Dance of Demons (Greyhawk: Gord the Rogue, #5) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

May 26, 2016 Derek rated it did not like it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery, tie-in

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'll just have to cry uncle on this one. After a 20-page recap of what came before--the fact that it has crawled so far up its own internal details to warrant such summary is a warning sign, in my mind--the story divides its time between Gord's running firefight and combat and raid into the depths of the Abyss, and the tactical battle among demons/devils/daemons in various nightmare realms for possession of the Theorparts, the magical plot device. One hundred pages of this, with no real texture I'll just have to cry uncle on this one. After a 20-page recap of what came before--the fact that it has crawled so far up its own internal details to warrant such summary is a warning sign, in my mind--the story divides its time between Gord's running firefight and combat and raid into the depths of the Abyss, and the tactical battle among demons/devils/daemons in various nightmare realms for possession of the Theorparts, the magical plot device. One hundred pages of this, with no real texture or variety, and I was out of beans.

Part of it was that no amount of powers, abilities, or toys could possibly make Gord interesting, despite Gygax's insistence. Gord is, at the end, just a burlap bag to pour in awesomeness, to be the Champion and to get to the end of the story. I was tempted to skip over his sections entirely, which is a sad statement for a "GORD THE ROGUE" book.

Second were the unending demonic battles filled with tactics, which read like some wargaming session report. I can see some of what he tried to do, what he touched on: the planar conflict is reflected in the mundane world in the form of conventional wars and natural disasters and wholesale destruction. The multiverse is caught up in this, with alternate Oerths in flames, star empires marching to battle, strange vast entities wrestling and flopping in the void. But it is a paragraph in mentioning and away.

I'm not sure that justice can be done to the concept, but Gygax barely tries. He steps away from the potentially amazing into some bizarre treknobabble-style fiddling with energies and forces and tactics and tricks.

And there's the overwhelming pointlessness of it all. The entire point of the story, the very end, is the destruction of Gygax's Greyhawk itself, his Oerth. His final departure from TSR Hobbies was not kind, and left him needing to license his own setting in order to write in it. So this is its cataclysmic destruction, a final F-U to everything that was. In its epilogue, he introduces the world of Yarth, which was--drum roll--the intended setting for his follow-on RPG, Mythus Dangerous Journeys. ...more

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