The Fall of Blood Mountain

Lone Wolf #26

by Joe Dever, Brian Williams (Illustrator)

For centuries the Shom’zaa has lain incarcerated and forgotten in a granite prison located deep below the mountains of Bor. Now this terrifying beast has accidentally been set free, and its hunger for vengeance knows no bounds. With a horde of vile minions at its command, swiftly the Shom’zaa enacts its sinister plan to destroy King Ryvin and the wondrous realm of the Drodarin dwarves.In The Fall of Blood Mountain, you must journey to the fabulous subterranean kingdom of the dwarves and attempt to save your ancient allies from the wrath of the Shom’zaa. Will you succeed in your mission or will you succumb to the terrible powers of this ancient champion of evil?

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Role Playing Games, Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[Mathew Walls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Am I getting sick of these books or was Dever? I think it was Dever. It really seems like he'd rather be writing novels, because there aren't many decisions to make in this book and those choices you do get don't really make much difference. The thing is, it's not a good novel. It's a bad rip-off of the Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings. That would be fine if it was more of a game, like you actually get to explore the mines - but you don't. You follow a set path to a foregone conclusion. If you've played the rest of the series so far there's no even really any danger in this book. Thanks to the constant upgrades you're basically unstoppable at this point. I want some game in my game book.

[Rachel Redhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not normally the kind of LW storyline I've come to enjoy the most this 'base-under-siege' style of plot has a lot of echoes with the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor who, in which our protagonist arrives somewhere and gets trapped in a building with a terrible menace trying to kill everyone inside. There's also a generous Lord of the Rings feel to the book too, with sections of the book reminding me of the cities of Moria and Erabor at times. The survive at all costs trope comes to the fore towards the end where myself as the book's protagonist (called Moonfire) have to kill off the big bad set free by accident. There's not much in the way of side-quests or thankfully logic puzzles so the book keeps on track right to the end with a heroic sacrifice to satisfy the expectations of the genre. I enjoyed this book more than I expected too, maybe because I recognised similar tropes to other media that I enjoy, or maybe it was just the prose, on sparkling form with sumptuous descriptions backed up by excellent artwork.

[Dhana · Rating 4 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 26: The Fall of Blood Mountain
(published 1998, first read 1998)

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