My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m not sure what to think of this book. This is the fifth book in the series and I loved the first one so much, I’ve wanted to read all of the others. And most have been decent — but not as good as the first one.
In this one, Ben Holiday and Willow’s daughter, Mistaya, is growing at an astounding rate. She’s two, but looks 10 and acts 15. In other words, she’s a spoiled little bitch and entirely unlikeable and I didn’t like this about the novel. And it centers around her, for the most part, so we’re inundated with her attitude. So, someone comes to the castle and issues Ben a challenge for the kingdom of Landover. If he can defeat seven monsters, he’ll keep his kingdom. If not, the challenger gets it. Strangely, though, Mistaya is kidnapped almost immediately and used as bait for Ben to follow this stranger’s rules. While traveling with Mistaya in a fruitless effort to find her safety, Questor and Abernathy are sent back to Ben’s home world of Earth, where Abernathy is turned from dog back to human and he is elated. Of course, not all is as it seems. Nightshade, the witch, is behind everything and steals Mistaya to train her to become a witch — and to unwittingly kill her father.
In the last book, I complained that Ben seemed pretty dense, which was odd considering that he had been a high priced, successful attorney in Chicago and was now king of the land. In this book, he’s just as dense and so is Willow. In fact, they spend most of their time together in the book “holding” each other for support — and that gets pretty damn old very quick.
There is magic in this book, of course. And we get to see some of the characters we know and like, such as the Earth Mother and her mud puppy and Strabo, the dragon. And Ben does somehow defeat several monsters through the help of his alter ego, the Paladin. But by the time Ben has figured out what’s going on, the reader figured everything out eons before and is annoyed by his ineptitude and I’ve got to fault Brooks for that. I want to give this three stars, but because it’s a Landover book and I enjoy the series and because it does introduce some new people and elements to the setting, I’ll give it four. Cautiously recommended.
hankrules2011 