Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai: Volume One | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai: Volume One by Vincent Lazzari & Ben Dever

Holmgard Press, hardback, £30.00, May 2026, ISBN 9781915586759

The story of the completion of the Lone Wolf cycle of gamebooks, which began with the publication of Lone Wolf 1: Flight from the Dark in 1984, is almost as compelling and harrowing as the epic fantasy itself and included the death of its creator and author, Joe Dever, in 2016, shortly after publishing Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai. I told the story of the story – or, in Lone Wolf terms, ‘The Story So Far…’ – from a very personal perspective in my reviews of Lone Wolf 21: Voyage of the Moonstone and The Storms of Chai. Dever’s goal was always to publish thirty-two adventures, the first twenty of which would tell the story of Kai warrior (a Ranger in AD&D terms) Kor-Skarn (Lone Wolf) defeating the demonic Darklords of Helgedad and restoring the Kai to their rightful place as defenders of the world of Magnamund from all enemies foreign and domestic. In the next twelve, the player would adopt the persona of a New Order Kai Grand Master and undertake missions for and occasionally with Lone Wolf, and the game mechanics are such that the more adventures you complete, the higher your Grand Master rank and abilities (resembling D&D and AD&D, of which Dever was a great fan and skilled player). You determine your persona by means of the Random Number Table (on which gameplay is based, though many will find a ten-sided die more convenient) and my New Order warrior ended up as True Friend. A bit of a wimpy name, but he can kill you with his bare hands, live off the land indefinitely, and move small objects by looking at them, so don’t make fun of him.

After Dever’s death, his son, Ben, and long-term collaborator, Vincent Lazzari, undertook to complete and publish the remaining three books in the cycle, based on their final conversations with him and the detailed notes he had left. Ben relaunched the now highly successful Holmgard Press for the purpose, publishing Lone Wolf 30: Dead in the Deep in 2019 and Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night in 2020, and dividing the cycle as a whole into five series: Kai (books 1–5), Magnakai (books 6–12), and Grand Master (books 13–20), featuring Lone Wolf; and New Order (books 21–28) and End Game (books 29–32), featuring True Friend (or, generically, the ‘Lorn Commander’). As I’ve mentioned several times in my previous reviews of the New Order and End Game series, I have far too much invested in what is now the Lone Wolf ‘franchise’ (though I hate to use that term) to even pretend to voice an unbiased opinion. Not only am I in my fifth decade of playing the gamebooks, but they are one of my fondest childhood memories and one of the reasons I continued to read so much and try my hand at my own imaginative fictions. With that in mind, after The Storms of Chai, which was the highlight of the cycle to date, I was a little disappointed with Dead in the Deep because it didn’t quite live up to the expectation created by its predecessor, for an even greater epic struggle than Magnamund had ever seen. The Dusk of Eternal Night was, unfortunately, the first of all thirty-one gamebooks that I didn’t actually enjoy playing. My main criticisms were twofold and contradictory: that it is, first, too inventive and innovative and, second, derivative and even unoriginal.

The first referred to the new format, which retained the traditional three hundred and fifty gameplay sections, but replaced many of the player choices and actions with long descriptive sections to create a hybrid gamebook-novel. This experiment was just too different to what I’d enjoyed so much and had two consequences that didn’t work for me: the narrative was both much longer (as my photograph of Lone Wolf 31, 1, and 32 below shows) and more linear than the previous adventures. The second criticism was to the revelation of the primary antagonists of the End Game, which involves the reprisal of old enemies. While the latter had only a minor impact on my enjoyment, the former was much more serious and I was very concerned to read that Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai had been divided into two volumes, each of which includes four hundred gameplay sections. I wondered why. Dever wanted thirty-two adventures and each of the twenty-nine he authored had three hundred and fifty sections so it seemed unlikely that this was in honour of his memory. And, as the old adage goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It definitely wasn’t broke, even if Dead in the Deep wasn’t one of the best. The only reason I could think of was that the extra volume and extra sections were to continue the hybridisation of the End Game series that appeared to have begun in The Dusk of Eternal Night. (As an aside, books 1 to 12 were fully novelised, in the The Legends of Lone Wolf series, which was published from 1989 to 1994 and only marginally successful.) I mention all this to disclose that my expectations for Light of the Kai were not very high and that had I not been waiting for the end of the saga for so many decades, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

Light of the Kai: Volume One was released at 17:00 BST on Tuesday 12 May (very much an ‘event’ for the fanbase) in three editions, Definitive (£30), Limited (£40), and Collector’s (£30). The reasons for these multiple editions are to do with Dever’s heroic attempts to keep Lone Wolf in print when interest in gamebooks tailed off at the turn of the century and I decided on the Definitive because I didn’t want to wait for the Collector’s (pre-order only, with delivery expected in July) and don’t have any great interest in signed copies (though it is nice to have Dever’s signature in my copy of The Storms of Chai as a keepsake). In addition to the fifty extra sections of gameplay, which – my reservations notwithstanding – will no doubt appeal to most buyers, the gamebook is also illustrated by the brilliant Gary Chalk (amongst others), the first to which he has contributed since Lone Wolf 8: The Jungle of Horrors (1987). The volume also includes thirty-two pages of supplementary material, ‘The Magnamund Archives’, which will also no doubt appeal to most buyers. (I did enjoy reading this, though I buy the books primarily for play.) I ordered promptly at 17:02 on 12 May, paying a very reasonable £4.99 for postage and packaging, and my purchase arrived exactly two weeks later. That’s quite a long time to wait, even by Royal Mail’s well-publicised declining standards, but the delay may well be shorter in future, now that the book is officially ‘in print’ (if that term is relevant anymore).

In consequence of the Lone Wolf cycle being distinguished from similar gamebooks (such as the Fighting Fantasy series, several of which I also enjoyed, especially The Warlock of Firetop Mountain) by using a serial player character who advances in rank and abilities, there is always a ‘The Story So Far…’ section between the rules and the first section of gameplay. One of the strengths of The Dusk of Eternal Night was that it seemed to pick up where The Storms of Chai left off, reestablishing the sense of looming cataclysm and climax by, amongst other things, gathering together companions and allies from the previous New Order books, The World of Lone Wolf miniseries, and the various Bonus Adventures published in some editions of the gamebooks. The final assault by the servants of the Dark God Naar to rule Magnamund began in the year MS 5101. Naar’s victory is dependent on his destruction of all three of the New Order of the Kai, the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star (a magic-user’s guild in D&D and AD&D terms), and the Elder Magi (also magic-users, as the name implies). Thanks to the efforts of True Friend, Lone Wolf, and the other Kai Grand Masters, Naar’s agent Zashnor was defeated in Chai (The Storms of Chai) and his Shadow Gate in Zekgazad destroyed (Dead in the Deep), preventing him from unleashing an army from the Realm of Paradox. Naar has, however, freed Demonlord Agarash from his pocket dimension prison and resurrected Archlord Vashna, with True Friend defeating an undead army of the former at the Battle of Lorn in MS 5103 (The Dusk of Eternal Night).

As True Friend has successfully completed eleven adventures, he has now mastered all sixteen of the Kai Grand Master Disciplines and reached the highest rank possible, Kai Supreme Master, in theory if not in practice Lone Wolf’s equal (more on this below). In the battle for Magnamund, he has been assigned command of Southern Magnamund, where he will continue the fight against Agarash while Lone Wolf does the same against Vashna on Northern Magnamund. I liked this premise as it expands True Friend’s exploration of the south, in contrast to Lone Wolf’s focus on the north, which means that players who complete all the series within the larger cycle experience the full range of settings across Magnamund. With all this personal history (like many, if not most, of the fanbase, I imagine) and nervous anticipation in mind, the first few pages of the volume exceeded my expectations: this is a game that promises to integrate the excitement of the first thirty episodes with the originality of the thirty-first. ‘The Story so Far…’ is succinct and gripping, a perfect introduction to the whole cycle and the cataclysmic end to which it is coming. Then comes the big reveal in ‘The Game Rules’, which answers all of the questions and concerns I posed above: in this game (and perhaps the next), I can choose to continue with True Friend as my persona or return to Lone Wolf. Not only can I either be one or the other, but I can mix and match within the game.

This is ideal because Lone Wolf and True Friend are the same rank (‘level’ in D&D and AD&D terms), both have demigod-like powers, and are each in command of half of the forces of good…so why not play either/or or both/and? The instructions are that one can begin with either character and then choose to either stay with that character throughout the adventure or switch between the two when the characters meet (and given the option in the text). Of course, what this also means is that there are actually two distinct adventures in Volume One: Lone Wolf’s (the first two hundred sections) and True Friend’s (the second two hundred sections). This, in turn, explains why the final adventure has been divided into two. Lazzari and Ben have remained true to Joe’s initial conception of thirty-two adventures, but offered us the opportunity to play it twice. Brilliant. The experiment with the gamebook form is also reminiscent of another of Joe’s short series, Combat Heroes, (two pairs of books, one pair published in 1986 and the other in 1987) where players could either play a short solo adventure or play against another player, who would be using the other gamebook. The options for playing Volume One are not, however, merely twofold because one can begin as either Lone Wolf or True Friend and then switch (or not) at two different points in the game, providing eight permutations in total. That must have involved some very clever and creative planning and writing by Lazarri and Ben and I found the switches between personas perfectly seamless.

I decided to start as True Friend to retain continuity with the New Order and End Game series, which I’ve been replaying and reviewing for the last decade. My initial plan was then to switch at each point I was given the opportunity. I’m not sure why, but I thought there would only be one chance to change so I envisaged beginning the game as True Friend and finishing it as Lone Wolf (which was in fact what happened, but for a different reason). One thing I realised as I recovered my notes on True Friend from The Dusk of Eternal Night and used the information in the rules to arm and equip Lone Wolf as best as I could remember – from when I played Lone Wolf 20: The Curse of Naar (1993), which was probably twenty years ago – was that the game has become pretty complicated by this stage. Not only have both Supreme Masters acquired multiple sets of disciplines, abilities, and powers over the years (conveniently summarised in the last few pages of Volume One), there are also a new set of abilities called Supreme Master Gifts. But don’t get too excited… what Lazarri and Ben give with one hand they take away with another because Lone Wolf and True Friend are also cursed, by Vashna and Agarash respectively, meaning that one must balance all of the previous abilities with the gifts and the curses in order to determine Combat Skill and Endurance (the two core game mechanics) in different situations. This is not a criticism, merely an observation that Light of the Kai is not an entry level game. The Storms of Chai would be a better place to begin and Voyage of the Moonstone even better (though the best place of all to begin is with Flight from the Dark).

True Friend’s adventure starts when he is summoned to a war council with Lone Wolf and their allies in Toran, in Sommerlund, and Northern Magnamund is the setting of Volume One (I am hoping Volume Two will shift to Southern Magnamund, for the reasons mentioned above). I liked the ecological theme that is raised very early, of Magnamund’s inhabitants being destroyed by the declining capacity of the planet to support existing species rather than being annihilated by Naar’s various minions (later referred to as its inability to sustain its ‘World-power’). I think this will resonate very well with younger players in particular. True Friend finds himself and Lady Assiliah, who is a student of the Shianti and a guardian of the Isle of Lorn, in the Ironwoods, in the Durncrag Mountains, the range that separates Sommerlund from the Darklands. The opening reminded me of playing Flight from the Dark all those years ago and at this early juncture I was really looking forward to whatever came next. In the first part (of four), True Friend and Assiliah must find Tower Ironar, an abandoned Sommlending settlement, infiltrate it, explore the dungeons beneath, and enter the Crystal Forge. The second part begins when they return to Sommerlund to find that an enormous cyclone is engulfing Toran while a comet descends on Northern Magnamund from above. True Friend must then defeat the Demon-king Suula, who has taken Kai Grand Master Swift Sword as his host, in a sequence that is surprisingly short and frustratingly deadly. Once Suula is defeated, there is an opportunity to switch characters and I began the next part as Lone Wolf, in search of the Rings of Judgement (the book uses US spelling, which I’ve replaced here) in the Danarg, a jungle to the southwest of Sommerlund that was the setting for The Jungle of Horrors. Lone Wolf must explore some or all of the four ruined towers of the Elder Magi to recover the rings and defeat, amongst many other denizens, a hive of Krywiz, powerful zombies that can infect all they wound, even Supreme Masters with their demigod-like resistances. The final part starts with Lone Wolf’s skyship receiving an unexpected visitor and a second opportunity to switch characters. I decided to remain with Lone Wolf this time and continue my search for a cure for the failing World-power. This takes Lone Wolf to the city of Ankor, in the Hardlands, in search of the Death Shard, and a climactic battle in his skyship with The Shog’aash, the last of the Sea Dragons of Naar. As such, the narrative that underpins the game, the ‘book’ in gamebook, is entertaining, engrossing, and exciting, unquestionably the best End Game instalment since The Storms of Chai. There are several sections that have long descriptions or more than two pages of text and occasionally there are two of these in a row, but the balance is much better than in The Dusk of Eternal Night and this is a very good game indeed.

If I concluded my review here it would be exclusively positive. I’d be very happy with that and many players may not agree with what I have to say next, but I've reviewed all of these gamebooks honestly and have no intention of changing my approach at the eleventh hour. Simply put, True Friend is, as his wimpy name might have suggested, not tough enough for this adventure. Almost all combats were very hard, against adversaries of a similar strength (which stretched credibility at times), and the addition of the curse made many very hard combats fatal or even impossible. I’d already been killed twice (once in combat and once by a poor decision) by the time I met Teakkro, last seen in Dead in the Deep, at the end of the first part. She would have been enough of a challenge on her own, but she had brought some friends along to make killing me much quicker and by this point I was the proud bearer of the Red Plague in addition to the Darkness Curse. For the first time in thirty-two games, I had to ‘cheat’, meaning that I had to pretend I’d won an impossible combat rather than simply replay the combat until I won or reboot my game at an earlier section to increase my odds of success. I didn’t feel great about this, but I did feel great about scurrying back to Lone Wolf to let him to take over and decided that I would finish the rest of the game as Lone Wolf whatever the options were. Unfortunately, before I could pass the baton – or, more accurately, beg for big brother’s help – I had to fight the Demon-king Suula, which was another impossible combat (even if I hadn’t been so battered and bruised) and ended up cheating for the second time. Once I was Lone Wolf, I was hoping I’d fare better. I did, at first, but almost immediately added a Krywiz plague to my Blood Curse, which proved fatal later on and caused me to cheat for the third time. I was killed twice before I reached the relative safety of the skyship at the end of the third part of the narrative and dare not revert to True Friend when offered the option because by this time he was basically what the military call ‘combat ineffective’. The final fight against The Shog’aash was probably not impossible, though I would have had to go back to my start as Lone Wolf and have a lot more luck with everything in order to be in significantly better shape when the time came. Without giving away any spoilers, the end of Volume One suggests that the fate of Magnamund is now entirely in the hands of True Friend… if so, then I recommend that all the good folk either immediately convert to the worship of Naar or find a convenient Krywiz to infect them.

With respect to the gameplay, I think the full combination of adversaries that are so tough, the curses, and the various other opportunities to have permanent or long-term reductions to Combat Skill, Endurance, or both are – literally – overkill. I could have done without the curses or the reductions, or perhaps even both, and still been killed a few times and had a fun-filled and nail-biting experience. Alternatively, maybe I’m not as good a player as I was when I played The Storms of Chai, but that wasn’t very long ago and although True Friend was killed at least once then and perhaps more than once, none of the adversaries were impossible to defeat. I just needed better luck with the Random Number Table or better decisions before the combat began. Or maybe I need to take my own advice, go back to Voyage of the Moonstone, play the New Order series with a little more skill, and make sure that True Friend is more robust by the time he sets foot in the Ironwoods. The fault may well be mine, but I didn’t like having to cheat and have never needed to before. My verdict is that while Volume One didn’t quite match its very promising beginning, it is an excellent gamebook and is bringing the cycle to a captivating and convincing conclusion. I’ve not seen any reliable information on when Volume Two will be released yet. Wikipedia states 2030, which seems too long. My sense from the inspired and ingenious crafting of Volume One, with its eight permutations (seven of which I still have left to play), is that the whole of Light of the Kai has already been planned in detail, if not drafted. My guess is that it’s almost finished or finished and awaiting playtesting. If there are another four years to wait, I hope I’m in better shape than True Friend when it’s released…

Why A Pulp Memoir? – Rafe McGregor

This year marks the emerald anniversary of my first professional sale and publication as an author. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never taken stock of my whole writing ‘career’ (if that’s the right word), which began in earnest four years before that sale, and two decades seems an appropriate (if extremely tardy) time to ask myself whether I’ve succeeded or failed at it. If nothing else, the answer might determine what I do with the next two decades (or, more realistically, whatever part thereof is left).

From one point of view, it’s been a success. By this summer, I’ll have authored twenty books (divided evenly between academic monographs on culture, crime, and politics and small press pulp fiction novels and collections) and three hundred shorter works (including several as editor). While I’d be lying if I said I was proud of every single long and short piece published, I’d defend one of the monographs and one of the short story collections as being right up there with the best. Though two good or better books and a few good articles and short stories isn’t much in twenty years, I’m happy with it. A slight change of perspective, however, tells a very different tale. None of my long or short works have ever been published by the Big Four or elite university presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, or Stanford or in periodicals with more than a few thousand readers so I may well be overrating the quality of my oeuvre. A quantitative evaluation is nigh mortifying: none of all those publications made me more than £1,000 and most of them didn’t earn anything at all. Forgetting about the money for a minute, which no professional writer can afford to do, with a mere two exceptions, my estimated readership has been in four figures (or less) for each. If the lack of quantity reflects a lack of quality, then I have indeed overrated myself.

Put like that, I’d have to say I failed, but it’s all too easy to compare oneself to the best-known writers – Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, James Ellroy, China Miéville, etc. – when the reality is that they constitute a tiny percentage of the profession. Let me try a different tack: what was my goal when I set out? To earn a ‘modest’ living from writing fiction and nonfiction which, for reasons I can’t remember, I set at £30,000 per annum in 2006. Given the various financial and cost of living crises since, that would probably be £50,000 now. The latest statistics suggest I set the bar outrageously high. At present, more than four in five novelists in the UK support themselves with other jobs, their median annual income from writing is £7,000 (less than a third of minimum wage), and the income of the top 10% is disproportionally high compared to the rest. I haven’t made £30,000 from writing in twenty years, let alone each year, which simply confirms my failure. In mitigation, in 2006 there was still a ‘mid-list’ of novelists, a host of magazines accepting article or story submissions from unknown authors, and readerships were expanding rather than shrinking, meaning my goal wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds in hindsight. All that has of course changed several times over, courtesy of the digitisation of everyday life, shifts away from reading novels and watching films to online gaming, and the increasing ubiquity of artificial intelligence. Perhaps, after all, there is some success in still being able to publish and still getting read, even if by only a few hundred people each time?

Or perhaps I’m asking the wrong question and the issue at stake isn’t success or failure but why I started writing for publication in the first place and why I’m still doing it two decades later? I didn’t start in 2006 to earn £30,000 (I was already making slightly more than that) – I started to earn a modest living by writing. Notwithstanding the failure of that goal, I managed to keep up a steady rate of publication (a book each year and a short work each month) in spite of never having more than 50% of my working week to write, edit, and research. Let me change tack one last time. If, as seems highly likely at the moment, that 50% drops to 0%, what will I do? I’ll do what I did from 2002 to 2006, write on weekends, holidays, nights…whenever time permits…which implies I’m doing it for pleasure. Call me naïve, but when Stephen King writes ‘I did it for the pure joy of the thing’ in On Writing, I believe him and I don’t begrudge a single cent of the many millions he was talented and lucky enough to earn while he was enjoying himself. If the ‘right’ question to ask is why I have spent so much time writing for the last twenty years, then the answer is for the pure joy. And spending that much time doing something enjoyable, something whose product a few thousand other people have enjoyed, is worth doing for as long as time permits.

All of which is why I collected seventy-five of my short nonfiction works in A Pulp Memoir: Essays, Reviews, Interviews 2006-2026. Is it a memoir? Not really, but it does include both my first and most recent publication, spanning the full range of the two decades. There are also autobiographical reflections on my experiences as a writer in the introduction and conclusion, in the three interviews (one from 2009 and two from 2024), and in the essays about my two novels (published in 2009 and 2017). Perhaps I should have called the collection ‘A False Memoir’, except that Jim Harrison beat me to that title fifty-five years ago with Wolf: A False Memoir (which, if anyone is interested, has absolutely nothing to do with the film Wolf, whose screenplay he wrote twenty years later). If it isn’t really a memoir, is it pulp? Most definitely. The essays, reviews, and interviews are divided into four parts, one each on crime, fantasy, weird, and climate fiction. While I don’t regard the popular distinction between artistic and genre fiction as either accurate or useful, as I mention more than once in the collection, much of what I’ve written about would be classified as pulp fiction by most critics, including: Sherlock Holmes across the centuries, the Lone Wolf gamebooks, H.P. Lovecraft’s legacy, and Sharksploitation movies. The earliest pulp fiction character I discuss is H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain, who first appeared in King Solomon’s Mines in 1885 and the latest is Ice Cube’s Will Radford, the protagonist of the 2025 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, which might just be the worst film I’ve ever seen. And if that doesn’t convince you to take a look, I’m not sure what will…

The Strigun's Cartography Workshop | review by Rafe McGregor

The Strigun's Cartography Workshop: Maps for Novels, Board Games, D&D Campaigns, or Decoration

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s alter ego, Charles Marlow, describes himself as being fascinated by maps from an early age – particularly maps with blank spaces – and such fascination has probably accounted for a great deal of harm over the centuries. It certainly seems to have been shared by many people across multiple generations. My own interest in maps was much more limited and less consequential and I only ever saw them as a tool for orienting myself until I came across what I later realised were world famous: J.R.R. Tolkien’s maps for first The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings. This must have been sometime in the late seventies and the latter were tucked into the dustjackets of the editions my parents kept at home (probably from the nineteen sixties). There were two different maps and I can’t remember which map was in which part of the trilogy, but I reproduce the better-known one here (above).

Later, I discovered Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and Dungeons & Dragons and began to appreciate the artistic qualities of maps a little more. They nonetheless remained first and foremost a way of orienting myself, to the wonders of an unexplored fantasy world, even though I recognised that Lone Wolf and the AD&D Greyhawk campaign maps in particular had an aesthetic appeal beyond the practical. When I replaced the editions of The Lord of the Rings, I kept the maps from the originals. I’m not entirely sure why, but I still have them. 

Earlier this year, I visited friends in Croatia and met Endi, the proprietor of The Strigun’s Cartography Workshop, in Trsat in Rijeka. I had been told that he created maps to order, but didn’t think too much about it and, if I remember correctly, most of our conversation was about film, one of several shared interests. He was, however, kind enough to give me two of his maps as a memento of my visit, one of Trsat Castle, which looms over Rijeka like an eagle on its perch, and the other of the province of Istria, where I visited Pula, which boasts an almost entirely intact Roman amphitheatre.

I didn’t get the chance to look at them properly until I returned home, when I was awed by their beauty. The photographs (above and right) do not do them justice and they are as pleasing as artifacts to hold and touch as they are works of visual art. Had I greater expertise in the visual arts, I could describe them more eloquently, but one does not need to be an afficionado to recognise their quality. I was, of course, struck by the similarity in style to Tolkien, though when one compares and contrasts the two, Endi is clearly the superior artist. In addition, he will make maps to order and his website is well worth browsing, whether for a commission or just for pleasure. The maps are divided among regions, cities, and battles and there is a separate page for the work he has had published to date. As the website reveals, the Strigun’s maps come in both two-tone and full colour and there is even a map for Game of Thrones…how could there not be!

Lone Wolf 28: The Hunger of Sejanoz, by Joe Dever | review by Rafe McGregor

Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, November 2022, ISBN 9781915586056

I’ve been delaying my review of the most recently published collector’s edition because I was hoping to be able to report that Holmgard Press had achieved at least one of its goals: that either the whole cycle of thirty-two Lone Wolf gamebooks had been published or that a large proportion of the cycle was back in print. Unfortunately, both goals remain in development at the time of writing. Regarding availability, there are now three editions circulating: original (paperback and secondhand only), collector’s (hardback and secondhand only), and definitive (which can be purchased from Holmgard Press, Amazon, and no doubt other online bookstores). The only definitive editions in print at the time of writing are books 1 to 12, 1 to 5 (the Kai series) in hardback and paperback and 6 to 12 (the Magnakai series) in hardback. Books 13 to 20 (the Grand Master series) are relatively easy to find on the secondhand market (and usually not extortionate, for the original editions anyway), but books 21 to 31 (the New Order series) less so. People seem to be hanging on to the Holmgard Press Collector’s Editions pretty tightly and I’ve not seen any copies of books 28 to 31 available for a while now. The original edition of Lone Wolf 28: The Hunger of Sejanoz (which was published by Red Fox in 1998) reached a peak price of £1894 on the secondhand market in February 2022, but both original and collector’s editions are now completely unavailable fourteen months after the publication of the latter. Regarding the completion of the series, Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai is going to be released in two parts, which Holmgard aims to publish in October 2024 and October 2025 respectively. I have to ask why. Two parts mean that Joe Dever’s original conception of a thirty-book cycle has been changed to thirty-three, but the press’s stated intention is the posthumous realisation of his vision (Dever sadly passed away in 2016). I am also concerned that the perceived need to publish the final book in two parts is evidence of an exacerbation of the source of my criticism of Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night, which I reviewed in TQF69. Finally, 2024 is the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Lone Wolf 1: Flight from the Dark (yes, that does make me feel old) and it would have been great to have the cycle completed in such an auspicious year.

Lone Wolf 27: Vampirium | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 27: Vampirium (Collector’s Edition) by Joe Dever

Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, July 2020, ISBN 9781916268043

Lone Wolf 27: Vampirium is the seventh (of twelve) gamebooks in the New Order series of the Lone Wolf cycle of thirty-two, all but one of which have already been published although the majority remain out of print (1 to 29 can be played online, at Project Aon). I won’t bore regular readers with details of either the cycle or its publication as they are described at length in my reviews of books 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, and 31, all available on this blog. Vampirium is also Holmgard Press’s eighth publication and maintains the high standard of production values begun with Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai. The New Order series turns away from protagonist Lone Wolf to focus on a new member of the Kai order, Sommerlund’s warrior elite, and combines standalone with campaign adventures. Vampirium begins a campaign that is continued through gamebooks 28 and 29, despite the elapse of nineteen years of real time and seventeen years of game time between the latter two. The adventure begins three months after the conclusion of Lone Wolf 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain and sees Grand Master True Friend (of randomly-generated-name-fame) once again pitted against the agents of the evil deity Naar.

Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night by Vincent Lazzari and Ben Dever

Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, December 2020, ISBN 9781916268036

If I enjoy a series and the latest instalment isn’t up to the standard of its predecessors, my usual policy is to avoid reviewing it.  Perhaps that’s what I should do with Lone Wolf 31: The Dusk of Eternal Night, the penultimate instalment of the late Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf cycle of fantasy gamebooks, which was released in time for Christmas by Holmgard Press.  Having invested so much time and energy (and a not inconsiderable amount of money) on the franchise as well as reviewing all of the New Order series (Lone Wolf 21 onwards) to date, however, I feel it would be a cop out.  Also, notwithstanding my criticism below, I will be buying the last in the cycle – Lone Wolf 32: Light of the Kai – on the basis that I am in my fifth decade of playing the books and have a need to know how it all ends (I began shortly after Lone Wolf 1: Flight from the Dark was published in 1984).  For those interested, I’ve discussed the trials and tribulations of the franchise – including why the publication of the cycle has taken so long – here, here, and here.  So let me begin with the bad news and my harshest criticism: Lone Wolf 31 simply has too much dialogue, too much description, and too little gameplay.  It’s as if the authors forgot they were writing a gamebook and wrote an experimental young adult fantasy novel instead.  Now one may think that this hybrid model of gamebook-novel is an improvement on the gamebook-only model or that the change of direction is precisely what the cycle needs for a spectacular conclusion, but I have been playing these books since the eighties because they are games.  If I wanted a novel set in Magnamund I would have collected the Legends of Lone Wolf series (novelisations of gamebooks 1 to 8, published from 1989 to 1994) – and, indeed, I did try the first and decided that they weren’t for me.  I genuinely hope that most if not all readers of this review disagree with my evaluation and if you don’t want to be put off Lone Wolf 31 please don’t read any further.  Just buy the book, read it, and make up your own mind.

Lone Wolf 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain (Collector’s Edition) by Joe Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £16.99, July 2020, ISBN 9781916268029

In my review of Lone Wolf 24: Rune War, I mentioned that I’d never played books 25 and 26 and although I’ve used Project Aon (see: www.projectaon.org) to play books 27 and 28, it’s particularly gratifying to be able to play 26 using Holmgard Press Collector’s Edition hardback (available at: www.magnamund.com). Lone Wolf 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain is the sixth (of twelve) in the New Order series of the Lone Wolf cycle. I won’t bore regular readers with details of either the cycle or its publication as they are described at length in my reviews of books 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, and 30, all of which are available on this blog. The New Order series turns away from protagonist Lone Wolf to focus on a new member of the Kai order, Sommerlund’s warrior elite, combining standalone with campaign adventures. The two standalone adventures are books 23 and 26. Interestingly, anyone who played the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons will probably notice a strong correlation between the shape of these two adventures and the Wilderness Survival Guide (1986) and Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide (1986) respectively. The latter was the supplement that introduced the Underdark, a subterranean world consisting of a vast interconnected network of caverns, tunnels, and shafts, as a campaign setting. In the world of Magnamund, the Dwarven Kingdom of Bor has a foot both on and under the earth and the action of The Fall of Blood Mountain takes place in the latter.

Lone Wolf 25: Trail of the Wolf | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 25: Trail of the Wolf (Collector’s Edition) by Joe Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £16.99, April 2020, ISBN 9781916268012

With the release of Trail of the Wolf to schedule, I must confess that my cautious optimism about Holmgard Press has matured into quiet confidence… to the extent that I’d be very surprised if the late Joe Dever’s whole Lone Wolf cycle (books 1 to 32) hasn’t been published by this time the year after next.  As I mentioned in my review of Lone Wolf 24: Rune War, I have never played books 25 and 26 so I was particularly pleased when this arrived very promptly in the post (from Holmgard Press’s website, at: www.magnamund.com).  Trail of the Wolf is the sequel to Rune War and although I provided a brief summary of the New Order series (books 20 to 32) in my review of Lone Wolf 22: The Buccaneers of Shadaki, it is worth drawing attention to the way in which the cycle has been constructed.  The Kai (books 1 to 5) and Magnakai (books 6 to 12) constitute a single quest (or “campaign”, in role-playing game terminology) with a single protagonist (“player character”), Lone Wolf. The Grand Master series (books 11 to 20) consists of ten standalone adventures, in which Lone Wolf plays the part of troubleshooter for the good gods Ishir and Kai, foiling the evil god Naar’s plots to extend his influence in Magnamund (the fantasy world in which all the gamebooks are set). The New Order series focuses on a new protagonist (whose name is randomly-generated, leaving me with “True Friend” for mine) and combines campaign and standalone adventures.  The standalone adventures are Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight’s Hero (reviewed here) and Lone Wolf 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain.  There are four separate campaigns: books 21 (reviewed here) and 22; books 24 and 25; books 27 and 28; and the final four books, beginning with Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai (29 and 30 are reviewed here and here; 31 and 32 have yet to be published).

Lone Wolf 24: Rune War | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 24: Rune War (Collector’s Edition) by Joe Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £16.99, December 2019, ISBN 9781916268005

In addition to completing the late Joe Dever’s vision of a thirty-two book cycle comprising four different series, Holmgard Press is intent on completing the Collector’s Edition release initially begun by Mongoose Publishing in 2010 (for details, see my review of Lone Wolf 21: The Voyage of the Moonstone). I must confess that for a combination of reasons (and despite the user-friendly formatting of Project Aon), I had never actually played books 24 to 26, in consequence of which I was very pleased to see Lone Wolf 24: Rune War released at the end of 2019.  The game begins with True Friend (my Kai Grand Master of randomly-generated-name-fame) returning to the Kai Monastery from his successful mission in the Kingdom of Siyen (Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight’s Hero) to be invited to a private audience with Lone Wolf.  The evil Lord Vandyan has usurped the throne of the former Principality of Eldenora and invaded the neighbouring countries of Delden, Magador, and Salony in Northern Magnamund.  Vandyan’s imperial ambitions are currently stalled in Lyris, where he is besieging Varetta (the Stornlands setting of Lone Wolf 6: The Kingdoms of Terror) with his Vorka horde.  The Vorka are Agarashi (spawn of Agarash the Damned, an archdemon that serves at the right hand of the God of Darkness) and were believed extinct before their appearance in Vandyan’s army.  The Vorka horde is being continually replenished from Duadon, the capital of Eldenora, where it appears that the creatures are being created by means of the Runes of Agarash. While Lone Wolf leads a crusade of New Order Kai, allies, and mercenaries to raise the siege of Varetta, True Friend is tasked with infiltrating Skull-Tor, Duadon’s fortress, to destroy the runes and cut off the supply of Vorka at its source.  This mission brief suggests a game of at least three parts: a wilderness adventure beginning with a river journey and ending in a forest, an urban exploration of the streets of Duadon, and finally a dungeon crawl in the fortress.

Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight's Hero | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight’s Hero (Collector’s Edition) by Joe Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £16.99, April 2019, ISBN 9781527237728

Now that I’m cautiously confident Holmgard Press is here to stay – to see the Lone Wolf series through to its conclusion, at least – I’ve been spending more time on the website at www.magnamund.com. On the About page there is a history of the series by the renowned Jonathan Green, author of YOU Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks (parts 1 and 2, published in 2014 and 2017 respectively). I was struck by how much more upbeat it was than my own history of the series, with which I began my review of Lone Wolf 21: The Voyage of the Moonstone in 2016 (and updated in my review of Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai in 2017). I hope my intention to be supportive of the late Joe Dever and my admiration for the innovative ways in which he overcame the obstacles presented by publishers were both clear, but I suppose Green’s history is written for a different purpose (promoting the series) to mine (providing some sort of critical appreciation). I nonetheless thought it would be interesting to compare the two, by which I mean fill in the copious gaps in my account using Green.

Lone Wolf 30: Dead in the Deep | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 30: Dead in the Deep by Vincent Lazzari and Ben Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, June 2019, ISBN 9781527240797

Given the many trials and tribulations experienced by Joe Dever in securing a reliable publisher for the New Order series (21 onwards) of his Lone Wolf gamebooks from the mid-nineties, my main concerns whenever a new book is released are whether I will receive it and what kind of production values it will have. The details of the first two decades of Joe’s struggle can be found in my review of Lone Wolf 21: TheVoyage of the Moonstone and the last two years in my review of Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai. While I was writing the latter in November 2016, the series and its considerable fan base suffered the ultimate setback in Joe’s untimely death and it seemed like his Holmgard Press would close after less than a year in operation. The press has, however, been relaunched at www.magnamund.com and appears to be run by his son, Ben, who is jointly responsible for the completion of the series (books 30 to 32) with Vincent Lazzari. The ordering process from the website is simple with safe if not speedy delivery following. Dead in the Deep is a hefty tome (there are no page numbers in consequence of the sections used for gameplay, but it is over two inches thick) and although the paper used is of lower quality than the Collector’s Editions published by Mongoose and Mantikore, the finished product makes for a neat fit with the rest. In keeping with almost all of the series to date, Dead in the Keep consists of three hundred and fifty sections and you can perhaps imagine my disappointment when I discovered sections 319 to 330 were absent from my copy, a repeat of sections 233 to 251 appearing in their place. I contacted Holmgard about the problem and received a very quick response to the effect that a replacement would be sent to me without any extra charge or a requirement to return the defective copy (I always resent either of these inconveniences if the fault lies with the publisher or the supplier). I received the replacement in due course and I only relate the complication as evidence of why I am confident in recommending Holmgard Press to any and all potential readers. At present, they also offer the Collector’s Edition of Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight’s Hero (£16.99) and twenty-five very attractive art prints that look like alternative book covers. The Collector’s Edition of Lone Wolf 24: Rune War (also £16.99) is the next book due for release (no date given).

The Wildlands Hunt by Martin Charbonneau and Gary Chalk | review by Rafe McGregor

The Wildlands Hunt is the second instalment of the new Lone Wolf gamebook series, which began with The Pit of Darkness in 2017, and follows the adventures of New Order Kai Konor Autumn Snow. Like its predecessor, The Wildlands Hunt is crowdfunded, with progression from funding to delivery proceeding much quicker and smoother the second time around. The project was launched on 28 January 2017, received the required initial funding of €4000 the following day, received €15,000 within a fortnight, and the volume was published in October 2018. Megara Entertainment was founded in 2007 and director Mikaël Louys appears to have been transparent about the company’s financial situation throughout. In March this year, for example, Megara published a hardback collector’s edition of Grey Star the Wizard. This was the first in a short spin-off series – The World of Lone Wolf – that followed the adventures of Grey Star, a Shianti wizard. The four books were written by Ian Page, illustrated by Paul Bonner, and edited by Joe Dever, creator of Lone Wolf and Lone Wolf’s world, Magnamund. Grey Star the Wizard (1985) was succeeded by The Forbidden City (1985), Beyond the Nightmare Gate (1985) and War of the Wizards (1986), making 1985 the most prolific year for the franchise, with The World of Lone Wolf 1–3 published alongside Lone Wolf 4–6 (The Chasm of Doom, Shadow on the Sand and The Kingdoms of Terror). On the Kickstarter updates, Louys reveals that Megara published Grey Star the Wizard at a loss, selling a disappointing two hundred copies. He seems undeterred, however, and after revision of the production model, launched The Forbidden City project as Grey Star the Wizard was released. The campaign has reached €11,845, exceeding its €8000 goal, although the stated delivery date of December 2018 is likely overambitious. For those who have followed the vicissitudes of Lone Wolf publication (which I related in my reviews of Lone Wolf 21: Voyage of the Moonstone and Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai), it will come as no surprise to hear that Megara are currently in the midst of financial problems. The Wildlands Hunt is printed in the same format as The Pit of Darkness (medium octavo hardback), retails at €40 (delivery included), and is only available from the Megara website (www.megara-entertainment.com).  I ordered my copy on 12 October (the transaction cost me a total of just under £37, but no doubt this will rise in direct proportion to Brexit chaos). On 12 November, I received an email from Louys stating that there had been a delay caused by issues with investors. The book arrived on 24 November, along with a free copy of the collector’s edition of Fabled Lands 1: The War-Torn Kingdom by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson (first published in 1996; published by Megara in 2014). My assessment is that Megara are scrupulously honest, but that until the publishing uncertainty is resolved, buyers should be wary. On a related note, I must admit to not contributing to either Autumn Snow Kickstarter project – as much as I long for more Lone Wolf gamebooks, past experience has made me wary of paying any small presses upfront.

Autumn Snow 1: The Pit of Darkness, by Martin Charbonneau, Joe Dever and Gary Chalk (Megara Entertainment) | review by Rafe McGregor

Stephen Theaker has been kind enough to allow me to indulge my nostalgia for 1980s fantasy gamebooks in his magazine and over the course of three reviews – The Voyage of the Moonstone (TQF55), The Buccaneers of Shadaki, and The Storms of Chai (both TQF57) – I’ve charted the remarkable story of Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf series. The latest of my reports contains a couple of surprises of the kind I’ve come to expect by now, given the series’ incredibly complicated publishing history, characterised by first falling victim to and then being perpetuated by the domination of internet technology at the turn of the century. To begin at the beginning, I first found out about The Pit of Darkness courtesy of Project Aon (www.projectaon.org), the voluntary organisation that has done so much to keep the series alive during its many years in the publishing wilderness, in a bulletin listing the current availability of Lone Wolf products dated 8 July 2016. Megara Entertainment founder Mikaël Louys began crowdfunding for the volume in September 2014, the main purpose of which was to secure the services of the original Lone Wolf illustrator, Gary Chalk, who had an apparently acrimonious split with Dever between the release of Castle Death (#7, 1986) and The Jungle of Horrors (#8, 1987). The gamebook is only available from the Megara website direct (www.megara-entertainment.com) and has been released in both French and English versions. The two are presented distinctly on the website and although the price is quite steep (about £30 at the time of my purchase, no doubt more now), it includes postage and packaging and my copy arrived promptly and in perfect condition. I nonetheless have two small complaints about Megara. First, they don’t seem to advertise very well – I ordered immediately after following the link from Project Aon and the copy I received is already a “THIRD PRINTING, REVISED” – what happened to the first two printings? Second, and this may well be the reason for being in a third printing already (assuming all three were released in 2016), there are quite a few typos and formatting errors in the book (albeit all minor).

Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai, by Joe Dever (Holmgard Press) | review by Rafe McGregor

Note that the following Lone Wolf review was written and supplied before we heard the sad news of Joe Dever’s death. Our commiserations to his family, and to all of his fans.

In my review of Lone Wolf 22: The Buccaneers of Shadaki above I mentioned that Joe Dever is now self-publishing the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks, after close on twenty years of problems with first Red Fox, then Mongoose Publishing, and most recently German publisher Mantikore Verlag. One would have hoped that after all the trials and tribulations suffered by both Dever and his fans at the non-profit Project Aon (www.projectaon.org), his decision to take charge of the process himself would have run smoothly, but alas this was not the case. The Storms of Chai is book 29 in the Lone Wolf series as a whole and the ninth adventure in the New Order series, which rebooted with a new player persona in Lone Wolf 21: Voyage of the Moonstone (reviewed in #55). The New Order series was published at the rate of two books a year from 1994 to 1998, by which reckoning The Storms of Chai would have been published in 1999. With Dever at the helm after seventeen years, the long-awaited adventure – which had been sold out on pre-orders – was due for release in April 2016. There was a delay with the printers and it seemed as if the Lone Wolf project had stalled yet again. The book was finally released in mid-May and with a stack of further pre-orders to meet, Dever ordered a second edition printed. In yet another improbable twist in the Lone Wolf story, a second first edition was printed and although the books are exactly the same, the difference in paper used by the Turkish (fat) and Lithuanian (thin) printers has resulted in the former being substantially thicker and heavier than the latter (Dever explains the full story on the book order page: www.mapmagnamund.com/id72.html). There are no copies of the fat edition left and my copy (which is still available at the time of writing) is the later, thin one. As I mentioned in my review of The Buccaneers of Shadaki, I have suffered at the hands of small presses on several occasions, but I had no problems whatsoever with my order, the price (£19.99) includes postage and packaging in the UK, and all copies purchased from Holmgard Press arrive with Dever’s seal and signature.

Lone Wolf 22: The Buccaneers of Shadaki, by Joe Dever (Mantikore Verlag/Holmgard Press) | review by Rafe McGregor

Note that the following Lone Wolf review was written and supplied before we heard the sad news of Joe Dever’s death. Our commiserations to his family, and to all of his fans.

In #55, I reviewed the collector’s edition of Lone Wolf 21: Voyage of the Moonstone, published in English by Mantikore Verlag in 2015. The review was more of a reflection on the whole series, summarising the thirty years between my first reading of Lone Wolf 1: Flight From the Dark to the point where, after numerous improbable narrative twists, there once again seemed to be a delay in publishing. The short version: Lone Wolf was originally conceived as a series of thirty-two gamebooks, the first of which was published in 1984, stalled – apparently forever – in 1998 at Lone Wolf 28: The Hunger of Sejanoz, and has been the subject of many and varied attempts to both finish the series and return all its instalments to print. I concluded by noting that although Mantikore Verlag’s taking over of the series from Mongoose Publishing in 2013 was an initial success, it seemed to have run into trouble in the second year. On 1 April 2016, shortly after I submitted the review, Joe Dever announced that he was self-publishing the rest of the collector’s edition series, including the previously unpublished four books. I must admit I was disappointed by the news, after the heroic efforts the fans at Project Aon (www.projectaon.org), a non-profit organisation, had made on Dever’s behalf, but I’m pleased to report that Holmgard Press (www.mapmagnamund.com) is flourishing. Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai (also reviewed in this issue) was published in June and Dever is also selling the Mantikore Verlag volumes that are still in stock, books 18 and 22. Having suffered at the hands of small presses on several occasions myself, I’ll add that I had no problems whatsoever with my purchase of The Storms of Chai and that the price (£17.95) includes postage and packaging in the UK. In addition, all copies purchased from Holmgard Press arrive with Dever’s seal and signature (for those who set store by such things).

Returning to The Buccaneers of Shadaki, my Kai Grandmaster – True Friend – had put in the kind of performance his wimpy name would lead one to expect in his mission to return the Moonstone to the Isle of Lorn and found himself in the city of Elzian at the end of Voyage of the Moonstone. In my previous review I mentioned that the gamebooks have moved through distinct series as the overarching story progressed: a single campaign in the Kai and Magnakai series (books 1 through 12), followed by a series of standalone adventures in the Grand Master series (13 to 20) all with the same character, Lone Wolf. Voyage of the Moonstone marked the beginning of the fourth series, the New Order, in which the reader adopts the persona of one of Lone Wolf’s acolytes, and it was not clear whether the twelve books of the New Order would take the form of a single campaign or more standalone adventures. Dever seems to be employing a third, hybrid, option, with some New Order missions being standalone and others spanning more than one book (about which I shall have more to say below). The second half of the Moonstone quest takes True Friend “deep into the wild and lawless reaches of southern Magnamund”, which will only be familiar to those readers who played Ian Page’s regrettably short-lived spin-off series, The World of Lone Wolf (four gamebooks were published by Beaver Books from 1985 to 1986, beginning with Grey Star the Wizard).


This survey of the southern continent is the book’s greatest strength and the narrative is a sequence of fascinating explorations of and mini-adventures in the ports between Elzian and Lorn: from the emporium of Zharloum to the junkyard that is Dlash-da Ralzuha to a run-in with Sesketera, the despot of Ghol-Tabras; from the ruined splendour of Caeno, with its famous guanza derby, to the austerity of Nhang, with its eighty stone statues, and finally the Port of Suhn, ruled by the wizard Grey Star (hero of The World of Lone Wolf). The southern continent of Magnamund is every bit as interesting as its northern counterpart, where Lone Wolf cut his teeth, but The Buccaneers of Shadaki is more of a guidebook than a gamebook, even if it is a guidebook no one should be without. The combat finale is with a Zhürc, which might be a sea dragon and might not – one cannot be certain because there is no illustration – and provides an anti-climax either way. The creature on the eye-catching cover, drawn by Manuel Leza Moreno, is a scary sea crocodile called a Nigumu-sa that appears much earlier on, between Ghol-Tabras and Masama, but despite its presence the adventure as a game is altogether too easy.


One of the problems that has emerged in the New Order series was evident in some of the Grandmaster series: when one is playing a single character, who advances in prowess and power with each adventure but who is not involved in a campaign – working his way through increasingly difficult minions of an evil archenemy, for example – it becomes difficult for the author to maintain both the peril factor and a minimal degree of realism. True Friend is a Kai Grandmaster Senior at the beginning of Lone Wolf 21, which means that he is advanced to twenty-five out of a maximum of thirty-six levels of expertise and has several supernatural abilities. If Dever had opted to make The Buccaneers of Shadaki more challenging, he would have had to put some pretty tough opponents in relatively innocuous settings – but it would be stretching the imagination too far if street thugs and hungry animals were capable of taking on one of the most fearsome warriors on the continent. This is one of the reasons that I prefer a campaign to a series of standalone adventures. Speaking of which, like all the other Mantikore Verlag/Holmgard Press collector’s editions, this 574pp volume includes a bonus adventure, “A Wytch’s Nightmare” (written by Vincent Lazzari and Alexander Kühnert). The reader’s persona is the Wytch Yenna, her mission is to find the missing Grey Star, and the writers’ use of a female protagonist makes a very welcome change (true to its eighties origins, the various Lone Wolf protagonists have hitherto been exclusively male).


As my next review will be of Lone Wolf 29, I shall conclude this one with a brief summary of books 23 to 28. The Buccaneers of Shadaki ends with the promise of “a new and sinister threat to the fragile peace of Magnamund”. That threat is Baron Sadanzo and his robber-knights and Mydnight’s Hero (#23, first published in 1995) sees True Friend assisting the exiled Prince of Siyen to reclaim his father’s kingdom. Rune War (#24, 1995) returns the action to the Stornlands, a war-torn region in northern Magnamund where Lord Vandyan of Eldenora has used the Runes of Agarash to raise a reptilian breed of warrior. While Lone Wolf leads the crusade against Eldenora’s army, True Friend must break into the fortress of Skull-Tor to destroy the runes and his success sees him rise to become the second most powerful Kai Grandmaster. Shortly after the victory against Eldenora, Lone Wolf is abducted by a necromancer named Xaol and True Friend rescues him from Gazad Helkona in Trail of the Wolf (#25, 1997). (Unfortunately, the plot of rescuing friends or allies has been a little over-employed in the series, especially if one includes the standalone graphic novel spin-off, The Skull of Agarash, published in 1994, and “A Wytch’s Nightmare”.) Meanwhile, the greedy Dwarves of Bor have dug too deep in search of wealth, released an ancient horror called the Shom’zaa, and require True Friend’s assistance to defend their Throne Chamber in The Fall of Blood Mountain (#26, 1997). (As another aside, I should mention that this is currently the rarest of all the books; a second-hand copy was sold for just over £1000 on Amazon in August.) Vampirium (#27, 1998) takes a slight change of direction in that it initiates a series of events that will (it seems) dominate the remaining five books. The Autarch Sejanoz of Bhanar despatches a mission to excavate the Claw of Naar from the ruin of Naaros and True Friend must intercept the party before it returns to the capital. Sejanoz proceeds with the invasion of Chai without the Claw in The Hunger of Sejanoz (#28, 1998) and True Friend is sent to escort the Khea-Khan to safety. The Hunger of Sejanoz was published with only three hundred (as opposed to the usual three hundred and fifty) gameplay sections – I am not sure why – but Dever has plans to remedy this… all of which will be discussed in my review of The Storms of Chai.

Lone Wolf 21: Voyage of the Moonstone Collector’s Edition, by Joe Dever (Mantikore Verlag) | review by Rafe McGregor

I wonder if (m)any readers remember the thrill of picking up The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for the first time? Of realising that they hadn’t lost their thread in the real world, but were lost in the maze under the mountain? Or of not realising they were in the maze until the appearance of the deadly Minotaur? Firetop Mountain, the brainchild of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, was the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, published by Puffin in August 1982. The series was a great success, with fifty-nine books available by 1995. The first instalment nonetheless remained the most popular, spawning two sequels – Return to Firetop Mountain (#50, 1992) and Legend of Zagor (#54, 1993) – various spin-off products, and reprinting as late as 2010. I find it difficult to convey the excitement of Fighting Fantasy to twenty-first century readers, but one must remember that they appeared in a decade without the internet or household computers, where “TV games” (for those who could afford them) were restricted to Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Unlike the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which was well underway when Firetop Mountain appeared, Fighting Fantasy was aimed at young adults rather than children, with the best adventures combining compelling storytelling with pleasing terror at what awaited in the next numbered section. I must have played Firetop Mountain for the first time in 1985 or 1986, but quickly left Fighting Fantasy for a newer series. Lone Wolf was written by Joe Dever and launched with Flight from the Dark, first published by Sparrow in 1984. Where Fighting Fantasy were all standalone adventures, some of which took place in different universes, Lone Wolf adventures were self-contained but constituted an extended quest by a single character who progressed to new levels of expertise in a vividly-drawn and complex world called Magnamund. The epic began with the extermination of the Kai – an order of warriors dedicated to protecting the nation of Sommerlund as well as the rest of the free (medievally-speaking) world – at the hands of the demonic Darklords of Helgedad. Readers adopted the persona of Kor-Skarn (Lone Wolf), the sole survivor of the Darklord attack, and his first mission was to convey the bad news to the king. The missions became gradually more challenging as Lone Wolf advanced in power and ended up with the destruction of the Darklords in The Masters of Darkness (#12, 1988). The road to Helgedad and beyond was a rocky one, however, no more so than for Dever himself.