Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #6

by Rose Estes

Forced into a duel of wizards at the mysterious Rainbow Castle, you are magically separated from your teacher and grandfather, Pentegarn, who battles for his life against three evil wizards. You must get back to him!

The paths you may take are many and the choices are yours!

Will you be thrust into Limbo and be forced to explore the misty cloud castle and meet giant Rainbow Dragons?

Will you go into the dungeons and fight the strange monsters of the lower regions?

Or will you venture up into the highest towers of Rainbow Castle and be forced to overcome the magical taps that the evil wizards have set for you and your friends?

Action and adventure are yours in every ENDLESS QUEST book. You will find yourself returning again and again to experience new paths of excitement.

Remember! Only your choices can help being about the REVENGE OF THE RAINBOW DRAGONS

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Fiction, Young Adult, Choose Your Own Adventure, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Rose Estes is the author of many fantasy and science fiction books, including full length novels and multiple choice gamebooks. After contributing extensively to TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons and Dragons Endless Quest series (of which she wrote the first six, as well as others later down the line), she wrote her first full length novel, Children of the Dragon (1985). She continued to write for TSR by writing six volumes in a series of Greyhawk novels. She contributed to other series, but continued to write books and start series of her own that, like Children of the Dragon, take place in a fantasy or science fiction world created by her own imagination. She also wrote the Golden Book Music Video Sing, Giggle and Grin.

Reviews

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dragons and wizards and rainbows!


Not what I normally go in for, but I did dig out some enjoyment from Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons, a sequel of sorts in the Endless Quest series.

A few characters from Pillars of Pentegarn are onboard for another adventure. This time young Jaimie and his animal pals find themselves lost in a castle and must escape in time to save their good wizard friend from three underhanded wizard baddies.

I reread Revenge... in prep for this review and this is what happened in my Choose Your Own Adventure style reading fun!

Adventure #1 Given three choices of where to hang out in the castle while the wizards are battling, I chose "Limbo", not because it sounded appealing, but rather it was the first choice. Limbo in this book is depicted as a cloud landscape with some distant caves and a castle. I saved an ingrate child from the castle and, realizing this whole "hang out while we battle" thing is just a ruse to get us out of the way so the baddies could dispatch my friend, we head back towards the wizard battle. However, in one of the craftier choice conundrums posed in an Endless Quest book, I made a blunder that got us all killed.

Adventure #2 Tried Limbo again, wanting to check out those caves. Here be dragons! With little to no effort, the day is won with FABULOUS rainbow magic!

Adventure #3 Chose the tower this time and ended up battling spiders, 3-headed dogs and animated suits of armor. At one point there was an opportunity to die in an obvious and idiotic way, after which the author suggests you go back and pick a different path...Not start from the beginning again, mind you! Many of these books suggest at "The End" that you start all over, but not this one. The above mentioned scenario is the only time in this book that you get a do-over. It's like Estes feels bad for the shortbus kid: "Go on, Sport, give it another go. You can do it!"

Adventure #4 I wanted to try the tower again. This one ended with one of the most ridiculously obvious choices. Remember, you're trying to escape in order to get back and rescue your wizard friend from the wizard baddies. So, towards the end of this reading adventure, I found a library with a book containing three spells: Grow huge, become super wise, or "Rescue a Friend". Wow.

Adventure #5 In a desire to give every major pathway in this book a shot, I tried "The Game Room" next. Turns out it's a dungeon. I met an old man and played with his stones*. I obtained the key to the kingdom and I AM CHAMPION!!!

Adventure #6 That last ending was pretty kickass, but I thought I'd try the game room once more. I recalled an interesting choice I passed up the first time. This led me to some fungi, who weren't exactly fun guys.


Well, that was an enjoyable trot down memory lane! When I was but a young lad, I read and reread Revenge... and recalled being annoyed by it. Part of the problem is your animal friends, Owl and Fox, who provide too much goddamn comic relief. Too many goofy scenes that go for the cheap laugh. The other major issues is that the dragons hardly ever appear! They're in the title, they're on the cover, but they're barely in the book at all! There's essentially one dragon scenario. That's disappointing.

Otherwise, this isn't a bad little book in the Endless Quest series. The old characters, familiar from my childhood as well as from this being a sequel, gave me warm fuzzies. I'm actually surprised more sequels weren't written for this series. Most are just one-offs. Endless Quest, being a series by nature, really dropped the ball on not serializing their characters. And they might as well have, because usually you play the same kind of character, either an elf or a young androgynous human.

Overall, Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons provides good times, just not great times.


* Not a euphemism!

[Jeffrey Caston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could go back to my 10 or 12 year old self and say "dude, don't get rid of this! Hang on to it. You'll regret it if you cave to parental pressure to clear out your room and feed this little gem to the yearly yard sale."

Oh well. I managed to find a copy through an online store. It's beat to hell, but it has a good home now. This is one of the "endless quest" books based on D&D back in the day. I'm on a bit of an endless quest myself trying to get copies of these books. It's an ongoing project.

I've had it a while now just forgot to read and review. Setting aside the fact that it isn't really dragons taking "revenge" on anybody just trying to recapture a kingdom that was good.

I read it twice more last night. Yes, it is very juvenile. But I enjoyed it. The art is a kind of simple drawing, but it adds a lot to the very subtle dark undertones. The first time I re-read I succeeded in saving the kingdom and the dragons came back. The second time, with different choices... well I just wanted to see what would happen and I ended up dissolving into a pensive cloud that becomes part of Limbo.

Thoroughly enjoyed this however. Lots of fun.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gets a “low” three stars, while Mountain Of Mirrors got a “high” 3-star rating. Even though they are both flawed, the other one is better for repeat readings. This one is disappointing, but not so disappointing that I’m willing to knock it all the way down to two.

The biggest problem with this book as a choose-your-own-adventure is that it’s too easy, and that most of the pathways through it are too short. There are some imaginative and exciting outcomes you can reach, but without an occasional failure, there’s no reason to keep coming back and trying again, and without longer stories, it seems to provide little bang for its buck. I played it seven times this last week, and I won five times – each time by doing something different, so I was never moved back onto a previous winning path. The two times I lost, I basically had to deliberately make stupid decisions to see what would happen. Now, for a small child, that can be a good thing, but for the early-young-adult audience this was presumably intended for, that’s boring. Putting so many unique paths to victory in the book also means that each path is pretty short, and a short adventure is rarely memorable, which is why I didn’t come back to it more often, I think.

There are some other problems as well. The first is the title: In a sense, the title is a spoiler for one particular outcome of the adventure. I think in three of my four winning paths there were no rainbow dragons at all, and one of them only included them briefly at the end, and they really had no revenge in that version. “Duel at Rainbow Castle” would be a more accurate description, although the TSR marketing dept probably thought dragons would sell better than castles. The other problem is the opening gambit. Both Dungeon of Dread and especially Mountain Of Mirrors had long expository sections with no choices, which is understandable in setting up a story. This one tries to trick you into thinking you have choices at two points in the exposition, but choosing the “wrong” decision on either just dumps you back into the narrative after a brief distraction. That’s just annoying. Choices should be choices, and they should have an effect on the outcome, or be eliminated in editing. Those distraction pages could have been put to better use adding color to the story.

The endings are all pretty much the same as well – you go back to the place you started from, only this time things go well because of the choices you made along the way. That’s not really a criticism, by the way, but it emphasizes the fact that all of the interesting stuff happens in the middle, during the few choices you do get between the exposition and the all-too-sudden endings. This is where Estes’s imagination really shines, and there are some very creative middle sections, which will be enjoyed by youthful fantasy fans. It won’t take you long to exhaust them, but they are worth it, for people who enjoy D&D and related worlds.

[TC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my very first "pick your own path" adventure book and I wish I still had it! I loved these when I was a pre-teen and still have some of my Sherlock Holmes style adventures that I pretty much keep for "old times sake" This wasn't the best of the books I "played", but being the first it always holds a special place in my memory.

[Robert Crisp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this book as a kid (the whole series, in fact) and was glad to find a used copy online. I've been reading it to my eight-year-old son, and he loves it. The book follows the Choose Your Own Adventure model, so you can meet a bad end, but there's nothing graphic about it. The darker endings are more spooky than anything.

[Russ Painter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. It was cool because you could choose what the characters would do and there were different endings depending on your choices.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so much fun, a much more robust story then I'm used to from choose your own adventure books but it makes for an compelling read. Feels like a pretty well drawn children's fantasy tale that you interact with.

Not life changing but it's fun to read a fox and an owl bicker whilst you solve fun logic puzzles.

[Toni Serrano Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuación directa de "Las Columnas de Pentegarn" que, desafortunadamente, no alcanza el alto nivel de su predecesora.
Nos encontramos ante una historia con un talante mucho más infantil que su entrega anterior y con una historia mucho menos tétrica. ¿Es por ello una mala novela? De hecho, no lo es. Es más, continua la historia de forma directa (por supuesto, únicamente a uno de sus finales, el considerado "perfect ending" de la entrega anterior), aportando una conclusión casi necesaria. La narrativa tampoco está nada mal y aporta una diversidad de caminos y finales muy interesantes, pero no es tan genial como lo era la otra.
Las comparativas son odiosas, lo sé, pero es imposible no hacerlo en este caso. Por supuesto se puede leer independientemente, pero merece la pena no hacerlo para enterarnos de todos los detalles.

[Joey V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I did like this book, it represents the worst feature of "choose your path" books. Namely, several "choices" give you no choice whatsoever. You're given three choices to pick from, but two of them lead directly back to the same page, forcing you to choose the third one anyway. Also, I saw no dragons, rainbow or otherwise. Given the title of the book, I would expect the one thing for the various paths to have in common, if no other similarities at all, would be dragons. Rainbow dragons. Wanting revenge.

[Jsrott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure why I didn't like this one as much as the others when I was a kid- maybe it had something to do with "rainbow" dragons. I like it much better now for its multiple choices and several different outcomes.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorable, lighthearted entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, with rainbow dragons, a castle in the clouds, and a bratty princess.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhhhh my childhood! ~reasons why I'm a nerd~

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The same review I wrote for Zork applies for this book also.

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recuerdo que leí esta serie en paralelo al Elige tu propia a aventura original. Tenía como novedad que había pequeños detalles que lo hacían más parecido a una partida de rol, aunque no tanto como los de la serie de Lucha ficción, por ejemplo. A partir de la primera entrega eran básicamente los de ETPA pero con temática fantástica. Su calidad literaria era tirando a baja pero mantenían el interés y había bastantes finales, por lo que las relecturas daban para muchos ratos dentro de lo que en este tipo de libros era habitual. Entretenidos, sin duda.

[David Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

De niño había en la casa de mi pueblo un par de estos libros de Rose Estes de DnD, serían de mi primo. Me empecé el del Dragon Negro, me mataron un par de veces y dropeé.
30 años mas tarde, bicheando los nuevos librojuegos me he acordado y he terminado pillandome un par de ellos por Wallapop.
Este me h durado como una hora, y he llegado a la resolución buena (creo que será la mejor) a base de evitar las opciones descabelladas. No lo valoro como lectura, pero como experiencia mazmorrera de su época, me ha parecido bastante inmersivo y divertido.

[Peyton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love these choose your own adventure books. I picked up this book years ago because I was excited to meet rainbow dragons on my adventure. I was, sadly, disappointed by the lack of rainbow dragons, but I did find them this time around!

I wish the dragons had a bigger part in the story, but Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons is still exciting enough to keep me rereading even years after I first picked it up.

[Aurora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the story except when my first two decisions just led me back to the decision I didn’t want.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a kid, I find this fun because it's an endless quest wherein you will choose which ending you want.

[Strawberry Witch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t want to brag, but I am the new ruler of the Rainbow Kingdom and all the rainbow dragons are returning home.

[Sammy Tiranno · Rating 3 out of 5]

As average as the rest of the Endless Quest books, but it was a fun experience because I made a beeline to the correct ending, avoiding THE END that appeared on almost every alternate page.

[Krissy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was phenomenal! I was so, so impressed with the various story threads--they all went in completely different directions and were so satisfying in their own ways. This was a lot of fun to read!

[Aritz me obligo (pacopepe) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me he muerto a las 4 decisiones, 0 de 10, nada recomendable.

[Dick Baldwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only thing more embarassing than actually reading this is taking more than a month to read it. It's a children's Choose Your Own Adventure book!! I read every possible storyline, and they all totally sucked. I think dragons are pretty awesome, but actually I think that dragons are really stupid.

[colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

read 05.18.91

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Friend lent me this book during the 7th grade. He gave me a copy some 50 years later. Was moved, but felt very sad.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the only Choose Your Own Adventure title that I remember, and yet I remember the least plot from it, which makes me think it wasn't that interesting. Dragon/human romance seemed fairly well accepted though, if I recall, which would appeal to some.