JasonKoivu

I'm puttin' on my "FALSE ADVERTISING!" angry face!

The Dragon's Ransom has "dragon" in the title and there's a dragon on the cover, so why is this book so nearly dragon-free?

And the cover...There's a hero depicted as a brawny, bronze-skinned, golden-haired warrior….



Yet, inside the hero appears as a spotty git who can't afford a decent haircut…



In this D&D oriented "Choose Your Own Adventure"-styled book, as the reader you play the role of a young cleric, a catch-all synonym for holy man. Go ahead and grab a D&D player. Once he's done shaking and wetting himself from the perceived attack, he'll tell you that the cleric class was the most boring character to play in the game bar none. It's like making the football team, but being made to play punter.

So let's get this into perspective: In this adventure you are a lowly priest who's tasked to get a bag-worth of gold from hobgoblins (one step up in fierceness from goblin...and that ain't very fierce) and the gold is to be used as tribute to a mostly benevolent dragon. Wow, not a terribly promising start. But from what I remember reading this as a kid, it wasn't so bad, so let's give it another go!

Well, the first thing I notice is that there are many lost opportunities for reader choices. It's like Laura French had a linear story in mind and she didn't want to veer away from it. Flipping through the book, I see now that there are only 18 possible endings. That's not a good sign, since many of those original CYOAs had 36.

Here are the adventures I recently went on in preparation for this review...

1) I take three companions with me: a fighter, thief and wizard...yep, the good classes. We head out of the village and kill a trope, er rather, I mean a bridge-guarding troll. Then we avoid a nixie (a water faerie) trap. (Note: Every adventure you go on in this book forces you to read through both of the previous encounters, and that equals large amounts of lame.) We then find and investigate an orc village where we locate a bunch of treasure in a dungeon. Snuck out w/it safely, but then got greedy for more and got killed by a war party.

2) Me and the gang made it to the underground hobgoblin lair. Found a treasure horde. Got greedy for more...and got it! BOO-YAH!!!

3) Me and my pals kill the troll, burn down the orc village, and then wake up in the middle of the night to a werewolf tearing into my throat. CONSEQUENCED!

4) I go it alone this time and try to use magic on the bridge-guarding troll, but it doesn't work. The End. Wait a second...So that means there's no way of succeeding unless you go with the group? Wow. That blows super bad. I'm starting to recall the annoyance I once felt about this book back when I first read it....

End Note: There are multiple occasions in which whatever choice you make will lead you to the same conclusion. Literally, you are eventually sent to the same page as a consequence of either choice, and this happens more than once. What's the point? It's just bad form for these kinds of books.