Mountain of Mirrors

Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #2

by Rose Estes

Mountain of Mirrors... Monsters... Magic... Mystery!Whirling around, you discovered that the enchanted ice door has a face on this side also. Before you can react, the door starts to scream. "Help! Help! Guards! intruder inside the mountain!"You hear the heavy thump of foot steps to your left and gruff orc voices saying "Let's get the intruder!"1) If you want to stand and fight the guards, turn to page 75.2) If you want to run down the stair case, turn to page 32.Which way do you go? You must defeat the evil in the Mountain of Mirrors and save your village or everyone you love will be destroyed.Will your quest end happily or will you end up as the monster's slave inside the Mountain of Mirrors?You Choose Your Paths to Adventure!

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Dungeons and Dragons, Young Adult, Games

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Rose 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.

Reviews

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woohoo! Go ahead and choose your own adventure! Sky's the limit...just as long as you choose the adventure the author wants you to choose, and don't even think about the sky!

I've read a fair number of these types of books, but I don't think I remember reading one more linear. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice read and a fun adventure, but if you've come here seeking freewill, forget about it!

Rose Estes' second Endless Quest book, Mountain of Mirrors, strives to put readers (aimed at kids) into the body of an unassuming elf forced into a dangerous, frozen wilderness as your village's last hope in braving Herculean perils in order to open the mountain pass for caravans and save your people from starving.

That sounds promising, but the premise is a shaky at best. Your village has already sent a bunch of warriors out to see what's holding up the caravans. None of them have returned alive, so your village elders think the wise choice is to send just you, one little elf, to see what could possibly be wrong. Brilliant. Okay it's a kids' fantasy book, so I'll quit with the cynicism and just go along for the ride.

Before you start your adventure and get to make your first choice, you must wade through the absolute longest intro I've ever seen for one of these books. Then your first choice turns out to be an obvious go-home-ending or continue-the-story non-decision, after which you must read another lengthy stretch of pages. And after that you think you've come to an actual freewill choice of three options only to discover one of them is an immediate dead end, the second is a loop back to the same spot and only the third allows the story to continue. So far you've done a poopload of reading and not truly made your first real choice in deciding the fate of the tale. That's irritating.

Now for a little praise after all my negativity. This is a very nice fantasy set up and setting. The prose is passable for the most part. The scenes are decent and descriptions are good. The monsters have character and that's fun. There's some action, not a lot, but you're allowed to fight and kill and so that's nice. Larry Elmore and Jim Holloway, provided great illustrations, as per usual.



Mountain of Mirrors has a lot going for it, it's just that making your own choices doesn't enter into it as much as you'd like. It seems Estes had a book in mind with one particular ending and she shoe-horned it into this "choose your own adventure" format. Makes for essentially a decent fantasy novel, but it's no fun as a choose-your-own-adventure.


Here are the adventures I went on while rereading this for review purposes:

1. In my first attempt, I chose to stand and fight a bunch of orc guards instead of taking the other two options which amounted to fleeing, yet my "fight" choice had me fleeing anyway, fleeing right the frick back home. That's annoying.

2. This time I discovered the monsters are using slaves to mine diamonds in the mountains, so that's what's happened to all my villager buddies. But this whole storyline doesn't go anywhere. It either ends with you running home, dying, or loops back upon the story and forces you to head down a flight of stairs into a misty valley. Just to spite the author, I intentionally killed myself. So there!

3. Okay fine, I'll take the stairs. I immediately ran into some more orc guards. Talking with them won't get you very far, apparently.

4. On this adventure I made it down into the misty valley. Nice Wonderlandy type of setting, this! No seriously, this might be Wonderland. There's a mushroom forest and minxy lynx. Sounds vaguely familiar. Anywhooo... A big ol' frost giant and his pet white dragon come along, so I hid behind some talking ice clumps, which turned out to be very important talking ice clumps. Then I tried to save a halfling's life and ended up as dragon food.

5. Screw the halfling this time! I used a magic diamond to bring the house down, kill all the baddies and save the day...HUZZAH!!!

[Tym · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was my introduction to the Endless Quest series as an 11-year old boy and in my opinion the best of the series, or at least of the ones I have read. You play a "young" elf sent on a quest to the Mountain of Mirrors as your peoples' supply trains have been disappearing. You quickly discover a number of your kind being slaughtered. Soon you find that the Mountain of Mirrors holds many more secrets than anyone imagined.

This Choose Your Own Adventure type fantasy is based in a generic Dungeons and Dragons universe but it reads like an original creation. There are a number of original creatures and some pretty good characterization for this type of series. The adventures are a bit more realistic and down to earth than I expected but I think that plays to the author's strengths so it works well. Several interesting concepts are introduced here and so I wished for a sequel as a child but there will never be one coming.

The GOOD: great characterization, realistic adventures, good art, and intriguing concepts.

The BAD: rushed in a few places, some choices aren't logical

[Mike Mearls · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot more limited in some ways than Dungeon of Dread, this one features fewer locations and longer stretches of descriptive text without any choices. The location is more interesting, but there is far less exploration here than in the prior Endless Quest book. Some fine ideas for an adventure, but will require a fair bit more DM input to make this one work.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

My feelings about this early "Endless Quest" book are somewhat mixed. The "Endless Quest" series were choose-your-own-adventure style books based on the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. To my mind the first one Dungeon of Dread, was the best. This one has some good features, but just doesn't quite manage to maintain the same level of interest for me.

The first problem I have with this book as compared to the other one is that, rather than allowing the reader to pretend to be an adult adventurer with experience of the fantasy world, it, like all too many choose-your-own-adventure books, has the reader portray a young adult on their first adventure away from their own village. According to the opening paragraph, “you are an elf named Landon…You are 270 years old. Since elves live to be about 1200 years old, you are still in your early teens in human years.” Mathematically, that has never sounded right to me (270 is 22.5% of 1200. Surely, we are past our early teens when we have lived out 22.5% of our natural lifespan). But, apart from that, those 270 years of elf-life experience are totally ignored, and you are basically a 13-year-old character throughout the book. This is unfortunately the direction that all the “Endless Quest” books went from here on in.

That’s a relatively minor quibble, though. The real problem with this book as a choose-your-own-adventure becomes obvious as you read through the opening 22 pages before you get to make your first decision. By that time, you’ve already had two encounters with monsters and one pitched battle has been decided. The rest of the book goes pretty much the same. You make that first decision and either 1) the book ends, or 2) you read on for another nine pages (and another monster encounter) before coming to another false choice: only one of the three options allows you to proceed. It’s as if the author couldn’t come up with a way to make multiple adventures possible in the short space allotted, so just came up with one fairly simple trajectory and a lot of dead ends. This is disappointing, because the first book allowed you to explore several different pathways in the dungeon, even though they all led either to defeat or a single climax. The Mountain of Mirrors has only one storyline, with one minor sidetrack along the way.

That said, the storyline is pretty cool, and I liked it a lot when I was a kid. As Landon, you are sent out from your mountain village to determine why caravans are no longer coming through the pass and you find that the mountain has been occupied by monsters, including orcs, goblins, ogres, a frost giant, and a young white dragon, who are plundering it for diamonds and attacking the caravans and enslaving anyone who comes across the pass. You find that you cannot free most of the slaves, who are hypnotized or zombified somehow. Then you meet the “guardians of the Mountain of Mirrors,” who are sort of rock-like creatures that ask you to use a huge diamond to reflect sunlight and melt the ice pillar that supports the mountain. You find some recently-taken prisoners and a blink lynx to help you out and make your way to a vast whirlpool, perform your task and melt the ice, destroying the mountain and all the monsters, but managing to escape safely yourself. Or, you make a false choice and start over. It’s undeniably a good story, and more creative than a lot of the “Endless Quest” storylines, it just doesn’t hold up well as a choose-your-own-adventure, especially if, like me, you play it over and over again for decades.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly seems lacking in charm, compared to the others I've read lately. Estes is writing down at her audience--he says, 42 years out of the target age range. It doesn't help that there are long stretches of narration without a choice, most apparently the 22-page introduction that has to be waded through and doesn't justify the "Start Over from the Beginning!" endings.

And I think there's a loop, so you could potentially play forever, endlessly encountering Kvetch and Kimmel the orc guards and slaughtering them in some weird Groundhog Day nightmare.

I remember Nigel the blink-lynx from back in the day and creating blink-lynx animal companions for my PC after him. Now, he strikes me as that sort of co-worker that you'd reverse directions in a hallway to avoid.

[DavidO · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one tells a story if you make all the right choices. If you don't, then you won't get the good ending, but one of the lesser endings, or one of the ones where you die.

[Joseph Levesque · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this was my favourite one when I was a child...

[Leonardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rose Estes realizó un innegable aporte a la difusión de la literatura de fantasía y los juegos de rol de temática "medieval" en los años ochenta, principalmente por medio de la adaptación del sistema de "Elige tu propia aventura" al mundo de Calabazos y Dragones, pero.... el reencuentro fortuito con La montaña de los espejos fue una decepción. Otras reseñas han hecho una disección más puntual de la problemática estructura del libro y su incapacidad de crear una ilusión de libre albedrío satisfactoria. Por supuesto, como lo demostró el episodio "Bandersnatch" de Black Mirror, la libertad de elección en este tipo de libros y en muchos videojuegos de RPG (e incluso en no pocas sesiones de juegos de rol de mesa) es sólo una ilusión y el arte de los creadores es hacer creer a los jugadores que tienen disponibles más elecciones de las que realmente tienen. Lamentablemente, en este caso, es un muy claro cuál es la historia "verdadera" y cuáles son las rutas y elecciones equivocadas. Por lo demás, la trama puede resultarle útiles a DMs que anden en busca de un poco de inspiración para una aventura en un ambiente ártico.

[David Sarkies · Rating 2 out of 5]

An elf goes for an adventure in a mountain full of mirrors
23 June 2012

From a quick glance over the reviews it seems that these Endless Quest books run on the one true path method that the Fighting Fantasy books run on, namely that is that there is one true path through the adventure to reach the proper ending of the book. The other endings either leave the adventure incomplete or otherwise you die (though I suspect somebody has already written a game book where the only ending you can get to is one where you die).
Carrying on the tradition of the first book you play a character that is not you (which is generally the case in table top games as I have never encountered one where you actually play yourself, but I don't see why you can't, especially if it allows you to do things that you wouldn't normally do in real life, such as rob a bank). This time you are playing an elf and you are going on a quest into the Mountain of Mirrors.
I can't remember much of this book (though I know I have read it) and I guess I didn't like the fact that you couldn't actually roll-play, that is create a character and fight the monsters, but as I said previously, with the complexity of the rules for Dungeons and Dragons, to have them compressed into a book would be very difficult indeed, particularly if you are using multiple dice.
Now I know that a lot of people in the Dungeons and Dragons world do not particularly like elves, and I am one of them. I guess it is because elves create this idea of the perfect human, something that we do not like, particularly since elves are generally more beautiful, intelligent, and moral than us humans and in a way this puts us out of joint. However, because elves are generally one of the 'good' races, they tend to have the option to play them. Things have changed with 3rd Edition in that you can play a whole plethora of characters (including half-demons, if your DM lets you) so in the later editions the definition of good and evil tend to become more blurred.
Tolkien's idea of the elves were that they were meant to be unfallen human beings, namely that they had not been corrupted by sin, but were able to live among humans nonetheless. This is all speculation, though I have picked this idea up from among some of those who wrote about Tolkien's writings. However the problem with that is that many people try to read things into Tolkien's writings that are not there, particularly Christian Fundamentalists who like to try to read something Christian into everything they consider to be good for a Christian to be exposed. It is funny that because Tolkien was a Christian, everything he writes is suitable for Christians, but Harry Potter is not. I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter, but I would go nowhere near as laying the criticism against it that some people do. I guess it is because they are jealous that Harry Potter was so successful.
My idea of elves is that they are arrogant, racist, and generally look down on people that are not elves. I never liked creating races in my roleplaying games that were too 'good', such as elves, and as such I like to add a flaw into them, and with elves it is their arrogance. They are beautiful and they know it, they are master artisans and they know it, and as such they really do not like hanging around with those whom they consider 'lesser beings'.

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The village of Aralia has been cut off from the Land Beyond the Mountains. Now, a young elf named Landon has accepted mission to cross Shanafria, the Mountain of Mirrors, to bring help to the city before winter arrives. Armed with the Sword of Magus, Landon is about to discover the danger which lurks within the Mountain of Mirrors and free his people…if he can survive the darkness within.

Written by Rose Estes, Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 2: Mountain of Mirrors was part of Dungeons & Dragon’s answer to the popular Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. Following Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 1: Dungeon of Dread, the series was often collected at the time of its publication in sets.

With video games at their fledgling state and Dungeons & Dragons at its popularity peak, the Endless Quest books were a bit of a combination of RPG games, fantasy, and reading. An RPG game didn’t exist at this point so “reading” one was about as good as it could get. If a kid was challenged to read, the choose your own adventure style of writing was great to encourage reading.

This volume (like most volumes) starts out with a general description of your character. The story is a bit harder to “get right” than the first volume of the series and there seems to be two distinct paths to take. One path leads to the destruction of the mountain (which seems to be the correct path) and the other path has you killing a leader called Tsimmis to escape. Part of the fun of the books however is “choosing wrong” and leading your character to a grisly death.

What I enjoyed about this series more so than some of the Choose Your Own Adventure series was the illustrations. With a fun cover by Larry Elmore and interior illustrations by Jim Holloway, the book always had you looking through the illustrations even if you didn’t do the “quest”…you wanted to read the book to see how the illustrations tied into the story.

Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 2: Mountain of Mirrors is by no means a great work of science-fiction or fantasy, but it is a good starter for young fantasy readers or kids who need extra motivation to read. The format of the books might not be as popular as they were when they were invented with computers, games, and real roleplaying games, but they still can entertain a young reader by providing some mild scares and thrills. Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest Book 2: Mountain of Mirrors was followed by Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 3: Pillars of Pentegarn.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

A poor effort in a series that is merely adequate to begin with. Your first choice in the book comes on page 22, and there are a number of long stretches of that nature throughout the book. Generally in a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book the frequent breaks disguise the relatively poor writing, but here you're stuck with the leaden narrative far too often. In a major gamebook sin, there's at least one portion that can infinitely loop, allowing the reader to experience a scenario where you kill the same ogre over and over again forever. That same ogre is involved in another error, where you're given a choice to run, fight it, or trick it. The trick option actually leads to killing the ogre, which automatically takes you to the same page where you would have gone if you had chosen to run, at which point you are told that you made the right choice in running because tricking or fighting the ogre you've already killed would've been hopeless. How did any of this stuff get by an editor?

All I want is one Endless Quest book that is better-than-mediocre, but what I got here instead was Groundhog Day without eventually waking up next to Andie MacDowell.

[Toni Serrano Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nos encontramos con una historia interesante, aunque no para tirar cohetes. Lo bueno de este libro es que nos permite elegir múltiples opciones (muchas de ellas nefastas) dándonos más libertad de historia que otros libros de la colección que poseen una mayor linealidad, pero lo malo es que ni el personaje ni la historia son demasiado originales.
Aun así, es divertido y cada obra de esta colección merece la pena.

[Jsrott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's another D&D Endless Quest book. I've decided it's time to re-read all of them. Still lots of fun, and from an adult perspective oddly dark in some of the endings. There don't seem to be as many different paths in this one, but I do like the fact that the frost giant on the front cover is in a classic WWE finger pointing pose.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

A somewhat uninspired entry in the D&D Choose Your Own Adventure series, following an elf into the depths of a mountain-dungeon. Best part: Nigel the grumpy blink-cat, and the drawing of him crouched drenched and unhappy in a giant mushroom cap atop a raft made of giant mushroom stems.

[Ramón Nogueras Pérez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bastante mediocre, en comparación sobre todo con el anterior. No hay suficiente información para poder tomar buenas decisiones, con que muchas veces se trata de elegir a voleo y es inconsistente. La historia tiene una premisa interesante pero la ejecución es muy mejorable.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

ooh... a blink lynx.

[Julián · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it many times, and I always failed to the quest. hehe.

[Dubzor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very difficult to put down. All the choices are logical dependant on your character, but it also rewards you for a good memory without holding your hand too much.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An oldie but goodie that is in my classroom library, it was one of the few "choose your own adventure" type books that held my attention.

[Dan Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much too long ago to remember details, recognize the cover art though.

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a short amount of time I thought I'd acquired a regular novel rather than a CYOA-style book when first I began reading Mountain of Mirrors. The first decision point did come until a number of pages into the book. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy Rose Estes' style of writing, but its not always a great idea to take the control of a CYOA story away from the reader too often or for long periods of time.

That aside, this is a rather fun story about an Elf who has been tasked with finding out what is preventing traders from venturing into his home town before the winters set in and his people starve.

You'll encounter such things as Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, a giant and a small dragon. They're pretty much all out to kill you so don't go looking for the friendly dragon or giants you often find in other books.

Not the greatest book in this series, but Rose Estes' writing almost makes up for that lack of branching paths. Almost.

[Remo · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Gulo · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s not too much to say about this book. Certainly it is no feat in fictional literature and here aren’t many different routes for the book to take; as far as “choose your own” stories go, this one is like riding on an interstate with exit ramps as side options to wrap up the story - no major splits if you choose one route over another.

My one takeaway quote:
“The council feels one elf may succeed where many have not. The name drawn in the lottery is Landon.” (<< lol this guy totally got voted off the island)
Estes

[Filbi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent prose for a kids' book. Suitably fantastic location and some surprisingly deadly combat with monsters. Some tricky decisions, more than the first Endless Quest book, so I had to read through several times to get the best ending. I like Rose Estes's YA writing than her fiction for adults such as Master Wolf.

The cons: There are at least two encounters that you can end up repeating, which I feel is a no-no for interactive fiction. I was also disappointed that the main villain, a frost giant, is never even given a name, nor is there a proper confrontation with him in the best ending.

[Sammy Tiranno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool setting, and it would’ve been a neat storyline, but there should’ve been a lot more opportunities for choice. Also, the choices that do appear should allow for multiple paths to success, or at least give that impression. Instead, this one was very much a prescribed path that you couldn’t veer from without the adventure ending.

[Nicole (bookwyrm)]

I remember reading these Endless Quest books ages ago, but when I went looking for them more recently I forgot that they weren't part of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" line. I probably read more of them than I remember, but I have very fond memories of the ones I know I read.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one of the choose your ending books from my husband's youth. I have been trying to see how many endings I get from each one that I have been reading and I think I am just tired because I stopped keeping tabs on this one.

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Grew up reading (and re-reading) the ENDLESS QUEST books by Ms. Estes. Her crisp and descriptive writing and brisk pacing set the tone for my own imaginative tales. Excellent illustrations by the great Jim Holloway and Larry Elmore make this one hard to beat.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun and entertaining for a couple of hours. :)

[Cognatious Thunk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found another beloved favorite from my elementary school days!