Sagard the Barbarian: The Ice Dragon

In Sagard the Barbarian: the Ice Dragon, Gary Gygax--the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons as well as the hobby of fantasy roleplaying, leads you on an adventure to freely explore his oldest and best loved fantasy world--Greyhawk. The reader, takes the part of the excited youth Sagard of the Ratikkan tribes in the open-ended quest to explore the world and find worthy adventures great enough to persuade the tribal leaders of the Warrior's Lodge to admit him into their ranks. To the west lie the gnashing mountains known as the Rakers and rumors of a dreaded Ice Dragon, to the south ancient plains of ice dotted with ruins and legends of an ancient crumbling colosseum. It is a wonderful way to discover an interesting primal world. You challenge Tehnite knights, giant white-furred serpents, devil-bears, cursed spirits, and corrupt Medigian slavers. When finally you discover the secret of the Ice Dragon, it's a fascinating suprise! One of the most interesting parts of the book, as compared with other choose-your-own adventure style novels, is that along with choices you make along the way, you also play your way through the various fight scenes. Weapons and equipment you gain along the way give you bonuses and you roll dice or flip through the random numbers printed at the top of each page to determine your success or failure. It's a simple system, but it really adds excitement to the stories and drama to the choices when there's the uncertainty of whether or not you'll be able to win the fights ahead. One of the biggest disappointments with the series is the confusion over what fantasy world the books take place in. Despite comments made in interviews, that the novels introduced a totally new and unexplored Gygaxian world called Yarth, the Sagard series is clearly set in Greyhawk--the maps in the book and the cultures and landmarks provided all fit exactly. The last few pages of the book even call the world by name. If you know what you're getting, that's great--but it really disappointed me. There's really a lot of Greyhawk books out there already, penned by both Gary Gygax and many others. The idea that the series described a whole untouched world was one of the main things that got me excited about the series. Although I do love Greyhawk a lot, it really was a knock to my enthusiasm for the books. That said, they're still great.