Item - Ring of the Ruby Dragon

I'm glad TSR decided to appeal to girls, but HeartQuest kicks off by including a book with one of my biggest pet peeves of Endless Quest: a protagonist who isn't good at anything useful except moral support. Even The Endless Catacombs ducked that one. Admittedly I'm nowhere near the target audience, but I don't want to go on an adventure as a character who spends the early part of the book constantly bursting into tears.

More reviews by Fireguard

This was an interesting experiment by TSR, a clear attempt to appeal to female readers by adding a romance aspect to the fantasy and pick a path elements. Although a few of the Endless Quest books have you play female characters, your gender wasn't really an issue. The books probably weren't very successful as they only lasted through number 6.

What is first of note are the window style covers which I've only ever seen on romance novels (I've never actually read one so I have no idea how close these books follow the genre). It's probably hard to get a copy that doesn't have a torn cover as they are very flimsy. The other thing you notice is that "Dungeons and Dragons" appears nowhere on the cover, front or back. I suspect that in the early 80's, D&D was so closely associated with being a "guy" thing, they were afraid no young girls would pick them up. It just reminds me that I an clearly not the target audience for these books.

The Elmore cover is excellent as always. In the book, you play Chantelle, the daughter of a travelling jeweler. Your father gets kidnapped by some supposedly friendly centaurs under the control of a red dragon and you must try to save him. You have with you magical jewels which you use to cast spells, making you more or less a magic-user for this adventure.

It's actually quite a good book. You find help along the way in the form of a young knight, Coren, an older 20-something knight, Torben and a female halfling thief named Jancy. Depending on which paths you take, either knight can wind up as your potential love interest, making the romance part more interesting than if there were just one choice. Most of the choices are similar to a normal Endless Quest, except one, where you can decide to kiss a boy or not. But interestingly, not all party members may make it through the mission.

The book is somewhat cheesy, sometimes stopping for romance when I think the protagonist would be in no mood for it, her father a prisoner and all, but I reckon that's part of the genre. One very cheesy trap, a door you can pass through only if you are in love. Why would the dragon have a door like that in her lair? Whats the point? Interestingly, the older knight and the halfling can wind up as a couple, making me wonder what we would call their offspring.

I really found the scenario intriguing. As the dragon has charmed many, but not all, of the forest creatures, you wind up fighting satyrs, centaurs, lammasu, mermaids, etc. that you'd not normally fight. I think it would make a great D&D campaign module. An adventure where you couldn't kill the forest creatures but still have to find a way to defeat them.

Overall, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

More reviews by Kveto

[Rating: 4/10]
[Recommended? NO]

Upon first reading/playing, I considered the HeartQuest debut "Ring of the Ruby Dragon" THE best fantasy-romance hybrid gamebook I'd ever come across - and, regardless of the mixed opinion I hold of it now, Jeannie Black deserves props for what she accomplished. My first playthrough was really fun - the route playfully written with a fairly good-in-chemistry romantic match between Chandelle and Coren, good usage of setting and an interesting final showdown against Wyvella/Raedl. Upon re-reading, I was disappointed to find that the route I went down the first time was the only one which seemed to logistically make any sense as far as choices went. Immersive as it was on this obvious path, there were surprisingly no creatures to fight (ex. the centaur from the beginning didn't turn up or ever get brought up), save for the climax and the aforementioned turning-the-dragon-villainess-into-a-cat ending where Chandelle duels with the villain deep in the cavern. On other paths, the book's flaws are far more blaring; this left me seriously wishing the first route I read was given a more straightforward third-person tone and non-interactive treatment, considering its enjoyability, immersiveness and possibility of said possible adventure. The rest of the book as a whole, however, ultimately ends too quickly for comfort and manages to feel narratively rushed (and not romance-oriented per se) (on that note, Coren should've been the only love interest), and the unnecessary crying is odd, to say the least.

If the whole book was as enjoyable as the first read it would make for an easy, strong recommendation, though all the other paths of general disappointment weakened the replay value and weighed down the book enough that I wouldn't generally recommend it as a whole. If there's one book in the series to check out, though, it's easily this one. ^^

(Mysteriously disappears into the shadows.)

More reviews by Shadeheart