Wizard at Large (Magic Kingdom of Landover, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Terry Brooks (Author) "Ben Holiday sighed wearily and wished he were somewhere else besides where he was..." (more)
Key Phrases: shadow wight, owlish face, missing bottle, High Lord, Questor Thews, Michel Ard Rhi (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
A spell to restore the Court Scribe of Landover to human form backfires, and Landover's King embarks on a quest to his native world to rescue his friend and retrieve the medallion of Kingship from the clutches of a greedy wizard. Humor abounds in this engaging fantasy as Brooks continues the adventures of King Ben, Questor Thews, Abernathy, and their companions. Recommended where the series is popular. JC
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"Humor abounds in this engaging fantasy as Brooks continues the adventures of King Ben, Questor Thews, Abernathy, and their companions." -- Library Journal

"Humor abounds in this engaging fantasy as Brooks continues the adventures of King Ben, Questor Thews, Abernathy, and their companions." --Library Journal --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (July 17, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345362276
• ISBN-13: 978-0345362278
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #72,762 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Would've been better without Cameron Beierle narrating., April 26, 2007

By	Mister Tut "Editor, Health-Hack.com" (Massachustetts, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wizard at Large (Audio CD)

While Brooks is not a great comedic fantasy author (see Terry Pratchett for someone who is) he is generally a good fantasy author. I keep listening to the Landover CDs hoping to get past Cameron Beierle's horrible readings and I can't.

Apparently the original audiobooks were done by "Dick Hill" and released on cassette only. These new CDs suffer greatly from issues like:

*Frequent mispronunciations of words (Foliage becomes "foilage" for instance);
*a completely phony sounding "hard boiled detective" voice for Ben Holliday (I am convinced Beierle is NOT a native english speaker as he often rolls his Rs or makes a soft "D" instead of an "R".);
*Randomly changing pronunciations of character names (the fairly simple word "paladin" is usually mispronounced "puhLADin" although in book 2 he freely changes back and forth between the two pronunciations.
*His female voices are atrocious. Willow sounds like Carol Channing imitating Marilyn Monroe's "happy birthday, mister president" performance. Willow pronounces "Ben" something like "Byeeeeehn".

Wizard at Large particularly suffers from having inappropriate pauses in the middle of passages where one would expect an editor to remove the dead space. In fact the whole series seems like nobody did any kind of production oversight or direction of the audiobooks at all.

On the plus side, Cameron does a fine job with second and third tier characters like Questor Thews, Abernathy and the G'home Gnomes.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice addition, April 11, 2004

By	Tyler Tanner (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The third book in the series starts off with very excited Questor who is positive that he can now revert Abernathy the court scribe and talking terrier back to his human form. During the incantation Questor sneezes and instead of tranforming him, he transports him. To Earth and in the castle/fortress of the original heir to Landover, Michael Ard Rhi. Much had been made of this guy in first two installments and Terry Brooks does not disappoint. This is one of the authors best villians. Ben immediatly crosses back over to go get him. Willow comes along. Leaving Questor in charge, hence the title of the book. Questor now has the task of recovering a magical bottle complete with a evil bottle imp that is reeking havoc in the land. All thanks to the filthy and meddling G'home Gnomes, Philip and Sot.

The one thing that I have always liked about this series is that in the beginning, the hero is just as clueless to the world Landover as the reader. The world starts off small and Brooks is great at adding layer after layer with each book. The last book was more focused on the character growth of Ben. Here it concentrates more on Questor, Abernathy and, surprisingly, the ambiguous River King. There is a great battle between wizard and dragon, but there is also another incident that happens on earth that, while good, strains belief even for a fantasy. All in all, a great book and fans of the series will not feel cheated. Makes you definitely want to get the next one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Magic Kingdom of Landover" series, November 3, 2001

By	Spring (Israel) - See all my reviews

This was the first Brooks' book I read, and after I read this one - I oredered the rest of the series. This book is still better than the rest, but I might feel this because the others were repetitive.

If you've already read the other books in the Landover series, you might find this one boring, as i did for the other books.