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With a lineage that reaches back to time immemorial, the fantasy quest novel has been a bookstalls staple since Tolkien's trilogy appeared in paperback in the 1960s. Legions of imitators followed. The popularity of the genre led in turn to the creation of fantasy role-playing games, the grand-daddy of them all being TSR's "Dungeons & Dragons", which then spawned its own imitators. Novels deriving from that popular game system began at least as early as 1979, with Andre Norton's "Quag Keep" the first such.
By the mid-1990s, TSR alone had cranked out dozens of novels of varying quality set in its numerous adventure settings, until they became something of a glut on the market. After Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR, they issued several more "Greyhawk Classics" titles, essentially novelizations of older Greyhawk adventures.
All of which brings us to this particular book. Inspired by yet another gaming supplement by a small independent publisher designed for use with D&D (they are legion), it is a quest into that adventure setting, "Dreadmire". And, sadly, it is not really anything new. With a fairly standard set of all-too-familiar adventuring types, the tale leads to a not terribly surprising "twist" which, in turn, sets up the inevitable "expect a sequel" ending. The feeling this reader came away with was of having just been told all about some player's on-going campaign game yet to be finished. "Perhaps it was a great adventure, but I guess you had to be there."
On the technical end, more careful editing might have eliminated some distracting elements, including a "Foreward" [sic] in which the editor felt compelled to quote nearly verbatim an entire paragraph (uncredited) from the Encyclopedia Britannica Online for the benefit of readers who might not grasp the most basic concept of a fantasy novel. The novel itself is some 135 pages in length, excluding other matter. Even less, when one eliminates the clip art and illustrations, some of which take up more than half the page.
Overall, fans of Ms. Donald are better served by reading her award-winning Nocturnal Urges, Abaddon and Setting Suns.
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