Quag Keep Review

 

Book: Return to Quag Keep
Author: Andre Norton and Jean Rabe
Pages: 304
Hard Core Scale: 1/4
Normal Scale: 6/10
Publish Date: 2010
About: Realizing they did not go home after the confrontation of the strange man in the keep, the adventures cling to their fading memories, until fate brings them again to the keep that had promised them home a life time ago. Rabe picked up after Andre died. Hard to tell who was doing what.
Review:  A lot better written. More fun. Still not DND esque in its magic, but the chaos and order is out the window. Though its mystic charms lost away. Some classic Norton archetypes. Not sure if they were thrown in for fun or not. The iskeai memory fading a lot more powerful here. Sadly, the plot has too many plot holes and makes zero sense. The ending is just a letdown. Does not fulfill author’s promise. That is all it takes to kill a book.

 

Book: Quag Keep
Author: Andre Norton
Pages: 241
Hard Core Scale: 1/4
Normal Scale: 6/10
Publish Date: 1978
About:  Andre was inspired to write this after her first DND adventure with Gary Gygax.  A party of adventures are forced to find the alien force to free themselves and separate them from a strange reality warping power… if that…
Review: This was terrible for Norton. So bad. Most of the time you see people making fun of DND nerds in media they act like this. I always wondered where it came from because most DND nerds don’t act like this. Was it like this in the 70s? The characters are all that extreme to invested in RP. Were Gary’s games like this? Its early in the period. The dice as weird items strange that did not do a lot. Mentioned lich and pseudo dragon. Long boring talks about how magic works. Only chaos versus law and not good versus evil.  A party of a human fighter, wereboar barbarian, elf druid, cleric of the unicorn, wizard, and lizard man? Too many character’s perhaps for Andre to write. Outside of the wereboar none of them were interesting in their archetype.  The iskeaied mind underutilized do the character’s mind over coming the players. Just a wasted premise. Its conflict of resolution lacking? Nothing seems gained or lost. Terribly verbose and boring for a DND adventure.  I would say skip it out of its uniqueness. Sadly, sequel on my shelf. 

 



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