1. Leda: Book the First of the Maduban Saga
Author: Suzi Yee
First Published: April, 2003
Length: 241 sections (plus 5 combat appendices)
Number of Endings: 3
Plot Summary: Leda, an elvish Rogue/Wizard who left home to study
magic in the city, finds her past catching up with her and her future likely
to get more interesting.
My Thoughts: This is yet another unimpressive amateur effort.
Unlike the disappointing Rangers of Taradoin or
Lands of Delorian series, this offering at least
featured a first volume that I was somehow able to plod my way through, but
I very nearly didn't bother. When I first downloaded the book, there was no
printable version available, and the number of errors I encountered in just
a few minutes of reading made my patience with staring at my screen quickly
waver. I complained, and to my delight, the publishers quickly revised the
book to include a printable version, fixing a few errors along the way. A
noble effort, but not enough to make this product worthwhile. For one thing,
although some errors have been fixed, others have not, and there remain many
spelling errors (mostly involving the accidental use of homonyms) and awkward
sentence constructions. Even if all of these were fixed, though, the book's
flowery but awkward writing would make it hard to tolerate at times. The
author's inability to introduce characters smoothly into the story is also
frequently jarring. Mediocre writing could be forgiven in the face of good
gameplay, but there's no gameplay to speak of here. The book is totally
linear, with the vast majority of sections ending simply in "go to
x" rather than in a choice. There is no attachment to the character
since it is pre-created, and the fact that there is no opportunity for
strategy in assigning skill points makes what few skill checks there are
unsatisfying and unsuspenseful. Combat is handled poorly, with the reader
having two options: read a narrative description of the fight (sometimes with
a token choice or two) or else run the fight based on giant blocks of D20
stats without any tactical notes. This is a case of two undesirable
extremes; just reading about the combat takes away a great chance for
exciting gameplay, but being dumped with stat blocks and being forced to
figure out what all the sides would do in a fight is just tedious and lacking
in direction. Some happy medium should have been reached, but this would
have taken more effort than anyone seems to have wanted to invest in this
book. By the time I reached the "cliffhanger ending," I was left
feeling that nothing had really happened. The story never went anywhere
(apart for some shallow character development rendered unimpressive by the
unengaging writing style), and there was absolutely no sense of having played
a good (or, let's face it, even bad) game of Dungeons & Dragons.
It's totally astounding how thoroughly the book fails to live up to even an
ounce of its potential. Alas, I once again feel compelled to advise against
purchasing a newly-released gamebook, even though I'd love to be able to
promote it.