Really good book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I often wonder if an actual barbarian would refer to himself as a 'barbarian' though.

This was one the good ones to be honest. It never got frustrating, the difficulty felt just right.

Jerry
Wed Jul 8 11:54:22 2020
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

I thought I won, but...

SPOILER

END SPOILER

914002
Sat Dec 26 17:41:53 2020
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

@mazing I lovei the
stoory

Jay
Mon Jan 18 23:29:22 2021
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Ended up with the dryads. A happy ending indeed.

Jay
Tue Jan 19 15:17:46 2021
Star - optimum ending reached

Completed it, but would prefer to meet the dryads again.

Yaztromo
Sat Mar 6 14:17:06 2021
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

This time the giant bested me in combat...

JDRAFO
Sat Aug 21 22:34:24 2021
Skull - non-optimum ending reached

Pretty cool game. Just wish Luck was useable in combat.

Mage
Tue Oct 19 02:08:22 2021
Star - optimum ending reached

Nice prequel for Scorpion Swamp.

YARD
Fri Aug 25 16:10:15 2023
Star - optimum ending reached

My mini-quest of playing through all of Kieran's works is now complete! With that, I might as well give a personal ranking for all of them.

* A Princess Of Zamarra

* The Word Fell Silent

* A Strange Week For King Melchion The Despicable

* Hunger Of The Wolf

* A Knight's Trial

* Waiting For The Light

* A Midwinter Carol

You can tell that this story is Kieran's first work as the writing style is notably less sharp, the characters less memorable and, of course, the story much more linear than in the works I rated above it, not to mention more altogether conventional than pretty much anything he wrote since. There are also some contrived moments the later works tend to be much better at avoiding.

SPOILER

END SPOILER

At the same time, it is still a perfectly good high fantasy adventure, with a fairly diverse range of creatures and encounters involved throughout. I particularly liked the Firefox and manticore fights mechanically (and a felinaur one stylistically), but there were enough other neat encounters as well, all reasonably balanced.

Now, proofreading:

119

"and a woman and her two daughter are sheltering"

172

"to see a red and blue parrot perched on a nearby branch . 'Follow me,' " (extra space) + perhaps "trying to decide what route" (not which?)

271

"Eventually you emerge on to the balcony"

296

"A group or orcs that had been"

399

"done you,' you ask." (should be a ? instead of a ,)?

349 - might misspell the name of a Council's member.

There are also quite a few moments which seem to be missing dashes where they would have come in handy: i.e. "a rather repulsive looking" at 116.

Kieran
Fri Sep 8 23:11:10 2023

Not technically my first work as I'd submitted a number of 50 section gamebooks for various competitions prior to this, but definitely an earlyish work - a lot of the content was reused in my later Revenant Rising - for better or worse.

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