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Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #4
RETURN TO BROOKMERE.Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book,Pick-A-Path to Adventure
The reader, as Brion the elf, must drive out a horde of monsters from his father's castle and locate a treasure hidden in the dungeon.
Unknown Binding
First published June 1, 1982
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230 people want to read
About the author
Rose Estes
51 books57 followersRose Estes is the author of many fantasy and science fiction books, including full length novels and multiple choice gamebooks. After contributing extensively to TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons and Dragons Endless Quest series (of which she wrote the first six, as well as others later down the line), she wrote her first full length novel, Children of the Dragon (1985). She continued to write for TSR by writing six volumes in a series of Greyhawk novels. She contributed to other series, but continued to write books and start series of her own that, like Children of the Dragon, take place in a fantasy or science fiction world created by her own imagination. She also wrote the Golden Book Music Video Sing, Giggle and Grin.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 28, 2015
Danger! Adventure! Humor! Dangerous adventure humor! Return to Brookmere has it all!
If you're a D&D fan of ye olden days, you'll probably enjoy the great dungeon-crawl style herein. Though not tops in dungeon-crawlyiness, it's right up there with others in the series, like Dungeon of Dread and Pillars of Pentegarn.
In this Endless Quest book you are an elf named Brion tasked with a reconnaissance mission to discover what's up with his family's old kingdom, the one some monsters routed them from years ago. For your quest, you're given a dragon head charm, and low and behold, it speaks! In fact, Mim as it's known, has quite the personality. Maybe too much frickin' personality. Even so, he knows his way around, so he's pretty helpful when making decisions.
I enjoyed the heck out of this one as a kid. I picked it up again to write this review. Let's see the intel I gathered from my recent recon attempts:
Adventure #1 Here's a tip: Don't start off by just running into the dungeon willy-nillily (<--that's a Karl Pilkingtonism), because that'll get you killed right quick.
Adventure #2 After giving it a good think this time, I zipped along down corridor after corridor and seemed to pass every kind of low-level baddie and even a couple giants. Turns out a cornucopia of monsters are rallying against some invading force. That force turns out to be my giant weasel*, whom I get reacquainted with and with whom I plan to conquer all!
Adventure #3 This time I decided to follow the advice of the cranky, wise-crackling Mim. He led me into a fantastical scene that, oddly enough, didn't move the plot forward or include any action and yet it was a fun and interesting sidebar nonetheless. After that I wandered through the dungeon almost endlessly, having little encounters before discovering a treasure hoard and making for home.
Adventure #4 Another maze-of-corridors adventure in which I ran afoul of orcs, gnolls, and hobgoblins only to end up back at that monster rally. Many choices seem to lead to that meeting or discoveries of treasure hoards. These appear to be your best possible outcomes for this book. Well, that and not dying.
I was about 11 or 12 when I first read this and I think that's a good age for the reading level. The monsters are pretty non-threatening, almost cartoonish for the most part. There's a number of ways to lose, and even end up dead, so there's a little bit of violence as to be expected in a sword & sorcery book.
This used to be right up there as one of my favorites, I think because it reminded me so much of D&D. However, as a kid, the "return" part of Return to Brookmere confused me. I assumed it meant this was a sequel, so for a few years I was in search of the original. I think there might've been something wrong with my medulla oblongata.
* Not a euphemism!
If you're a D&D fan of ye olden days, you'll probably enjoy the great dungeon-crawl style herein. Though not tops in dungeon-crawlyiness, it's right up there with others in the series, like Dungeon of Dread and Pillars of Pentegarn.
In this Endless Quest book you are an elf named Brion tasked with a reconnaissance mission to discover what's up with his family's old kingdom, the one some monsters routed them from years ago. For your quest, you're given a dragon head charm, and low and behold, it speaks! In fact, Mim as it's known, has quite the personality. Maybe too much frickin' personality. Even so, he knows his way around, so he's pretty helpful when making decisions.
I enjoyed the heck out of this one as a kid. I picked it up again to write this review. Let's see the intel I gathered from my recent recon attempts:
Adventure #1 Here's a tip: Don't start off by just running into the dungeon willy-nillily (<--that's a Karl Pilkingtonism), because that'll get you killed right quick.
Adventure #2 After giving it a good think this time, I zipped along down corridor after corridor and seemed to pass every kind of low-level baddie and even a couple giants. Turns out a cornucopia of monsters are rallying against some invading force. That force turns out to be my giant weasel*, whom I get reacquainted with and with whom I plan to conquer all!
Adventure #3 This time I decided to follow the advice of the cranky, wise-crackling Mim. He led me into a fantastical scene that, oddly enough, didn't move the plot forward or include any action and yet it was a fun and interesting sidebar nonetheless. After that I wandered through the dungeon almost endlessly, having little encounters before discovering a treasure hoard and making for home.
Adventure #4 Another maze-of-corridors adventure in which I ran afoul of orcs, gnolls, and hobgoblins only to end up back at that monster rally. Many choices seem to lead to that meeting or discoveries of treasure hoards. These appear to be your best possible outcomes for this book. Well, that and not dying.
I was about 11 or 12 when I first read this and I think that's a good age for the reading level. The monsters are pretty non-threatening, almost cartoonish for the most part. There's a number of ways to lose, and even end up dead, so there's a little bit of violence as to be expected in a sword & sorcery book.
This used to be right up there as one of my favorites, I think because it reminded me so much of D&D. However, as a kid, the "return" part of Return to Brookmere confused me. I assumed it meant this was a sequel, so for a few years I was in search of the original. I think there might've been something wrong with my medulla oblongata.
* Not a euphemism!
November 7, 2016
Un guerrero elfo, a solas en la oscuridad, contra una horda de oscuras criaturas. La verdad es que la premisa no podría ser más apetecible, y lo cierto es que la historia no decepciona. La aventura tendrá momentos de intriga, de sigilo y astucia, pero también de batallas épicas a muerte, en los que el honor de tu clan élfico serán tu único apoyo.
Una de las obras de la colección que más veces he releido.
Una de las obras de la colección que más veces he releido.
September 11, 2014
A young elven fighter named Brion has a mission. He must return to his home of Brookmere where he and his family were forced to flee after an invading force. Brookmere is filled with monsters and horrible creatures and death lurks around every corner. Brion must find his way through the kingdom he knew as a young and find the means to destroy the evil forces that are building there.
Written by Rose Estes with illustrations by Timothy Truman, Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 4: Return to Brookmere was TSR's equivalent to the popular Choose-Your-Own Adventure series by Bantam Books. Following Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 3: Pillars of Pentegarn, the series was often collected with other volumes.
I received the first collection of Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest books as a Christmas gift I believe. The four short novels were meant as a game that allowed the reader to have multiple means to work through the book therefore increasing its "readability". Of the first four books, I remember this book to be my least favorite.
As a kid, I think I disliked this volume simply because it is a bit tougher than the other volumes which had a more clean cut direction to the story. Choosing the "correct" path through Brookmere was a bit more difficult than the other volumes, and the story seemed a bit redundant to the other stories.
What did always keep me coming back to the Dungeons & Dragons books was the fun artwork. I always loved the cover art work (here provided by Larry Elmore), but the interior art made you want to read through the book and get the various endings. If you skimmed through the books, you wanted to see how all the weird pictures fit into the story. You have fun things like giant ferrets and rat men...it is still a fun book to look through for fans of fantasy.
The Endless Quest Books are fun and you should pick them up if you ever see them (there is collectible market with some of the titles). Having revisited the books recently, I have a bit of an itch to continue to visit the land of Dungeons & Dragons for adventures so seeking out other titles might mean a trip to eBay. Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 4: Return to Brookmere is followed by Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 5: Revolt of the Dwarves.
Written by Rose Estes with illustrations by Timothy Truman, Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 4: Return to Brookmere was TSR's equivalent to the popular Choose-Your-Own Adventure series by Bantam Books. Following Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 3: Pillars of Pentegarn, the series was often collected with other volumes.
I received the first collection of Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest books as a Christmas gift I believe. The four short novels were meant as a game that allowed the reader to have multiple means to work through the book therefore increasing its "readability". Of the first four books, I remember this book to be my least favorite.
As a kid, I think I disliked this volume simply because it is a bit tougher than the other volumes which had a more clean cut direction to the story. Choosing the "correct" path through Brookmere was a bit more difficult than the other volumes, and the story seemed a bit redundant to the other stories.
What did always keep me coming back to the Dungeons & Dragons books was the fun artwork. I always loved the cover art work (here provided by Larry Elmore), but the interior art made you want to read through the book and get the various endings. If you skimmed through the books, you wanted to see how all the weird pictures fit into the story. You have fun things like giant ferrets and rat men...it is still a fun book to look through for fans of fantasy.
The Endless Quest Books are fun and you should pick them up if you ever see them (there is collectible market with some of the titles). Having revisited the books recently, I have a bit of an itch to continue to visit the land of Dungeons & Dragons for adventures so seeking out other titles might mean a trip to eBay. Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 4: Return to Brookmere is followed by Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 5: Revolt of the Dwarves.
July 1, 2009
Why do I give this book a relatively high number of stars? Because there is a bit of a story here. If you make all the right choices, there is a best ending.
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February 27, 2013This site sucks!!!! I thought there was books here that you can read. This place sucks.
August 13, 2022
Recuerdo que leí esta serie en paralelo al Elige tu propia a aventura original. Tenía como novedad que había pequeños detalles que lo hacían más parecido a una partida de rol, aunque no tanto como los de la serie de Lucha ficción, por ejemplo. A partir de la primera entrega eran básicamente los de ETPA pero con temática fantástica. Su calidad literaria era tirando a baja pero mantenían el interés y había bastantes finales, por lo que las relecturas daban para muchos ratos dentro de lo que en este tipo de libros era habitual. Entretenidos, sin duda.
September 26, 2022
In this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book you are a young elf tasked with returning to his father’s ruined castle to attempt to find out what happened and to see if his treasure still exists. Maybe you can find a way to regain the castle or maybe you will meet your end. The choice will be yours! This book is number 4 in the Endless Quest series, this book reads as well on its own as in the series. The first 4 of the series were written by Estes who then went on to write many more fantasy novels in the 80s and 90s, her most popular being the Greyhawk Adventures series.
November 21, 2022
This was the first D&D Endless Quest book written (though it was the fourth one published), and it's one of the better ones. Fun encounters, nice art, and an interesting enough plot for me to go back and read several different branches. Frang the wererat is my favorite villain in these books so far. However, he's only in one scene and the reader never gets to confront him. I'm also getting tired of the same mix of goblins, orcs, gnolls, and kobolds that Rose Estes populates all of her Endless Quest books with. Still worth your time if you like these kind of gamebooks.
August 10, 2020
Very obviously Dungeons & Dragons sponsored content! First or second edition, at a guess. You can win most of the battles; there are more good endings than bad. Unusually, it is possible to get trapped in a loop of pages! There are a couple of major events, like the encounters with the wererat and the giants, at least one of which will likely be encountered in pretty much any readthrough. Only a few choices branch off into completely separate paths.
November 4, 2017
Odd- I remember this book being better than this. While it was a good entry, I found that there weren't nearly as many different paths as in others in the series, and that there wasn't a "longest" story line that gave an epic ending, like in other books. Disappointing.
May 8, 2025
Brilliant. Grew up reading (and re-reading) the ENDLESS QUEST books by Ms. Estes. Her crisp, descriptive writing and brisk pacing set the tone for my own imaginative tales. Excellent illustrations by the Timothy Truman and Larry Elmore make this one probably my favourite of the series.
February 16, 2020
Your neck talks to your giant ferret.
May 14, 2021
Lousy, but fun to read.
January 6, 2015
There is a wererat that sits on a throne
9 July 2012
I do remember reading this one quite a while ago (actually even longer) even though I can really only remember ever owning two. My parents were never big on buying things that were not needed and the local public library always had enough books for us to read an enjoy. However the types of books I really wanted to get my hands on at the time were these gamebooks, and unfortunately the library did not carry a huge amount. However, I remember the state library used to have a number of Dungeons and Dragons books available for loan, that is until they were stolen by the numerous rebellious teenagers that based themselves there.
What I do remember about this book is the wererat that was sitting on the throne. I also remember when you stumbled into the throne room to confront the wererat. To me Dungeons and Dragons was always like a Hollywood movie in that we expected to be able to slay a room full of demonic soldiers without breaking a sweat, though some of our dungeon masters never allowed us to do that: in fact some of them really liked the idea of keeping us mortal, even excessively mortal.
I remember one of the sessions that we had: I was still a teenager, probably in years 9 or 10, and we were playing a Forgotten Realm's module (some desert one) where I ended up playing a number of characters (one after the other), namely because I kept on getting myself killed. In a way it is up to the Dungeon Master, and while they can suggest that by doing something silly we have killed ourselves, at times it seems as if the odds were stacked against us. I remember that this group had a smaller group within it who would collaborate to get all of the good magic items and tossed the dregs to the rest of us. I guess that is why I wanted my character to go off on its own so I could get to some of the good stuff before them. However I never ended up finding treasure, just the end of a sword.
I sort of think back to those people and that group and I have lost contact with most of them. One of them is dead, and it was a very sad event in itself, particularly since he seemed to fall deeper and deeper into his fantasy world as his life crashed around him. Another was 30, living with his parents, working as a fruit and veg assistant at Woolworths, though others ended up making something of themselves (one of them landed up at Workcover as a claims manager, similar to what I do, another went on to become an accountant, and a third is still single and was working as an engineer at BAE while his brother is a suburban lawyer). Others from the group went downhill even further, one of them losing grip on reality and becoming a drug addicted no-hoper, while the other picked up whatever job he could get his hands on and supplementing his income on proceeds of crime.
Gee, I haven't said all that much about this book, but as I said, all I can remember was the wererat in the throne room, but I still wanted to write something.
9 July 2012
I do remember reading this one quite a while ago (actually even longer) even though I can really only remember ever owning two. My parents were never big on buying things that were not needed and the local public library always had enough books for us to read an enjoy. However the types of books I really wanted to get my hands on at the time were these gamebooks, and unfortunately the library did not carry a huge amount. However, I remember the state library used to have a number of Dungeons and Dragons books available for loan, that is until they were stolen by the numerous rebellious teenagers that based themselves there.
What I do remember about this book is the wererat that was sitting on the throne. I also remember when you stumbled into the throne room to confront the wererat. To me Dungeons and Dragons was always like a Hollywood movie in that we expected to be able to slay a room full of demonic soldiers without breaking a sweat, though some of our dungeon masters never allowed us to do that: in fact some of them really liked the idea of keeping us mortal, even excessively mortal.
I remember one of the sessions that we had: I was still a teenager, probably in years 9 or 10, and we were playing a Forgotten Realm's module (some desert one) where I ended up playing a number of characters (one after the other), namely because I kept on getting myself killed. In a way it is up to the Dungeon Master, and while they can suggest that by doing something silly we have killed ourselves, at times it seems as if the odds were stacked against us. I remember that this group had a smaller group within it who would collaborate to get all of the good magic items and tossed the dregs to the rest of us. I guess that is why I wanted my character to go off on its own so I could get to some of the good stuff before them. However I never ended up finding treasure, just the end of a sword.
I sort of think back to those people and that group and I have lost contact with most of them. One of them is dead, and it was a very sad event in itself, particularly since he seemed to fall deeper and deeper into his fantasy world as his life crashed around him. Another was 30, living with his parents, working as a fruit and veg assistant at Woolworths, though others ended up making something of themselves (one of them landed up at Workcover as a claims manager, similar to what I do, another went on to become an accountant, and a third is still single and was working as an engineer at BAE while his brother is a suburban lawyer). Others from the group went downhill even further, one of them losing grip on reality and becoming a drug addicted no-hoper, while the other picked up whatever job he could get his hands on and supplementing his income on proceeds of crime.
Gee, I haven't said all that much about this book, but as I said, all I can remember was the wererat in the throne room, but I still wanted to write something.
July 1, 2018
Classic AD&D at its best. I was in grade school when I found the AD&D Endless Quest series, Return to Brookmere was by far my favourite. In the story you are a young elven warrior named Brion that returns to his father’s former home of Brookmere in an effort to reclaim it for your from an evil wererat & it’s minions. With a variety of different endings this book & the others of this series is a wonderful introduction to the world of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
January 13, 2015
tengo los cocos demasiado peludos / i have the coconut so much hairy
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March 3, 2016Loved it! Read it twice. Once sort of as a game with friends and again with my husband. Quick and pleasant
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews