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Lone Wolf #17
The Deathlord of Ixia
The latest installment in the best-selling science-fiction role-playing series pits the reader against Ixiataaga, vile Deathlord of Ixia, and his legendary Deathstaff, who is bent on destroying the good people of Magnamund. Original.
301 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
1 person is currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Joe Dever
226 books170 followersJoe 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Want to Read
October 12, 2014Read 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).
April 24, 2015
Un très bon livre de la série Loup Solitaire. Rempli d'action et d'aventures, avec une histoire épique qui démarre rapidement et une fin très intéressante également!
July 9, 2018
I suspect that a lot of people would disagree with my assessment of this book, but I quite like it. It's definitely not well-balanced and you're probably going to have to cheat to finish it, but it's so cool though. An ice fortress full of zombies; the Deathlord himself. It's got so much going for it.
And if you've reached this point in the series you're probably used to cheating by now. As much as I do blame Dever (an unavoidable fight with a 60 CS enemy is ludicrous), he'd sort of painted himself into a corner by this point. Depending on which previous books they owned, what dice rolls they'd got, what Dsiciplines they chose and which equipment they'd managed to find a player could have a Combat Skill of anywhere from 10 to 66 by this point.
10 is only if you created your character in the Kai or Magnakai series, rolled a 0, and then skipped straight to this book, and 66 is only if you played every previous book, rerolled your CS in the Grandmaster series (and got a 9) and managed to pick up every CS boosting item you're allowed to keep into the Grand Master series (including the very hard to get Kagonite Chainmail). A more likely range is 25 to 53, but that's still unreasonably large.
Anyway, story's cool, game balance sucks.
And if you've reached this point in the series you're probably used to cheating by now. As much as I do blame Dever (an unavoidable fight with a 60 CS enemy is ludicrous), he'd sort of painted himself into a corner by this point. Depending on which previous books they owned, what dice rolls they'd got, what Dsiciplines they chose and which equipment they'd managed to find a player could have a Combat Skill of anywhere from 10 to 66 by this point.
10 is only if you created your character in the Kai or Magnakai series, rolled a 0, and then skipped straight to this book, and 66 is only if you played every previous book, rerolled your CS in the Grandmaster series (and got a 9) and managed to pick up every CS boosting item you're allowed to keep into the Grand Master series (including the very hard to get Kagonite Chainmail). A more likely range is 25 to 53, but that's still unreasonably large.
Anyway, story's cool, game balance sucks.
January 5, 2020
After four really good books comes something of a misfire, it's still got the rich prose of the earlier books but the plot is something of a mishmash, mixing two ideas together but not as successfully as they could have been. The storyline suffers as a result of these colliding ideas, pulling our protagonist from a nasty evil dead type of storyline into something more nebulous and distracting, before depositing our protagonist back into the original storyline with all the subtlety of an earthquake. With a little more care and build up this sudden change up could have worked really well and tied back to a previous book very nicely, but as it is it just feels random and arbitrary.
July 17, 2021
Finally got around to finishing this after getting horrendously stuck... and actually went back and played through the whole series again before I got to this one. While the story is quite interesting and there is a fair bit of ancient lore in here and we once again see a part of Magnamund which is new to us, the inevitable and unavoidable fight towards the end is so stupidly hard that it literally represented a one in five chance of success. The poor balance of the game really detracted from the book for me.
June 29, 2021
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 17: The Deathlord of Ixia
(published 1992, first read 1992)
Story: 4/5
Game: 1/5
Replayability: 1/5
Book 17: The Deathlord of Ixia
(published 1992, first read 1992)
Story: 4/5
Game: 1/5
Replayability: 1/5
October 3, 2022
Another good game book in the Lone wolf series. A good way to get kids to read if they don't like to.
June 4, 2025
The Kai Grandmaster series definitely suffer from a high variance in quality. After a disappointing Legacy of Vashna, The Deathlord of Ixia proves to be one of the best of that cycle so far. The fights are very hard unless you're using the best equipment, but they're in no way undoable. The writing is very good, as Joe Dever manages to create an unforgettable odyssey for Lone Wolf. If only there weren't these frustrating last-minute instant kill rolls... Still, this one's a very solid issue.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews