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Sunday, September 7, 2014

Wizard at Large (Magic Kingdom of Landover #3) by Terry Brooks

Wizard at Large (Magic Kingdom of Landover, #3)Wizard at Large by Terry Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The huge upgrade in this book was the danger. It was a page turner because the enemy, Michel Ard Rhi, was SO evil and SO powerful. He overthrew governments and had his own army. Our heroes had no money, no weapons and no time. This makes a great conflict that makes the reader hungry to know what happens next.

There was a significant logic error in this book. Late in the story when Quester is going to find Strabo to ask his help, we review the fact that it is impossible to cross the mists without the medallion or a dragon, yet the entire story was based on exactly that happening, not once, but twice! This seems like a huge oversight. I include things like that when I consider the quality of the book, so for me this was a fun, but low quality read.

My last issue is about the final fight. There was a huge climax with the medallion, but then there was still the storyline around the bottle hanging out there to get resolved, which had its own climax. The second resolution was smaller because Brooks stopped building it up halfway through the book. The utopian option would be to somehow resolve all of the conflicts in one confrontation, which would have required getting Nightshade to Seattle somehow, so that would have been tough. Another option would have been to continue giving updates on the crises in Landover while we worked on the other issues, which would continue to grow that second conflict until it was resolved. Just a thought. Nothing like a back seat driver with hindsight making complaints.

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