Armada Books, £1.95, ISBN 0-00-692658-4
Fantasy, 1987
Aww, Grailquest finally comes to an end, because a high power came to be and decreed that it be so. Okay, the series was cancelled by the time Legion of the Dead rolls by, which was just about right as by that time, the gamebook market was saturated with way too many bandwagon-hoppers that brought on more quantity than quality. The ROI of gamebooks would have been slipping for those publishers.
JH Brennan decides to end the show with a bang… no, not that kind of naughty bang, because you have to remember, kids are reading these things too.
So, foolhardy yet sturdy adventurer, you are summoned once again into Pip’s body for another typical adventuring gig in Avalon… oh, except this time you’re summoned by Cody, Merlin’s apprentice. Wait, since when did that lecherous old coot take apprentices? At any rate, you are too distracted by the next thing you’re told to dwell on: Merlin is dead.
Okay, the real bad news here isn’t that he’s dead. He’s undead now, leading the Legion of the Dead and, unless you stop him in Scotland, the smelly, rotting things will head over and swarm Avalon like a tenth century George A Romero movie.
Of course, to even learn this point, you have to first survive a combat encounter, because that’s how this campaign is going to roll. Make random choices, kill things, collect items or clues, repeat and rinse.
That’s every campaign of Grailquest, and arguably 99% of all gamebooks in existence, in a nutshell. What makes this one stand out in a not very good way is how half-hearted and even rushed the whole thing feels. The humor feels tad off, the punchlines are more misses than hits, and it can be hard to really describe it with words, but you will feel that the magic isn’t really here anymore.
Sure, you can still play the campaign just fine, and it’s nowhere as unfair and fiendish as some other past campaigns in this gamebook line, but somehow, those fiendish campaigns still feel more fun to play.
Also, it can be disappointing to know that, after all the things you have been put through, all the nooks and crannies you have to look, your success hinges on whether or not you have one item, and if you haven’t, well, it’s okay: you get thrown to that paragraph where you can start looking for it. While this is nice, probably a mercy lifeline from Mr Brennan after what he’s put you through in the last seven gamebooks, it also feels jarring. It doesn’t feel like Grailquest when it’s holding your hand like this.
There are some annoyances that probably stem from either the campaign being produced in a rush or some parts got sloppily excised—options and items that suggest you will be able to do so and so later on, but the campaign seems to forget about these things eventually. While these were also present to a smaller degree in past Grailquest entries, it’s especially noticeable here, and only adds to your impression that the whole thing was rushed to the editor just to fulfill some contractual obligations or something like that.
While not as sloppy and dire as, say, Inferno! in the The Way of the Tiger series, Legion of the Dead is still a tad disappointing and anticlimactic end to a wacky, one-of-its-kind gamebook series.
You may even find yourself thinking that this one and the previous entry should probably be switched around. After all, it’d make far more sense to conclude the whole thing with the most difficult, fiendish, scream-until-you-want-to-slap-Mr-Brennan-figuratively-of-course thing ever, considering the nature of the series.
Oh well, what’s done is done, and the farewell has been made. Your time in Avalon has come to a close, and it’s a shame that the fond goodbye is such a forgettable one.
