TSR, $4.95, ISBN 1-56076-355-8
Horror, 1992

J Robert King’s Heart of Midnight is a Ravenloft novel, which means it’s another fantasy horror full of angst and doom.

This time around, we visit Kartakass, a place full of bards that jostle to be the boss of the many towns around the place by winning the equivalent of Kartakass Idol. I’m not kidding. Musical talents are everything in this place. A realm of eerie yet beautiful forests, this is also the home of wolfweres—the reverse of werewolves, these are wolves that can take on human form, and they are not nice at all—and other Hansel and Gretel-type dark fairy tale tropes.

So, we have two young lads, the timid orphan Thoris and his more outgoing, daring BFF Casimir. Both become friends when Casimir rescues Thoris from the meanies of the orphanage. Ah, but Casimir has a plan: he lives for revenge against the father that killed his mother and left him with a… well, curse. To say more will be revealing a spoiler, I guess, although people familiar with the lore of Kartakass will immediately recognize Casimir’s name and know the things this story tries to hide until the grand denouement.

Hence, Thoris will be dragged along as Casimir plots his way to the top, where he’d take down his father, one of the evil master bards that have been ruling Harmonia for a long, long time. This fellow cheats, however, and Casimir may have to learn to play dirty in order to get his revenge.

That’s basically a simple outline of the story. There is more beneath the surface, of course, as the very act of attaining power in Kartakass comes with a great cost.

Unfortunately, the story is way too large to be contained within the length of this thing. Perhaps this one could have been better if it had been a trilogy or something, because events and character development take place at an accelerated pace here to the point that it’s like a ride on a bullet train with many stops along the way being skipped altogether. The author doesn’t help matters by sometimes, bewilderingly, taking up precious space to dwell on things that are, in the long term, inconsequential to the overall story line.

Then there are the characters that suffer from an annoying ability to be flippant even when they are supposed to be uncertain, scared, or feeling other emotions that do not go well with the author’s need to have his characters turn on the full-time quipping mode. Given that the story already feels disjointed and rushed, the last thing it needs are characters that don’t react believably to the situations they are in, hence making the story feel cartoon-y and keeping me from being fully invested in the story.

Also, there is Casimir. This is his story, but he never gets any believable character development. He remains a static character with barely any personality aside from “I want revenge!” In fact, it sure feels like the author is as bored as this character as I am, as eventually the story dwells more on Thoris and Casimir’s love interest, relegating that character to be more of a sidekick. Worse, Casimir spends the later parts of the story stuck in perpetual whiny brat mode. Am I supposed to root for this twerp? Funny, I think a sack of potatoes will be more interesting that this mope bucket.

If there were one good thing here, it’s the villain Harkon Lukas. He is one of the darklords that remain the same throughout all iterations of Ravenloft the tabletop RPG game, and no, I don’t consider Harkon becoming a black man in the 5th edition a significant change. As I’ve mentioned in my review of the 5th edition core rulebook, I don’t see why Harkon has to be white (or any other skin color) in the first place, as his background is pretty vague in the first place. Anyway, here the villain’s manipulative streak is in full display, although he’s not very subtle about it, and can give DMs hoping to get a campaign going in Kartakass that involves Harkon plenty of ideas for that character.

For the average reader, though… well, given how disjointed and rushed—and hence underdeveloped—the whole story is, how flat and unmemorable the characters are, and how Harkon only shows up late in the story, the whole thing is an unsatisfying read through and through. Heart of Midnight, huh? More like the heart of a black hole.