday himself whose training as a lawyer makes it hard for him to accept the realities of Landover, the magic kingdom. Part of Ben’s problem is political. While in my book, Jawan is the reluctant hero of Nanosia’s nonhuman populace, in Magic Kingdom, Ben is determined to be the king of Landover’s fairy world outcasts who reject him because they don’t see the benefit of changing the status quo. 

I read Shannara by Brooks first then picked this up and it’s completely different and yet still filled with the same literary magic that makes you want to read it from cover to cover immediately. It’s funny and frustrating and sad and also the first in a series so you can read assured there’s more to follow. 

Magic Kingdom is another novel by Terry Brooks that I enjoyed. It’s about a lawyer named Ben Holiday who purchases the kingdom of Landover for a million dollars. I’m pretty sure if I had the opportunity and a million dollars, I might do the same. Cool concept, right??? Anyway, Ben Holiday discovers the magic kingdom has a lot of problems, and the Baron refuses to recognize him as king. To make matters worse, he learns that he had to duel to the death with the Iron Mask, the terrible lord of the demons–a duel which no human could hope to… show more.