Narnia Solo Games

                                                      RANKINGS 

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1. Return to Deathwater - Score = 5.3   Tier = OK

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 1

Time to head to Narnia! I have been aware of "The Chronicles of Narnia" books by author C.S. Lewis most of my life, but have not actually read any of them, so this will be my introduction to this particular world. Although for all I know these gamebooks are nothing like the actual Narnia books, but I'm prepared to give the authors here the benefit of the doubt for the time being I suppose. The author of book 1 in this series is Curtis Norris, who I know from.......well, from nothing really, as this will be the first gamebook of his that I have played. So this book will then be a first for me in a couple of respects. One interesting thing to note right off the top while reading the prologue, is that we play in this adventure as an actual child (I'm guessing 10 or 11 years old?), who while on a school field trip to a museum one day, breaks away from the class to investigate a hidden alcove that they had never noticed before, despite having been to the museum several times in the past. This alcove reveals a stuffed lion (the representation of Aslan the Lion, a major character in the Narnia books and the only one I am at least somewhat familiar with), and behind the lion, a portal that transports us to the magical land of Narnia. Gameplay-wise, the adventure does not get off to a good start, as you are not once but TWICE given the option to ignore the portal and return to your class, but should you try to do that either time, the stuffed lion calls out to you and you end up going through the portal anyway. Sigh. This kind of thing again. 

Anyway, once you step through the unavoidable portal, you find yourself transported to the castle at Cair Paravel in Narnia, where you meet with King Favian, a boy about the same age as yourself. The King greets you and says you have been brought to Narnia because he has a mission for you (and why he needs you specifically I do not know, as he seems to have many servants and troops at his command). It would seem that there is a cursed island known as Deathwater which lies out in the eastern ocean, and the King tasks you to travel to the island, investigate the source of the curse, and if possible, remove the curse itself. Oh, and if it's not too much trouble, there is a side-quest here whereby he also asks you to find out what happened to a certain Lost Lord who went missing after travelling there. The King will have one of his ships take you out to Deathwater, and will also have one of his closest friends accompany you, that being a two-foot tall talking mouse called Cheekimeek. So hang on a second, you have magicians and badass rangers under your command and you give me only a two-foot tall mouse as my backup? You know I'm only like 10 years old right? Thanks a bunch pal! With that, and after spending a night in the castle to rest up, you and Cheekimeek board the ship the next morning and set sail towards Deathwater.  

It's apparent right away that this adventure is from the same publisher, ICE, that gave us the "Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries" series, because the game system is very similar. There are no Life points or Stamina points here, and no combat system. You have six starting Skills: Fighting, Trickery, Action, Talking, Perception, and Inner Strength. You are then tested on these Skills during the quest by rolling 2D6 and needing to roll equal to or over a given number to pass the check and overcome the obstacle in question. The pre-generated character shown at the beginning of the book has a +1 for all these Skills, however you can allocate the points elsewhere if you wish. The problem here is that this series also throws in a rule whereby if you decide not to allocate any points to a particular Skill, then instead of just playing with a 0 for that Skill, you need to suffer a -2 penalty for it instead. Ouch. This really makes the pre-generated character your best option. If the adventure had proven to be more difficult, then some trial and error to determine for which Skills you could afford to take the penalty would have added some nice strategy, but as it turns out, this is hardly required. And as also with the Sherlock Holmes series, this adventure provides a "Key Sheet" at the front of the book, where at various times during the quest when you perform a certain action or make a certain decision, you are told to check off one of the numbered Keys on the sheet. Then later you may be asked if you have a certain numbered Key, and if you do, then events will take place that reflect what you did earlier in obtaining that Key. So, a codeword system in other words. Again though, whether I had a certain Key or not seemed wholly irrelevant as I made my way through the adventure, at least in terms of solving the mystery of Deathwater. 

Once you and Cheekimeek make it to the island, avoiding some pirates on the ocean along the way, you have the option of landing on either the north or south side of the island. And thank goodness for this, as it provides some welcome replayability to what otherwise felt like a very easy adventure. You travel overland, dealing with wild dogs or more pirates depending on which way you go, before entering a cave which leads underneath a mountain that lies at the centre of the island. You will have learned by now that the secret to the curse of the island lies within this mountain, and then you will possibly encounter some dwarves before navigating mostly empty corridors, which all seem to lead to the same place no matter which way you go. You eventually arrive at a magnificent underground tower located near the centre of the mountain, and once inside this tower, you will unravel the mystery of the curse, and will need to solve a riddle in order to lift it. The riddle itself was actually not bad, and while anyone who has played a certain number of gamebooks will probably spot the answer quickly enough, I could also see it perhaps stumping quite a few players. Answering it kind of betrays itself though, as you do not need to turn to a secret reference number or anything, you are just asked if you figured it out or not. I don't mind this approach in principle, as I would answer honestly if I could not solve it (and players who wish to cheat at the riddle would probably find a way to do so anyway, even if it did involve a coded reference number), however this doesn't prevent someone who may THINK they know the answer from turning to the appropriate section, only to find out that they really did not. (Would they just voluntarily stop reading at this point?) Even if you can't solve the riddle though, you are given a second chance in the form of a relatively easy Skill Check, and passing this gives you the required answer. Once this is done, you head back to your ship waiting at the shore which takes you back to Cair Paravel for the wrapping up of the adventure with King Favian in an exit-interview format.   

For the longest time while playing through this, I was coming under the impression that it was one of those rare gamebooks that might be impossible to fail. I routinely found myself rolling low on skill checks and failing them, only to find I was just sent along my way anyway, with perhaps only a mild loss of my character's pride being the difference between passing and failing the skill check. Whether I picked up a particular Key didn't seem to matter, nor did many of the choices I was asked to make, as you are shuttled along towards the goal seemingly no matter what you do. This changes a little bit at least during the final sequence of the adventure, where after making it back to Cair Paravel, you are questioned by King Favian on what you have uncovered. Basically he asks you if you: a) learned what was causing the curse on Deathwater, and b) were able to remove the curse. Both of these are learned right at the very end of your time on the island, and as long you took the seemingly obvious choices and solved the riddle, you should have learned everything you need to know. Should you not have uncovered the mystery of the curse AND also removed it, you will fail the adventure and are sent back to your own world to try again some other time. The sidequest involving you finding out what happened to the Lost Lord who disappeared on the island is asked about, and you can find this out during your time on the island, but it is not required to win the book. Going back to look at some unexplored options after beating the adventure however, I did find out that it is in fact possible to die on the island (in one instance at least), but it seems to me you would have to make some poor decisions for that to happen. You can also find yourself losing the adventure by rolling VERY low at one point, so while failure of the adventure is certainly possible, you really shouldn't need more than a try or two to beat this one.  

I have to say that the writing style here was also not really for me. The author does a passable job, but there is a whimsical nature to the whole thing that isn't really my cup of tea. (But I guess playing as a child who has a 2-foot tall talking mouse as a companion, what did I expect?).  It also felt somewhat lazy to me in places too, as I know almost as little about Narnia now as I did before I went in, with very little in the way of description or atmosphere imbued into the places I was visiting. The prologue explains how Aslan contributed to the formation of Narnia, but about all I can tell you about the world itself is that it contains talking animals and walking trees. There was one thing that happened to me while playing though that really stuck out as lazy. Upon failing a Skill Check against some pirates, I awoke to find myself knocked out and tied up, at which point I had to sheepishly ask Cheekimeek, being a mouse and all,  if he could chew through our ropes. Later on, I found myself failing another Skill Check against some dwarves, which led to the exact same text where I again asked Cheekimeek to chew through our ropes! Couldn't the author have come up with more than one way for us to escape?  The adventure also repeats yet another aspect of the Sherlock Holmes series, in that it begins with section number 100. I am still wondering why that is. Is it to make the adventure appear longer? ("Look! A quick glance at the back of the book shows it has 449 sections! Wow!")

Rankings: I thought this was on its way to the 5.0 score that I feel compelled to give gamebooks that, while not necessarily bad, barely constitute a game. The ending sequence thankfully does just enough to save it from that fate, and you can lose if you make some poor decisions (or are unlucky enough to roll double-ones on a particular skill check near the end of the game). Overall though there are just far too many choices here where it doesn't matter at all what you pick, and I found the writing to be rather spartan, and even lazy in places. But on the positive side there are a couple of different routes through the island along with the sub-quest involving the Lost Lord, so it does have a modicum of replayibility at least. I hope I learn more about the world of Narnia before the series is over though, as this book let me down in that regard. (And why was this book called Return to Deathwater when I had never been there before?)  At least there was a map of Narnia at the front of the book that gave me a little something to go on. Maybe I should just read the actual books! 

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2. The Sorceress and the Book of Spells - Score = 7.0   Tier = Good

Sections: 455
Attempts to Beat: 2

Book 2 in the series, from author Anne Schraff this time, begins in a not-dissimilar way from book 1, as we once again play as a child character that finds themselves pulled somewhat unwillingly into Narnia. This time, while summer vacationing with our family at the beach, we swim out into the ocean and dive down in an attempt to bring up something shiny that we spot beneath the waves. When we surface however, we are shocked to find that the beach we just left is no longer there, and instead we swim ashore towards the castle of Cair Paravel. Finding ourselves invited inside the castle, we come across Aslan the Lion himself, who has a mission for us. It would appear that an evil Sorceress has managed to acquire a spellbook from another dimension that gives her the power of persuasion, which she is using to make the inhabitants of Narnia distrustful and pit them off against one another. She is using this power to sow discord throughout Narnia, while she waits for her moment to then strike at the weakened kingdom. Aslan thus tasks us with heading out into the wilds of Narnia to retrieve the spellbook and return it to him, so that he can set right what the Sorceress has done. So off we set from the castle, with only some vague clues to guide us as to where the book might be hidden. (What, no travelling companion this time?) 

The first thing that really stands out here is that there is one very large addition to the gameplay system, and that comes in the form of a grid-style map of the area of Narnia that you will be exploring, with the different grid squares available being marked off from 1A to 6D, making for 24 spaces in total. This is very similar to the map-movement system seen in the "Middle-earth Quest" series, as the adventure starts you on a given grid square, and you are then free to explore in any direction you choose by moving to an adjacent grid square to the one you are currently on (and moving diagonally is also allowed here). When you move to a new square, you then look up that numbered square in the location list at the front of the book, which will give a brief description of the area of Narnia you are now exploring before telling you which section number of the book to turn to. Returning to squares you have already visited is handled quite well, as when you look up the square in the location list, you will be asked if you have a certain Key number checked off which you would have picked up had you explored this grid square already, and in that case you are either sent to a different section of the book where things play out a bit differently (ie. creatures you have met before will remember you etc), or you might be told there is nothing more to be done here and to move on to a new square. This makes for a very well-done free movement system, and I enjoyed the freedom of getting to decide for myself in what order to explore all the grid squares (and you are probably going to have to visit almost all of them to complete the quest, unless you get extraordinarily lucky). 

Map Board of Narnia ("out of focus" edition!)

A very nice job was also done with the goings-on within the grid squares themselves, and each one you enter plays out almost like a mini-adventure. You will generally enter an area, either forest, river, mountain, or plains based upon the topography of the map, where you then deal with a creature encounter of some sort, with some of the creatures eventually proving to be helpful allies, and others showing themselves as servants of the Sorceress. Once these encounters are dealt with, you are then told to "Move On", and you get to choose a new square to move into. There are a couple of items you will need to locate hidden across the map (a gemstone and an actual key) should you wish to obtain the spellbook, along with locating the grid square that holds the spellbook itself of course. Grid squares that don't contain any of these needed items sometimes at least provide some sort of clue as to where you need to go, but the clues really are not all that helpful (ie. "look in a dark place". Gee, thanks.), or needed for that matter, as you should be able to look everywhere on the map without too much bother. Still, the author made these mini-adventures interesting enough so that I wanted to explore every square to see what I would come across, even though there are 2 squares among the 24 that don't lead to anything, and just give you a brief description of the empty terrain before telling you to "move on" to another square. I wonder if the author ran out of time to put something in these?  

The gameplay attributes from the first book remain the same here, and once again you are probably best served by just using the pre-generated character and their +1 bonus in each attribute. The Key Sheet returns also, but felt much more ......"key" to the adventure this time, and I found myself jotting down numerous ones, which actually felt like they had a purpose this go round. The Skill checks are once again plentiful as well, with the numbers required to pass them kept low in many situations, and even should you roll low and fail them, you will likely still survive (with at least one exception as I found out the hard way). The encounters you have as you travel across Narnia include many of the fantasy tropes you might expect to find in such an adventure, including dwarves, unicorns, werewolves, giants and ogres, but were given enough individual colour to keep me interested throughout. The Sorceress herself was a bit of a disappointment though, with only a brief meeting in one of the squares, and you can even find yourself not even encountering her at all until the very final section of the adventure when Aslan defeats her. Once this happens, you magically find yourself swimming back in the ocean where you began the quest, ready to get back to your summer vacation, which no doubt consists of "penny whistles and moon pies".    

My biggest detraction from the adventure is the same as it was with the previous book, in that the challenge level here is just way too low. I really SHOULD have beaten this adventure in 1 attempt also, but well, remember that certain roll I mentioned in the previous book where anything other than rolling double 1's would see you pass? Well, there is another such roll in this book, and wouldn't you know it, I DID in fact roll snake-eyes during this skill check, which led to failure on my first attempt at the book! Ah well, in a gamebook this easy, such an outcome was almost welcomed, and I got to go back and do some things differently to see if it changed the outcome or difficulty of the adventure (and it didn't). The upside to all this I suppose is that because I had very little worry in failing the adventure at any point, it encouraged me to try and visit every single grid square on the map to see what they all had to offer, even if I already had everything I needed to complete the quest. 

The writing here from author Anne Schraff was a clear step up from the first book, and there was a much better sense of atmosphere conveyed throughout. Heck, I even felt I learned a little something about the "feel" of Narnia, presuming Schraff knows a bit about the actual novels themselves of course. One thing that did stand out though was in how your character talks. You are once again playing as a child, but I was getting a good chuckle at the various exclamations your character was making. These included such gems as: "Great Scott!", "By Jove!", "I say!", "By George!" "Bother!", By gum!", "I do declare!" ("I do declare"? When did this become "Gone With the Wind"?), and my personal favorite, "What a rotten pig!". Once again though, the various creatures and peoples of Narnia don't seem to think too much of sending a child alone and on their way on a dangerous mission, and I'm starting to think this is the whole point of the Narnia adventures, that when the land of Narnia is in danger, only a child is able to rescue it, and thus is brought to the kingdom by Aslan to do just that. Aslan himself seems to be a representation of Jesus too unless I am missing something, and that is even strongly suggested at one moment in this gamebook when he tells you that "you will know my name on Earth", along with him also frequently referring to your character as "child of Adam and Eve". I am now confident we will be playing as a child in all the books of the series.      

Ranking: Better than the first book in every way. The map-movement system here is a highlight, and makes this book feel like 20 mini-adventures in one, and which even allows the player to have a large say in the order that they do them. The writing was much stronger too, although perhaps a little heavy-handed with its moral messages of "be a good person" in the latter parts of the adventure. (There is a strong theme of forgiveness running throughout as well, and even the worst evil-doers in the quest are given second chances, as everyone is worth saving). The adventure itself is typical fantasy fare, what with its "find the one magical item that can stop the evil magic-user from taking over the world" quest, but was still done enjoyably enough. I wish the challenge had been higher, but it looks like this series may have been written for a younger audience, so I will probably have to deal with that for the remainder of these adventures. Might allow me to finish them fairly quickly though! 

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3. Leap of the Lion - Score = 3.6   Tier = Bad

Sections: 241
Attempts to Beat: 4

By the mane of Aslan! Now the series is going backwards! Ok so now that I know we will be playing as a child in all these books, perhaps I could try approaching it with a different mindset. Well I did, and it didn't help. In this adventure we appear to be playing as a somewhat older child at least, one who is currently attending boarding school in London. In an opening that was reminiscent of the character I played as in The Black River Emerald from the "Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries" series, we quickly learn that our character does not have many friends, and as such finds themselves sitting out alone in the schoolyard one day on a foggy morning. Noticing a light in the fog, we walk towards it, (and you probably know what is coming at this point), to find ourselves emerging from the fog and to suddenly be deep within a forest in Narnia. Returning author Curtis Norris employs the exact same "trick" he used in book 1, by asking you a couple of times if you want to approach the light or not, but no matter what you do, you ultimately find yourself going towards it anyway! ("Do you want to approach the light or not? "Not" you say? Well too bad, you approach the light anyway. Better get goin' son!"). 

Once we find ourselves in Narnia, we immediately encounter Aslan himself, who can tell that we are lost and offers to show us how to get back home (wait, didn't he bring us here?). But before he can do that, Aslan is attacked by hooded bowmen in the woods who manage to draw blood and injure him (wait, how the heck did they manage that? I thought Aslan was basically God here?). At this point the adventure can diverge along two paths, and you can find yourself accompanying the bowmen back to their Temple, or you can find yourself pursuing Aslan as he flees through the woods (wait, he is actually FLEEING?). Accompanying the bowmen to their Temple actually proves to be the more interesting of the two routes, and this brings to the fore one of my problems with the adventure as a whole, in that the more dangerous option often tends to be the better one to take. You are not going to be rewarded for putting thought into your decisions here! Following Aslan through the woods (you don't find him), will see you bypassing the exploration of the Temple, but either way you eventually find yourself approaching a clandestine gathering of a small but determined group in the wilderness known as the "Friends of Aslan", where you then learn what is really going on. That is, an individual known as Haadreh has recently arrived in Narnia, and is in the process of indoctrinating the people and creatures of the land into no longer believing in Aslan. The hooded bowmen who injured Aslan earlier are disciples of his, and it is his Temple that you may have found yourself exploring earlier. These Friends of Aslan need your help (as a child brought from another world, this is your "calling" so to speak), and what they need you to do is twofold. First, they need you to sneak into the dungeons within the Temple and free all the prisoners, who are believers of Aslan that are being held there. Once that is done, they then need your help in locating Aslan himself, with the whole group setting out in different directions across Narnia in an attempt to locate him and ask for his help in ridding the land of Haadreh and his followers.  

This might end up being a shorter review because, well, this is rather a shorter gamebook. The first thing that struck me when picking up the book was in how many fewer sections this adventure contained as opposed to the previous entries, and it shows too, as you can absolutely blitz through this thing pretty quickly. Now, 241 sections isn't THAT small of a section count, and I have played some good to great adventures that had less, but somehow this adventure feels like it contains half the sections that it does, and it flies by very quickly. Win or lose, you will probably find out in short order which it is, as there is not a heck of a lot for your to actually DO here. The freeing of the prisoners in the Temple involves navigating down an abandoned well in order to get inside, then passing a Perception skill check to find the prisoners. And that's about it. There is a choice after the prisoners have been freed where you can opt to fight the guards, or "do something else". I always love that "do something else" option in a gamebook! It's so vague as to be almost meaningless, yet it is almost always the choice you should pick. 

When it comes to the leader of the Temple, this adventure must surely be in the running for having one of the lamest villains, Haadreh, that you will ever see in a gamebook. I get the sneaking suspicion that he is supposed to be the representation of Satan in Narnia, and I only say that because there are some descriptions about how he uses spectacle and pageantry in order to seduce people over to his cause. This could have been a very cool, and dare I say, even chilling idea if it had been implemented in any kind of serious way. But unfortunately Haadreh comes across as a total buffoon. The first time I encountered him he was doing a silly jig in front of a mirror dressed like a court jester. Even when I confronted him, he basically just said "beat it kid ya bother me!" and sent me on my way. Even the way Aslan defeats him at the end of the quest is laughable, swatting him aside into a river like yesterday's trash. 

Speaking of that endgame, it might be even worse than the villain. After freeing the prisoners from the Temple, your second goal here is to locate Aslan (who by the way, you don't even need to search for, as the adventure automatically sends you to him right after you set out looking), and then convince him that the people and creatures of Narnia still believe in him, and need him to return and overthrow Haadreh. So hang on a second, if Aslan feels that there are not enough "believers", he just abandons Narnia in a huff until enough people show up to bow at his feet? Thanks pal! Not only that, but there is no final confrontation or anything, and the whole adventure comes down to two questions at the end, which sees you being asked if you believe in Aslan yourself or not, and if you are willing to prove it by taking a leap of faith, which is where the title of the book comes from. It is probably blatantly obvious what you are supposed to do here (and any atheists playing this book are screwed!).   

Oh, and what the hell happened to the whole "Key Sheet" mechanic? I found a whopping total of one Key in all my playthroughs. What a tease! And while I'm on the subject of mechanics not being used, why does my equipment list on my character sheet include an amount of money, when as far as I can tell, there is nowhere to spend this? Now to be fair, an amount of money has been included in all of the adventures so far with it never coming into play (at least in all my attempts in the series), but I thought I would finally bring it up here as I am on a roll with my complaints! 

I'm struggling to find some good things to say about this one. The writing was a bit of a step up from Norris' previous effort in book 1, and I did at least feel like there was some atmosphere conveyed here in places. It also proved to be the most "challenging" entry in the series so far, at least in the number of attempts it took me, but even this was pooched up, and unfortunately that challenge manifested itself in rather arbitrary ways. For example at one point I found myself with a choice between a seemingly sensible option of not approaching some strangers in the woods, or the risky choice of approaching them. Should you pick the sensible option? Ooooo, too bad so sad, now you can't win. Failure in this book doesn't appear to ever lead to character death either (at least I never found one), as you are merely sent back to Earth and told to try again anytime you like. That kind of lowers the stakes somewhat, but maybe the author doesn't want to kill his character being that they are a child and all.  

Ranking: I wondered for awhile while playing if this adventure might eventually do just enough to scrape by with a 5.0 score, but nope, I couldn't bring myself to even be that generous. While it started off (briefly) well enough, with some spooky foggy environments and apparently a mystery to solve, it just went rapidly downhill from there, all the way to the endgame where it crashed in a burning heap. Overall this felt very half-baked to me, with hardly any game mechanics to speak of, a laughable villain, and a horrible endgame. The terrible trifecta as it were! Maybe the worst thing it did was make me not like the Aslan character, who up until this entry was very enjoyable, but here feels like a spoiled brat. This entry is easily the worst in the series so far, (if you hadn't guessed that already from the review), and I hope to start the next adventure as soon as possible to see if the series can get back on the right track it appeared to be on with book 2. Wish me luck!

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4. The Lost Crowns of Cair Paravel - Score = 5.2   Tier = OK

Sections: 364
Attempts to Beat: 1

Right off the bat we have a new author for the series in the form of Gerald Lientz, whose work I am very familiar with from the "Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries" series, also published by ICE as are these Narnia books. Mr. Lientz appears to be the "go-to" guy for ICE published gamebooks, as he also had an entry in their "Middle-earth Quest" series as well. I recall from my previous experiences with his books that while they sometimes seemed to me to lack in gameplay mechanics at times, they were usually well written and did a good job when it came to atmosphere and suspense. In fact he wrote what I thought were the two best books in the Sherlock Holmes series, so I was interested to see how he would fare with the Narnia setting. And the answer is......ehhhhhh, not so good, I'm sorry to say.   

Ok, so this book begins with us playing as a child on an overnight class trip to watch a play (Shakespeare's "The Tempest") in London. After watching the play and being enthralled by it, we retire with the rest of our class to the home of a teacher, where this teacher regales us with stories about how she once enjoyed her own adventures in a land called Narnia. Despite the teacher insisting the stories are true, none of the rest of our classmates believe her except for us, and after she has finished with her tales, we then head off to bed. Not surprisingly for the series, we awaken to find ourselves lying on top of a cloud high above the landscape of Narnia itself, where Aslan approaches us to give us our mission for this book. And this is where the adventure gets rather depressing, for we learn that Narnia is currently under the thrall of the White Witch, who has covered the whole land in an eternal winter, with every area covered by ice and snow. Wait! Don't tell me Aslan! Our goal is going to be to overthrow the White Witch and return Narnia to its formal sunny glory, thus rescuing all the people and creatures from their depressing fate! Well, no actually. Aslan informs us that our goal here is to help fulfill a prophecy, where it is foretold that in order for the White Witch to be defeated in the future, there are two lost crowns that must be located and returned to their rightful places inside the castle at Cair Paravel. Even so doing, it will still be a long time before the White Witch will be defeated, which is a bit of a downer to say the least. So our goal is to first find the crowns, then take them to the castle at Cair Paravel, and that's it. Is this how prophecies work? It seems like Aslan is forcing this to happen. In any case, we agree to try, at which point Aslan sends us down to the snowy surface to begin the quest. 

The adventure starts off on a high note, as we land deep in a snowbank but are rescued by a big talking St. Bernard dog called Snowfoot, who will be our travelling companion for a large part of the book. Most of the animals of Narnia want the White Witch gone too, so many of them that we come across will be willing to help us. Listening to Aslan talk when he was giving us the quest made it sound like these two crowns would be hard to find, but just about everybody we meet seems to have a good idea about where these can be found. It would seem that the rightful owners of the crowns, a King and Queen of Narnia, were killed by a dragon who lives high up on a mountain nearby, and the crowns are almost certainly a part of his treasure hoard. So, up the mountain we head with Snowfoot guiding the way, and the adventure continues with the strong opening by providing a werewolf encounter that is one of the better ones I can recall, with the werewolf himself being particularly evil and menacing, as he is also a servant of the White Witch. I'm sorry to say though that once this encounter is over, it is mostly downhill from here to the end of the adventure, which rushed by very fast.  

I don't know how Lientz managed it, but despite the fact that this book clocks in at over 100 sections more than the previous adventure, it somehow felt even shorter than that one.  After that strong werewolf encounter, next up is a meeting with a group of dwarves who live up the mountain, who try to trick you and Snowfoot into becoming their slaves, and you need to find a way to escape, which I managed to do by tricking one of the dwarves. But incredibly, I even managed to trick this dwarf into heading up to the dragon's lair to bring back the crowns for me, which he did! So once I had successfully duped the dwarf into retrieving the crowns, the adventure rushes to its conclusion even faster than the previous book! I very quickly found myself outside the gates of the now abandoned Cair Paravel. Again this repeats what was done in the final act of Leap of the Lion, whereby earlier in the adventure every step you took was a well-described part of the quest, but the final long overland journey to your ultimate destination is handwaved over in a section or two. Not only that, but yet again the final step here is a joke. I arrived at Cair Paravel to find it guarded by one solitary creature, a wolf who serves the White Witch (a regular wolf this time, not a werewolf). How did I get past him? Did I need to fight him? Beat him at a riddle game? Come up with a clever plan involving deception and stealth? Nah. I just happened to notice a couple of squirrels in a tree nearby and asked for their help. They agreed to aid me, then lured the wolf away while I ran into the now unguarded Cair Paravel where I put the crowns back. I then found myself waking up in bed having won the game. The end. Ugh, what a letdown. There isn't even a moment where you wonder if it was all a dream or not, as I'm sure most people would have thought after going to sleep with those stories the teacher told us in our heads, but its made pretty clear that this all did indeed happen (your teacher even confirms this).

"Phew! It was all just a dream.........OR WAS IT???"

After beating this book on my first attempt, I went back to look at some unexplored options and discovered whole sequences that I never got to experience, including one involving a dastardly old crone and another with the dragon itself. And why did I miss them? Because I refused to abandon my dog companion and leave him as a slave with the dwarves when given the option. Had I done so, I would have continued travelling alone up the snow covered mountain to take back the crowns from the dragon, in what seemed like a very intriguing encounter and nothing like I was expecting it to be. But no, I never got to experience that, because I chose to not leave without my dog! (And should you abandon him, the adventure even makes you feel guilty for doing it, and rightly so). Choosing to remain with him, I instead tricked a dwarf into going up the mountain and getting the crowns for me while I waited halfway up, and then quickly got outta Dodge and headed for Cair Paravel. This once again reinforces something I noticed earlier in the series, in that the far more interesting sequences seem to be gated behind what felt to me like "poor" choices. 

Lientz's writing was once again good here, although I didn't find it quite as compelling as his Sherlock Holmes gamebooks. Having the land of Narnia in a state of perpetual winter feels like it was wasted too, because you spend most of your time on a snowy mountain, which presumably would have been cold and snowy anyway. I would have really loved to see how the people in the villages, along with the creatures in the usually warm and sunny forests, were coping with the ice-age conditions, but I got barely anything of that. As it is, with plot points involving groups of dwarves, abused slaves, and needing to steal a certain treasure from a dragon's hoard, this felt like Snow White, Cinderella, and The Hobbit all smashed together (and the cover art does seem to me to have a certain Tolkien-esque quality to it). And while I applaud the originality of the goal of the quest in that we are not really saving anyone, we are just setting the stage so that the prophecy can be fulfilled sometime in the future, it comes with the tradeoff that I didn't feel like I accomplished all that much. What if I hadn't been able to bring the crowns to Cair Paravel? Surely there was enough time for another couple thousand tries at it by someone else. I am picturing Aslan sending a never-ending parade of children up the mountain until one of them manages to blunder their way into putting the crowns back. 

Ranking: Boy, these adventures are getting shorter and shorter. There is a large area of this book that is easily missed, and a great companion (c'mon, who doesn't want a loyal, cuddly, talking dog as a travelling companion!) that can be abandoned partway through. Hell the whole book feels all but abandoned over the final stretch, and is the second adventure in a row with an endgame that borders on the insulting. And I am not sure why they are even bothering with the Key Sheet mechanic anymore, although it is at least slightly used more here than in the last adventure (which isn't saying much). I give it a passing grade and have it ranked higher than Leap of the Lion thanks to what I feel is some increased replayability here providing you are willing to try some things that might not jive with your character. I now wish I had failed this book a couple of times ,which hopefully might have allowed me to see some of the encounters I missed, and consequently I might have ended up scoring the book a bit higher had that been the case. I also give it some marks for the original premise of not being the hero who saves the day for a change but merely a contributor for someone else to do so in the future. However, original or not, it left a "hollow victory" feeling, and leaves it open-ended as to whether you actually accomplished anything at all, as for all I know the White Witch was never defeated. Guessing by the title of the last book in the series, this will get cleared up I'm assuming, but anyone who ended the series with this fourth entry must have been left with quite an empty feeling indeed.

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5. Return of the White Witch - Score = 6.3   Tier = OK

Sections: 308
Attempts to Beat: 1

We have a new author again in the series, this time in Rob Bell, and as far as I can tell this was the only gamebook he ever wrote. And for the second time in five books we have an entry with "Return" in the title, and much like with book 1, Return to Deathwater, it doesn't make much sense here either, because at the end of the previous adventure, the White Witch had not gone anywhere to "return" from. I'm starting to get the impression that these gamebooks are jumping all over the Narnia timeline a bit, but if like me you haven't read the novels, you would not be aware of that. In any case, this entry opens with us playing as a child who finds themselves staying on a farm belonging to friends of the family. While exploring the grounds one day, we discover a cave that we naturally decide to explore. We initially find ourselves becoming lost in this cave, but eventually find a light source that we head towards. As you might expect, we emerge from the cave to find ourselves in the land of Narnia, but this time with no Aslan to greet us, and for awhile we don't really have a goal as we wander around looking for a way back home. We eventually find ourselves a new friend and travelling companion, and once again it comes in the form of a dog, as we hook up with a bloodhound called Trailhunter. Trailhunter knows that if a child is in Narnia, then something must be amiss, so he decides to show us the way to Cair Paravel, where hopefully the mystery of our appearance can be solved, and so off we go.

Here begins a rather fun little trip, with a couple of different routes available to get to the castle, one by land and one by sea, with the feeling of a strange and evil force watching us as we travel. Once we arrive at Cair Paravel (in the middle of a feast), we consult with the regent currently ruling over Narnia, a faun by the name of Tumnus, and his adviser, a raven called Sallowpad. Tumnus seems to think that everything is currently hunky-dory in Narnia, and can't think of a reason as to why a human child might have been called here. However, Sallowpad seems to think that Tumnus is in denial, as there have been several strange events occurring in recent weeks, including werewolf sightings, hauntings, and possible signs of activity in the White Witch's old castle, which is supposed to be abandoned. The title of the book unfortunately spoils the mystery here as to what is going on, but our in-world characters don't know this, so we decide to investigate these happenings. 

We get to mingle with some of the inhabitants of the castle before we then get to choose from a couple of diverging paths, including one where we get to choose between investigating the strange Lantern Wastes, or a Haunted Castle (but c'mon, who isn't going to want to explore the Haunted Castle!). At the very least this gives the adventure a modicum of replayability, and even after beating it I wanted to go back and see what the other paths had to offer. Inevitably we will uncover the source of the strange happenings in Narnia, as it turns out to be a group of evil creatures led by a Warlock who are attempting to resurrect the White Witch herself, which they actually succeed in doing in a rather chilling sequence. This eventually leads to a final large scale battle before the walls of Cair Paravel, with us leading the forces of the good creatures of Narnia against the White Witch and her minions, where we then need to take out the Witch ourselves in a thrillingly told climax. All throughout the adventure, should we have been acting in an honorable manner as we played, we will find ourselves gathering up Inner Strength bonuses, and this pays off at this point at the end, where we need to pass an Inner Strength skill check (or two), in order to get the optimal ending. I like this idea in theory, but you really shouldn't have too much trouble in determining what the "right" courses of action to take are, so therefore shouldn't have much problem in gathering up enough of these points to pass. 

Strangely though, no matter what you do, you seem to end up being sent to the final "victory" section of the gamebook, even should you make horrible choices. The difference being that you will need to make a couple of correct choices near the end, and possibly pass an Inner Strength skill check, in order to get the big send-off of a lavish feast and then have all the creatures of Narnia give you a big "huzzah!" before being sent to that victory section. Making bad choices will still get you to the final section, but the big celebratory part will be bypassed. I'm not sure I have seen anything quite like this design-wise before, but it means that you could very well get to the victory section having not really gotten the "optimal" ending, and you wouldn't even know it. Should you find yourself making your way through that optimal ending sequence though, oh boy does it ever just keep going and going. This adventure must be in the running for longest epilogue to any gamebook I have played, with a lot of "turn to" sections to make your way through as well. I kept expecting the next section to be the last, only to find there was yet more explaining to be done, and couldn't help but to feel this should have been tightened up a bit. I get it, we won, let's go!  

Overall though, author Rob Bell does a really great job with the prose here, although he seems to have a rather noticeable predilection for food, as every meal your character finds themselves having is explained in great detail, with several long paragraphs often devoted to all the various dishes you will be stuffing your face with. One moment in particular did strike me as odd though, because throughout the book you will get to feast on a wide array of fruits, vegetables, pastries, and so on, with no meat in sight, which makes sense in a world where all the animals talk, as they would not "serve" each other as meals. Right? (Although apparently the fish in Narnia aren't sentient, as they are often on the menu). But then right in the final celebratory feast, we are told how we dine on strips of steak and a succulent roast! Wait, where did this come from? Cannibals! I wonder if the author just forgot about the whole no-meat thing briefly, but it sure stood out to me. Other than that though, I will say that I think this might be the best written book of the series, with some great mystery, tension, and menace throughout, particularly the sequences involving the White Witch herself, which are top notch. 

That said, there are a couple of other oddities I found here. First, there was a section where I found myself waking up in my bedchamber at Cair Paravel, and am asked if I am a boy or a girl. What difference could that make? Well, apparently if you are playing as a boy, you receive some chain-mail armour and a sword, and if you are playing as a girl you receive some chain-mail armour and a dagger. Other than getting either a sword or a dagger, the sections appear to be almost the same, and you are then sent back on the same path regardless of which option you took. I guess this was the author's attempt to differentiate the adventure based on gender, but I don't believe anything else like it appears anywhere else in the book, and whether you have a sword or a dagger doesn't seem to matter either, so at the end of the day I'm not sure what the point was. Second, there is a brief mention made of you saying goodbye to all your new animal friends before heading home, but no goodbye at all between you and Trailhunter, which seems like a rather glaring omission seeing how he was your loyal and lovable companion throughout most of the adventure. Whoa! Hang on a second, does this then explain the "steak" that you were eating earlier? Talk about going the extra mile for your friends. The ultimate sacrifice! Going back to look at some unexplored options, I found out the real reason for this omission is that it is possible for Trailhunter to die before the end of the quest, although you would need to make a rather poor choice for this to happen, so I have to think most players would be left as disappointed by not having a goodbye with him as I was. 

He gave his life, that his friends might live........and have something to go with their potatoes.

I have to confess that I began to feel somewhat smugly prophetic at a couple of points while playing this, as some things I mentioned in the previous review seemed to come to pass. First, I hinted that they might as well abandon the Key Sheet mechanic as it was hardly being used, and apparently that is exactly what they did, as I found no Keys in the quest at all, and there does not even appear to be a Key Sheet in the book (although mine is missing the first few pages of rules, but more on that later). Second, I also mentioned in the previous review that an opportunity was missed in having your character wondering if the whole experience was just a dream, only to see that exact thing done here, as we wake up in the cave back on Earth where the adventure started, wondering if everything we experienced in Narnia really happened or if it was all just a dream, with no hints to guide us either way (such as finding an apple pie from the feast in your pocket or something). 

Now, about those missing pages in my book, this would be a good a time as any to talk about the rarity of certain gamebooks (and I feel like a whole long post could be devoted to this subject). The first 4 books in this Narnia series I had very little trouble in acquiring, but this final entry proved to be a real bear, and to date has been one of the tougher ones for me to get my hands on, right up there with City of Shadows 2: Bardik the Thief and Prince of Shadows 1: Mean Streets to name a couple. Now, I know what you are thinking, what about those 90's Fighting Fantasy books like Deathmoor, Magehunter, and Revenge of the Vampire? Well, at least with those there are usually a few copies floating around available on eBay at any given time, the problem with them being that they have crazy price tags. With Return of the White Witch however, for the longest time I was just not finding it available anywhere AT ALL! I eventually got notified of a posting of the book on eBay, with the caveat being that it was not in very good shape, as it was missing the cover and the first few pages. This might have actually helped me though, as being in such poor condition helped to knock the price down (although it still wasn't what I would call "cheap"). I just wanted to be able to play it for this blog, so I didn't really care much if the cover was missing. Even with many of the gamebooks I have purchased over the past several years since starting this blog however, I can't help but notice how much the asking price on so many of them has increased by quite a bit over that time. And to think, there was probably a time you could have found just about all of these in the bargain bin of a bookstore (I'm thinking late 90's through the 00's). If only I had been into gamebooks then! But I guess there are enough people in the same boat that we find ourselves where we are. Return of the White Witch is definitely one to snap up should you come across it cheap for some reason though, so heads up!  

Ranking: I would say that this is probably the best "read" of the series, with Bell being a strong writer who conveys many exciting sequences (if even he goes overboard on the feasting aspect). Having the White Witch herself in the book certainly helps too, and hammers home how much difference having a fantastic villain in your gamebook can make, with her sequence being a highlight. Still, the epilogue drags on for too long, there are a few too many "turn to" references, and gameplay wise you might begin to wonder how much difference your decisions and dice rolls are actually making to the outcome. However, if a gamebook is going to make it impossible, or nearly so, to lose, then at least provide me a reason to play again by offering different things to explore on future playthroughs, and I think that just enough of that is done here. I peg it as the second best book of the series, which is mostly thanks to the writing and story, because on a gameplay level it can't compete with The Sorceress and the Book of Spells for the top spot. This is a decent ending though to a mostly decent series. 

You know, it just hit me like a ton of bricks, but these ICE published gamebooks have now included series based on "Lord of the Rings", "Sherlock Holmes", and now "The Chronicles of Narnia". Not exactly conjuring up original worlds over there were they? Not only that, but all of these series also came to an apparent premature end, as they all had more books planned which went unreleased. This has me wondering if perhaps ICE may have misled the estates of these famous authors into believing they were making games based upon their intellectual works, but conveniently forgetting to mention that they would be in the form of books. Then, when this fact was eventually discovered, the deal was squashed. There could be some interesting behind-the-scenes stories to tell here. With that all said, we have gamebooks set in these 3 great literary worlds, so where the heck is a gamebook series based on Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels? That seems like prime gamebook real estate if you ask me! This HAS to happen!