The Curse of Naar

Lone Wolf #20

by Joe Dever, Peter V. Jones (Illustrator)

In an interactive role-playing fantasy adventure, Lone Wolf matches wits with the Dark God Naar to try to retrieve the powerful Moonstone, an awesome weapon, before Naar can use it to destroy the world.

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Fiction, Role Playing Games, Childrens

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Joe Dever was an award-winning British fantasist and game designer. Originally a musician, Dever became the first British winner of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championship of America in 1982.

He created the fictional world of Magnamund as a setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. In 1984 he released the first book of the Lone Wolf series of young-adult gamebooks, and the series has since sold over 10.2 million copies worldwide. He experienced difficulty with his publishers as the game books market began to contract in 1995, until publication ceased in 1998 before the final four books (numbers 29-32) were released. Since 2003, however, the series has enjoyed a strong revival of interest in France, Italy, and Spain following the re-release of the gamebook series in these countries.

From 1996 onwards, Dever was involved in the production of several successful computer and console games. He also contributed to a Dungeons & Dragons-style role playing game for Lone Wolf published by Mongoose Publishing (UK) in 2004. Currently he is Lead Designer of a Lone Wolf computer game, and he is writing the final books in the Lone Wolf series. No official publication schedule exists for these works.

Reviews

[Cyril Corbaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent last part for Lone Wolf's last adventure, though far from being one of the best. I enjoyed delving into Daziarn one last time, though I must admit the book of darkness wasn't a great way to gain information on its denizens. It made the progression repetitive. I liked being given the chance to given peace to Paido's tortured soul, as well as so many of Lone Wolf's fallen allies. But what I felt was lacking was a propre epilogue.

[Rachel Redhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concluding chapter of the epic Grand Master series doesn't quite hit the heights as some of the earlier books but it is still a strong contender. Wrapping up the mcguffin storyline is half the plot while the rest of the book seems to be an excuse to feature as many old adversaries as possible, though some are more fleeting than others. While our protagonist's quest is fulfilled and a great battle has been won, the eternal war is not over and there is room left for more storylines in the New Order series of books, which like these last two books I've never read before, indeed I only got the hardback copy of book 30 just before the 25th of December and only teatime on the 4th of January was book 29 released to Project Aon. On the whole I have been very impressed by the Grand Master books, they have been the strongest books, prose wise of the first 20 volumes. Maybe they didn't cover great battles and nefarious schemes at first but towards the end they opened up in ways the Kai and Magnakai books never could, taking the rage away from the known and expected areas into new realms of being to face threats like never before.

[Mathew Walls · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty disappointing ending to the series, to be honest. The whole book is spent just trying to get back to where you were at the end of the previous book, and on the way you visit a bunch of places where your only goal is to leave. A trip through the various realms within the Plane of Darkness sounds fun in theory, but it ends up being very linear and feeling very aimless. And if you've completed the rest of the series there's no challenge to this book either. And if you haven't, well, the Grand Master series especially is not balanced around playing them individually.

[Dhana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Dever's Lone Wolf gamebooks were a consistent presence during my formative years and have had a big influence on my reading and gaming interests. I first started reading them in 1989 and continued to do so until 1999. With the resurgence of new Lone Wolf material in recent years, I've decided to revisit these nostalgic gems of my youth.

Book 20: The Curse of Naar
(published 1993, first read 1993)

Story: 5/5
Game: 4/5
Replayability: 5/5

[John Somers]

Read most of this series years ago and want to get the set and re-read them to see if they're as good as I remember. (Childhood nostalgia).