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Greyhawk: Gord the Rogue #4
Come Endless Darkness
Gord and his companions enter a magical world ruled by the evil monster Tharizdun, who was responsible for the deaths of Gord's parents
379 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 17, 2014
Gary Gygax gets back at T$R by destroying their world
19 October 2012
This is one of those books where the world pretty much is destroyed and from what I can remember most of Gord's companions are killed, but in the end he comes along with his trusty sword, slays the bad guy and saves the day. As I understand it this book was written after Gygax had left TSR (and I believe that the parting of ways was not that pleasant) and it has been suggested that this book was simply written to get back at TSR in relation to the dispute that they had, which I believe was the rank commercialism in which the company was heading.
The problem with running such a company in a capitalistic system is that one is always motivated by profit, and the fact that the continual accumulation of profit is necessary not only to pay the wages of the staff, but also to expand into bigger and better things, it ends up cramping experimentation and art for the sake of art. In the end TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast (which had invented the roleplaying version of crack-cocaine, that being Magic the Gathering) and Wizards in turn was bought out by Hasbro, which my understanding is pretty much a profit making entity that simply exists to please the shareholders (which turn out to be superfunds and banks).
One of the things that gripped me about Dungeons and Dragons was the continual revamping of their products. The more commercialised that it became the more painful it became dealing with the product. Granted, the evolution from 1st edition to 2nd edition, and then on to 3rd edition was probably necessary to attempt to stream line the rules and to develop new concepts and make it more appealing to a growing fan base. However, when they scrapped what I considered a perfectly reasonable rules system (namely 3rd edition) into what my friend considered to by a dumbed down rules system (namely 4th edition) I became rather annoyed.
Another thing that is noticeable is the plethora of books that are forever released, almost on a weekly basis. The problem is that aside from the initial rule books, the system ends up suffering from the law of diminishing returns. Every new book that is released will end up having less sales than the previous book, particularly since people will look at it and consider that these books are really unnecessary for running a game. I remember a time as a teenager when I would load up with almost all my rule books (being two bags) plus miniatures, to make a one hour bus trip across town to play a game. Then I realised that as I grew older than first of all I did not need all those books, and secondly the complexity of the rules ended up subtracting from the game as a whole.
Anyway, I think I have gone way off topic here, but at least I have kept within the discussion of a roleplaying game. I want to finish off with the fact that the one way to attempt to halt the law of diminishing returns (though it still kicks in in a way) is to revamp the system and to release a new edition, which takes the company back to square one by simply having the market go back to the shops and fork out money for the new rules. At least by 3rd edition they decided to use an open gaming license, which probably had something to do with a massive backlash they received when they attempted to copyright their product and attempt to clamp down on gamers creating their own products using the TSR (or T$R as it was then known) rule system.
19 October 2012
This is one of those books where the world pretty much is destroyed and from what I can remember most of Gord's companions are killed, but in the end he comes along with his trusty sword, slays the bad guy and saves the day. As I understand it this book was written after Gygax had left TSR (and I believe that the parting of ways was not that pleasant) and it has been suggested that this book was simply written to get back at TSR in relation to the dispute that they had, which I believe was the rank commercialism in which the company was heading.
The problem with running such a company in a capitalistic system is that one is always motivated by profit, and the fact that the continual accumulation of profit is necessary not only to pay the wages of the staff, but also to expand into bigger and better things, it ends up cramping experimentation and art for the sake of art. In the end TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast (which had invented the roleplaying version of crack-cocaine, that being Magic the Gathering) and Wizards in turn was bought out by Hasbro, which my understanding is pretty much a profit making entity that simply exists to please the shareholders (which turn out to be superfunds and banks).
One of the things that gripped me about Dungeons and Dragons was the continual revamping of their products. The more commercialised that it became the more painful it became dealing with the product. Granted, the evolution from 1st edition to 2nd edition, and then on to 3rd edition was probably necessary to attempt to stream line the rules and to develop new concepts and make it more appealing to a growing fan base. However, when they scrapped what I considered a perfectly reasonable rules system (namely 3rd edition) into what my friend considered to by a dumbed down rules system (namely 4th edition) I became rather annoyed.
Another thing that is noticeable is the plethora of books that are forever released, almost on a weekly basis. The problem is that aside from the initial rule books, the system ends up suffering from the law of diminishing returns. Every new book that is released will end up having less sales than the previous book, particularly since people will look at it and consider that these books are really unnecessary for running a game. I remember a time as a teenager when I would load up with almost all my rule books (being two bags) plus miniatures, to make a one hour bus trip across town to play a game. Then I realised that as I grew older than first of all I did not need all those books, and secondly the complexity of the rules ended up subtracting from the game as a whole.
Anyway, I think I have gone way off topic here, but at least I have kept within the discussion of a roleplaying game. I want to finish off with the fact that the one way to attempt to halt the law of diminishing returns (though it still kicks in in a way) is to revamp the system and to release a new edition, which takes the company back to square one by simply having the market go back to the shops and fork out money for the new rules. At least by 3rd edition they decided to use an open gaming license, which probably had something to do with a massive backlash they received when they attempted to copyright their product and attempt to clamp down on gamers creating their own products using the TSR (or T$R as it was then known) rule system.
May 18, 2016
Of the entire rambling book, the only thing that stuck with me was a description of a battle taking place on the 366th layer of the Abyss (Ojukalazogadit). The dimension itself is semi-sentient and self-hating, a vulgarity of spewing liquids and spawning self-devouring organisms and consumption and corruption and violence. A battle rages on this mad plane between two nightmare demon armies who are victims of the environment as much as they are victims of each other. It's a sequence detailed at the tactical wargamish-level and reflects Gygax's writing in general: best when he pulls back from the personal and can manage the big picture. The big conflict is looked in terms of armies and invasions and defense of strongholds and battles raging across the planes of existence and mirrored in similar military actions in the Flanaess.
There's a distinction between 'demons', 'devils', and 'daemons' as three separate categories of interplanar evils, following very old-school Dungeons and Dragons minutia, and this reflects another part of Gygax's writing: an obsession with the fiddly mechanical parts. Everything, from the magical schema to a multiverse incorporating multiple axis of morality as part of is physical layout to a set of henchmen each lovingly detailed by name, character class, favorite equipment, and tactics is part of some grand construction that only Gygax fully understands and, likely, only he bothers to care about. He has an entire color scheme to correspond to the evil emanations of various planar sources, for crying out loud.
The story itself? Sheesh. It squanders a good third of itself in preliminaries as Gygax finally admits Gord the Rogue is a super-awesome center of the universe, and then sends him and all his best friends on a raid of an enemy stronghold for the entire rest of the book. Over two hundred pages are consumed in a long running firefight and chase and confrontation and very D&Dish trap/travel/whatever situations, and it starts from a very mundane hey-lets-go-inside-this-building-full-of-bandits and escalates quickly into pocket dimensions and raging demonic battles and dweomercraefting and divine intervention.
There's a distinction between 'demons', 'devils', and 'daemons' as three separate categories of interplanar evils, following very old-school Dungeons and Dragons minutia, and this reflects another part of Gygax's writing: an obsession with the fiddly mechanical parts. Everything, from the magical schema to a multiverse incorporating multiple axis of morality as part of is physical layout to a set of henchmen each lovingly detailed by name, character class, favorite equipment, and tactics is part of some grand construction that only Gygax fully understands and, likely, only he bothers to care about. He has an entire color scheme to correspond to the evil emanations of various planar sources, for crying out loud.
The story itself? Sheesh. It squanders a good third of itself in preliminaries as Gygax finally admits Gord the Rogue is a super-awesome center of the universe, and then sends him and all his best friends on a raid of an enemy stronghold for the entire rest of the book. Over two hundred pages are consumed in a long running firefight and chase and confrontation and very D&Dish trap/travel/whatever situations, and it starts from a very mundane hey-lets-go-inside-this-building-full-of-bandits and escalates quickly into pocket dimensions and raging demonic battles and dweomercraefting and divine intervention.
November 25, 2019
More like Come Endless Dorkness, am I right? Frankly this isn't a fun read, on each page you can hear the dice roll and endless fight follows endless fight, like a live commentary of a D&D game. Very little character development and it just feels like a succession of boss fights in a game. Overall it's an incredibly dull read.
Gygax clearly knows his world, of course he created the universe of Greyhawk where this is set, but unfortunately he isn't as good at communicating it to the reader, it's a universe full of demons and lords of evil and good and balance, our heroes fight for balance against evil and that's pretty much it. Previous novels in the series made a much better job at developing the characters, but you can't just have a whole installment where it just feels like nothing is going anywhere.
It is also a confusing read, I am sure Gygax can keep all the demons straight in his mind, but here we get a bunch of them which are just so many faceless enemies to kill and unfortunately the same happens with the main character, who are, of course, all male. We have a bard, a druid, a rogue and a barbarian as a typical D&D party all with names starting with the letters C or G making everything even more confusing. If you've read previous installments you know who they are, but the characterization is so slight that even when you get deaths the lack any kind of impact. The worst possible kind of tie-in, dull, repetitive and uninteresting.
Gygax clearly knows his world, of course he created the universe of Greyhawk where this is set, but unfortunately he isn't as good at communicating it to the reader, it's a universe full of demons and lords of evil and good and balance, our heroes fight for balance against evil and that's pretty much it. Previous novels in the series made a much better job at developing the characters, but you can't just have a whole installment where it just feels like nothing is going anywhere.
It is also a confusing read, I am sure Gygax can keep all the demons straight in his mind, but here we get a bunch of them which are just so many faceless enemies to kill and unfortunately the same happens with the main character, who are, of course, all male. We have a bard, a druid, a rogue and a barbarian as a typical D&D party all with names starting with the letters C or G making everything even more confusing. If you've read previous installments you know who they are, but the characterization is so slight that even when you get deaths the lack any kind of impact. The worst possible kind of tie-in, dull, repetitive and uninteresting.
December 5, 2008
While I've enjoyed the Gord books generally, most of them reinforced the image of D&D creator Gary Gygax having been a "failed author turned game designer." This was the first of the series to really break that mold, and to read more like genuine story-telling than like an adjunct to a game system.
Picking up on additional background reveled in the out-of-sequence City of Hawks (Gord the Rogue, Book 3), which filled in numerous gaps in Gord's history, this plays like volume 1 of "tying up the loose ends" and moving the saga toward a coherent, and perhaps melodramatically epic, ending. In the process, the prose gets tighter, focusing more on plot and characterization than it does on flavor-text filler and what amounts to game mechanics. (By this point, Gygax had long since left TSR, the company he founded to produce the Dungeons & Dragons game within which this series began, and perhaps this explains the greater freedom of his prose style, no longer feeling so tied to the product line.)
Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone could follow the story half so well, nor find it half so engaging, without first having slogged through the rest of the series, or at least Artifact of Evil, [Sea of Death (Gord the Rogue, Book 1)] and the aforementioned City of Hawks at a minimum.
Picking up on additional background reveled in the out-of-sequence City of Hawks (Gord the Rogue, Book 3), which filled in numerous gaps in Gord's history, this plays like volume 1 of "tying up the loose ends" and moving the saga toward a coherent, and perhaps melodramatically epic, ending. In the process, the prose gets tighter, focusing more on plot and characterization than it does on flavor-text filler and what amounts to game mechanics. (By this point, Gygax had long since left TSR, the company he founded to produce the Dungeons & Dragons game within which this series began, and perhaps this explains the greater freedom of his prose style, no longer feeling so tied to the product line.)
Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone could follow the story half so well, nor find it half so engaging, without first having slogged through the rest of the series, or at least Artifact of Evil, [Sea of Death (Gord the Rogue, Book 1)] and the aforementioned City of Hawks at a minimum.
February 15, 2024
The fifth installment of the saga of Gord the rogue, chosen champion of Balance, first of Oerth and then of the Multiverse. And it is a hell of a book… or better, of a D&D adventure. It is, in fact, the most adventurous of the book written by Gygax, at least in terms of facts happening in it. Spells flow, sword battle (and merge?), planes of reality are present aplenty in this great adventure, even suitable for a DM to be used for its many suggestions at DMing. Indispensable to fully follow and understand Greyhawk’s and Gord’s myth, and the one to prepare for the last confrontation, the one versus the Evil of All Evils, ancient Tharizdun itself.
June 12, 2025
The penultimate Gord book picks up with him being a true superhero and champion against evil in the fight that has the whole multiverse on the brink of doom. There are no goofy adventures creating mischief in the city of Greyhawk in this book, and Gord is far too superhuman by this point to be threatened by most mortal threats. After picking up months or so after the events in Sea of Death, it finally answers some questions about Gord's heritage and why he's chosen by fate for such a grand purpose. Some of his old companions make appearances, as do the most powerful of the good or neutral wizards. Some even meet their ends. But for the most part, this is a story about the powers of devils, deamons, and demons slugging it out with each other for intergalactic domination while the opposition tries to undermine them. If Sea of Death could be considered a dungeon crawl, this one could be considered a planer crawl, as the final fight against a high-level character is preceded by a chase through every foreign dimension a servant of demons might think to lead a pursuer through. High fantasy indeed!
May 7, 2021
One more book to go. These are really not that good.
The 'final battle' in this book takes AGES to finish. I didn't count the pages, but it must be at least the last 100.
I've come this far, I can finish this series.
The 'final battle' in this book takes AGES to finish. I didn't count the pages, but it must be at least the last 100.
I've come this far, I can finish this series.
November 15, 2019
This was the second series of fantasy books I ever read. It made me fall in love with D&D, and led me to paper top role playing.. It all started with this series of books!
March 9, 2022
2022: A (likely final) re-read of this book as I attempt to read the whole series in chronological order (including the awfulness of blending the first four overlapping books). I concur with my 2019 self that gave this a stinky 2 stars. Not only is this book a complete distraction from the main story line, but it is so full of inconsistencies and Deus ex Machina moments as to be infuriating.
If you ever wondered why the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1E) books were so poorly organized with rules that contradicted one another, look no further than this novel. Written by that same E. Gary Gygax of 1E fame, it shows the man is full of imagination and severely lacking on cohesion and clarity.
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2019: Here is my re-review as someone in their 50s without all that hero worship I had for Gary Gygax as a youngster.
A tedious book. Very VERY much in line with Gygax’s d&d modules — long ecosystem-ignoring dungeons. Tedious detail. The pursuit of an enemy who wasn’t even part of the growing story for the last few books. Truly this book is about pursuing “Gravestone” for no purpose. He has no theopart. The sword he stole magically was regained at the beginning of the book. Sure he’s a bad guy hoping to help Tharizdun awaken, but he has no direct role.
Dumb, and an entire book of distraction from the main storyline.
Below is my review as per my 21 year old self....
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The fourth, of five, books in the direct line of the Gord the Rogue series (the other two books of Gord the Rogue are not quite linear).
Again, a great book if you loved D&D and wanted it turned into a novel. Plane-spanning adventure, and now the great god Tharizduun is awakened and things ramp up toward the finale!
If you ever wondered why the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1E) books were so poorly organized with rules that contradicted one another, look no further than this novel. Written by that same E. Gary Gygax of 1E fame, it shows the man is full of imagination and severely lacking on cohesion and clarity.
--------------
2019: Here is my re-review as someone in their 50s without all that hero worship I had for Gary Gygax as a youngster.
A tedious book. Very VERY much in line with Gygax’s d&d modules — long ecosystem-ignoring dungeons. Tedious detail. The pursuit of an enemy who wasn’t even part of the growing story for the last few books. Truly this book is about pursuing “Gravestone” for no purpose. He has no theopart. The sword he stole magically was regained at the beginning of the book. Sure he’s a bad guy hoping to help Tharizdun awaken, but he has no direct role.
Dumb, and an entire book of distraction from the main storyline.
Below is my review as per my 21 year old self....
————————————————/////
The fourth, of five, books in the direct line of the Gord the Rogue series (the other two books of Gord the Rogue are not quite linear).
Again, a great book if you loved D&D and wanted it turned into a novel. Plane-spanning adventure, and now the great god Tharizduun is awakened and things ramp up toward the finale!
August 22, 2015
As usual, Gygax wrote a very entertaining story. As the enemies Gord faces have become more powerful and violent, Gord spends very little time travelling and learning about Oerth, and instead spends much of the book fighting or preparing to fight. Gord learns what happened to his parents. He also learns about his true heritage. And he is recruited by neutral gods ("the forces of Balance") to save Oerth.
I believe this may be the first book in the series with something of a moral. The moral is that the forces of good are too uncompromising and shortsighted to ever accomplish much in the fight against evil. Whenever Gord sees an incredibly good character, he thinks about how lucky he is to be neutral.
Gygax started an annoying habit of using unnecessarily obscure words in this book. At least, I don't remember him using "susurration" for "whisper" in earlier books. I feel bad for any 12 year olds who had to read with a dictionary close by. Gygax should have agreed to read Complete Plain Words (because Style: Toward Clarity and Grace didn't exist at the time) before punishing more books.
I believe this may be the first book in the series with something of a moral. The moral is that the forces of good are too uncompromising and shortsighted to ever accomplish much in the fight against evil. Whenever Gord sees an incredibly good character, he thinks about how lucky he is to be neutral.
Gygax started an annoying habit of using unnecessarily obscure words in this book. At least, I don't remember him using "susurration" for "whisper" in earlier books. I feel bad for any 12 year olds who had to read with a dictionary close by. Gygax should have agreed to read Complete Plain Words (because Style: Toward Clarity and Grace didn't exist at the time) before punishing more books.
November 28, 2021
Book 6 of the Gord the Rogue series written by Gary Gygax and originally started in Greyhawk Adventures is a strong continuation of the series. The story follows Gord has he continues towards his fated meeting with Tharizdun, the greatest of evil. In this story Gord and his companions hunt down and face off against Gravestone, the priest-wizard who killed Gord's parents and is working to free Tharizdun.
In general this book is of similar quality to the other Gord novels and has a fairly straight forward story. The bulk of the book follows Gord with the occasional passaging providing insight into the celestial and demonic powers playing with the fate of the world. The characters are engaging and show growth over time, the battles are detailed and the end of the book satisfactorily closes this story and paves the way for the final book in the series.
The few issues I have with this book are the facts that the epic battles feel drawn out with victory often snatched from the hands of the heroes for no more a reason than to draw out the tension before the inevitably victory. Another is that the seasoned party of adventurers do make some rookie mistakes....forgoing their experienced approach in an effort to take the battle to Gravestone.
In general this book is of similar quality to the other Gord novels and has a fairly straight forward story. The bulk of the book follows Gord with the occasional passaging providing insight into the celestial and demonic powers playing with the fate of the world. The characters are engaging and show growth over time, the battles are detailed and the end of the book satisfactorily closes this story and paves the way for the final book in the series.
The few issues I have with this book are the facts that the epic battles feel drawn out with victory often snatched from the hands of the heroes for no more a reason than to draw out the tension before the inevitably victory. Another is that the seasoned party of adventurers do make some rookie mistakes....forgoing their experienced approach in an effort to take the battle to Gravestone.
May 16, 2018
The endless demon names in the abyss section, really drags on and on, like Gygax was trying to show you what hell is like through his writing.
February 12, 2016
Good fantasy read by the creator of dungeons and dragons. Recommended
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews