Been a while since we did one of these, so I thought I'd finally finish up the GrailQuest series. Legion of the Dead is the series' grand finale - according to author JH Brennan, the gamebook market suddenly started to tail off at this point and the series was cancelled, although Fighting Fantasy was only halfway through its original run at this point. Brennan was well aware that this was to be the series' swansong, as the book is upfront about being the final volume from page 1. It's certainly got a plot to suit it - Zombie Merlin is leading the titular Legion, hell bent on destroying Avalon!
Now, Legion of the Dead is quite a curious thing. It's not actually a broken gamebook, as far as I can tell. However, whilst it avoids some of the inconsistencies noted in the previous two books, there are certain things which lead me to believe it was written in something of a rush.
Section 140: In this section, the Poetic Fiend gives you an ode which, when you face the Legion of the Dead, will render you absolutely immune to any magic that would otherwise kill you outright. This sounds quite good, but there's a problem that'll come up when we get to the Legion itself.
Section 218: This is where you discover the Lotus Wand, a rather useful artifact which can be used to restore you to full health, or deduct 3 from any damage scored against you in a fight, or add 2 points to any damage you score in a fight, or to guarantee a Friendly Reaction from any one enemy. It has one die roll's worth of charges in it. Unfortunately, it also requires a secret codeword to activate, which you don't know as of yet.
Section 227: During this encounter it's mentioned there are east and west passageways, but you can't go down them even after giving the monster you're facing the password. Is it possible the book was curtailed and these two areas excised from it?
Section 235: This is where we meet up with the Legion, and two problems arise. The first is that the Poetic Fiend's ode is fairly useless, as you can't die in this encounter. You need a Sunstone to restore Merlin to normal. If you've got the Sunstone, then you win the book. If you don't, then you get teleported back to the encounter where you can find the Sunstone.
(It is possible to get the Sunstone but then lose it, as it can also be used to give you extra LIFE POINTS over and above your current maximum, or an obscene amount of gold. If you've already been through that encounter but used the Sunstone to those ends, then it's not clear what you should do. See what I mean about being written in a rush?)
Moving on to the second problem: it's the Lotus Wand. Excalibur Junior takes this moment to inform you that he's known the secret codeword to use the wand all along, which seems rather inelegant. Especially if you've got the Sunstone, as it means you never get a chance to use the wand at all.
So, I am almost certain that that final showdown with the Legion of the Dead does not play out the way Brennan intended it to, and things got simplified at some point, or he just had to hurry things through to meet a deadline. (I wonder when he found out the series was getting cancelled?) But more than that, the book doesn't really strike the same Pythonesque tone of Arthurian parody the other volumes did so well - the doughnut stuff is jarringly out of place without being funny in a way previous things weren't. And there's also a rather unfortunate joke about anorexia at one point. I've seen a couple of other people suggest that the illustrations were looking a bit rushed in the later books, although that's not so apparent to me (although it does reuse a puzzle about working out which of three people is lying from book 5 almost word-for-word). But for those reasons, the book is slightly disappointing, although it is still entertaining enough to be worth your while.
The choice in section 132 is not just a matter of pure luck. Decoding the message at section 115 provides explicit instructions on the type of doughnut to use.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I noticed about this last installment of the Grailquest series was, Brennan seemed to forget about Pip's spells or their application to the gamebook's plot. In other words, in certain areas, a particular spell should've been an option (or at least a *suggestion*, as Brennan has done in past Grailquest gamebooks involving spell use), yet nothing. ***Example: Section #43----a good place to cast a PIL spell to simply levitate up--and later down--the cliff face...Section #58----why bother with a fancy riddle to open the magically-locked door when a PIN spell would've sufficed??!!...and lastly, Section #213----what about a PALS spell against the obviously Vegetable opponent??!! (not to mention that in this particular combat situation, no stats are given for the farmer in question, nor is anything mentioned of him after the combat).
ReplyDeleteon a personal note, I was glad to finally complete the Grailquest Series at last (Books #7-8 were never available in the U.S.), and this time around I've notated the gamebooks themselves, personalizing them (what I call permanent recordings). In retrospect, despite the overall positive feedback from others regarding this series, I myself must declare that it was either *too easy* or *too hard* to play, depending on which Grailquest gamebook one played. When I first played them back in the 1980s, I thought they were too silly even then, as a kid (who was used to the more serious style of series like lone Wolf/fighting fantasy), and I reiterate this feeling now, as an aged adult.
The spellbook thing is something I've noticed -- I think after it's introduced in the second book he *never* gives the opportunity to use the Invisibility spell again -- but he does have a penchant for introducing new rules and then forgetting about them. It's probably related that books 5 and 6 both have justifications for not having the Spell Books available, but it's odd he doesn't make the effort to integrate them more in 7 and 8.
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