Item - The Malifestro Quest

The Malifestro Quest is my favorite of the Zork gamebooks and quite possibly the funniest gamebook I've read. I'd be thrilled to read a funnier one. MQ's humor expands well beyond Zork in-jokes, with your new elf companions Fred and Max carrying most of the weight. A dumb troll and cyclops ("Um, yum, little tender breakfast people" is a quote that stayed with me) are dealt with nonviolently. Even Malifestro, the evil wizard in the title, and a demon you summon to help against him (no one else is available) have their moments. There's even a callback to the first book, too: the fake item referenced there actually exists here. My guess is Steven Meretzky felt more comfortable writing and trying jokes until they worked with one book under his belt. He even plays the "I can't detail this ending or your parents won't buy you the book" card. Grues are involved.

Not that Bivotar and Juranda have much time to appreciate all this. MQ starts with them (well, Bill and June, before they change identities) having the same dream about Syovar being near death. They then check the Ring of Zork, which is turning all sorts of weird colors. Bill puts it on, and they're transported to an empty, dismal castle. Well, empty except for Fred and Max, two hapless-seeming elves. They actually know some simple magic, though their tries at more powerful stuff like teleportation fail. It's enough to provide a few laughs and even progress on their quest. They also know the castle enough to sneak into a supply room. What supplies you choose are important.

MQ is more linear than FoK -- the only big branch is one where you need to escape thieves, and you have a variety of ways to. In one, Fred says "Fred allergic to thieves" after Max stifles him sneezing as everyone's hiding. In another, he casts a friendship spell beginning with "Chummo," which made me laugh harder than I should, then and now. These work. Eventually you need to use a Frobozz Magic Carpet (hooray FrobozzCo,) and there are a few silly but believable "why didn't they do that earlier" moments.

There are a couple of choices that play on your impatience. For instance, turn to page X or X+20, and you may think aha, I'll jump ahead, since the page progression is linear as you make good choices. But there's a bad end stuck in there. It's a small but effective subversion for me, and it works throughout the series. But there are also a couple of branches where Bivotar and Juranda refer to hints from a helper in a side branch you didn't have to visit. (You have a 1/4 chance of guessing both choices right.) The discontinuity is confusing, but one trick at the end makes up for it. While there's no choice where you can lie about finding a nonexistent item, one option lets you try to bluff your way through the final fight. It doesn't work.

Picking the right choice isn't brain-crunching, and there are few random deaths. The series does seem to punish abject cowardice consistently. But even here, there's a funny ending involving magical bureaucratic red tape of a sort. In the end, if you have the right items, you can summon the demon, who grants a wish. There's an exciting final fight.

More reviews by andrewschultz

This book is significantly better than the first book in the series; the tone is considerably sillier, and silliness is important in anything Zork-related. Also, for those who appreciate in-jokes, the magic sneakers used as a cheater trap in the previous book are actually present here. The only real problem with the book is that if you fail to stop at the cabin (page 63), the continuity gets messed up because you don't get to talk to a character who is mentioned later on.

More reviews by Demian

This book combines elements of dungeon crawl and wilderness adventuring. It is much more linear than book one, and only one path leads to success. It is a fun adventure to read, with more Zork-esque humour than other entries in the series. I found The Cavern of Doom to be more interesting in terms of how the choices are constructed, though. Overall, however, this is a good entry in a series that was one of the few worthy competitors to the Endless Quest fantasy adventures.

More reviews by Guillermo