The Magic Kingdom of Landover

About The Magic Kingdom of Landover

Terry Brooks's Magic Kingdom of Landover series follows Ben Holiday, a grieving Chicago trial lawyer who, on a whim, answers a mail-order catalog advertisement offering a magic kingdom for sale and finds himself the new, thoroughly unprepared king of Landover -- a realm of dragons, witches, a talking dog turned court scribe, and a castle that's falling apart both physically and magically. Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold! introduces Ben's chaotic first attempts to rule a kingdom that doesn't want him and rebuild the broken magic that's supposed to legitimize his throne; The Black Unicorn and Wizard at Large continue his education as king through confrontations with an ancient witch's curse and his own predecessor's meddling former court wizard. The Tangle Box and Witches' Brew escalate the stakes as threats to Landover's magic grow existential, and A Princess of Landover -- published well over a decade after the rest -- shifts focus to Ben's adopted daughter, Mistaya, coming into her own as heir to a kingdom of her own making.

Lighter and more comic than Brooks's Shannara books, Landover trades epic-scale war for fish-out-of-water fantasy-of-manners humor, following one ordinary man's slow, often funny transformation into a genuinely capable ruler -- and, eventually, into the father of the next one.

How to read this series

Read in publication order -- Magic Kingdom for Sale -- Sold! (1986), The Black Unicorn (1987), Wizard at Large (1988), The Tangle Box (1994), Witches' Brew (1995), A Princess of Landover (2009) -- which is also the internal chronology, following Ben Holiday's reign as king in roughly continuous sequence, with a long real-world gap before the final book that mirrors a jump forward to his daughter Mistaya's story. No Shannara reading is required or particularly relevant: Landover is a separate, self-contained fantasy world unconnected to the Four Lands. Two short stories set in Landover were published in the 2021 anthology Small Magic rather than as standalone books and aren't tracked as novels here.