Eclipse of the Kai

Legends of Lone Wolf #1

by Joe Dever, John Grant

A novelized prequel to Joe Dever's Lone Wolf Gamebook #1: Flight From the Dark. Vonotar the magician is angry. Once again his powerful ambition has been thwarted by the Brotherhood. Disillusioned, he chooses to betray them and join forces with the evil Darklord Zagarna.

Thus the fate of the Kai, the warrior elite of Sommerlund, is sealed. Long ago Zagarna vowed to destroy these fearless paladins and now, aided by Vonotar’s treachery, it seems nothing can stand in his way. For not even Alyss, the wayward godling, can change the shape of destiny.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Gamebooks, High Fantasy, Novels, Adventure, Young Adult

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Joe Dever was an award-winning British fantasist and game designer. Originally a musician, Dever became the first British winner of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championship of America in 1982.

He created the fictional world of Magnamund as a setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. In 1984 he released the first book of the Lone Wolf series of young-adult gamebooks, and the series has since sold over 10.2 million copies worldwide. He experienced difficulty with his publishers as the game books market began to contract in 1995, until publication ceased in 1998 before the final four books (numbers 29-32) were released. Since 2003, however, the series has enjoyed a strong revival of interest in France, Italy, and Spain following the re-release of the gamebook series in these countries.

From 1996 onwards, Dever was involved in the production of several successful computer and console games. He also contributed to a Dungeons & Dragons-style role playing game for Lone Wolf published by Mongoose Publishing (UK) in 2004. Currently he is Lead Designer of a Lone Wolf computer game, and he is writing the final books in the Lone Wolf series. No official publication schedule exists for these works.

Reviews

[Savasandir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una buona lettura d'evasione, specialmente per chi come me ha passato le lunghe estati della fanciullezza immerso nelle avventure mozzafiato di Lupo Solitario. Finalmente grazie a questo libro ho capito la cosmogonia del Magnamund, riportata per intero e non sbocconcellata come avveniva nei singoli libri game. Il duello di magia nelle prime pagine, poi, vale la lettura del libro.

[Brian Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written during the time of the Lone Wolf "choose your own adventure" gamebook craze, this explains how the titular character came by his name and the last of the Kai Lords.

Also a good read if you're planning to get into the upcoming RPG due out in mid/late 2015 and want to know some of the background.

The characters are mostly well written, some bursts of action (although few of them involve Lone Wolf), but this is mainly a book to set events in motion.

[Dushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lone Wolf - klasika ;)

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good novel that tells the story of Lone Wolf, from the popular series of gamebooks. It is very well-written. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of this book as well as all of the follow-ups.

[David Pierce]

A nice little fantasy story to curl up to on a porch .

[Susana789 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hodnotenie za celú sériu: gamebook. Vlak, do ktorého sadneš a sa vezieš alebo vyskočíš počas jazdy. Aj som mala chuť, ale odhodlanie dokončiť to nejako zvíťazilo.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 2 out of 5]

I fear that even a 2-star rating for this book is largely due to nostalgia. I played Joe Dever's original gamebook series 20 years ago, before or around the time I got into RPGs and truth be told, I was and still am impressed by the complexity and not-so-rare harshness of his world. It made the hero's struggle (and by extension, my own) that much more meaningful.

However, this (basically prequel) novelization, realistically speaking, is good only for a few things: providing background for the events that precipitated Lone Wolf's adventures, examining the villains' psyche in more depth and providing some amazing descriptions of the Darklands.

Make no mistake, however, it's not much. After all this analysis, description, exposition and cosmology, the answer to why everything happens is basically "Fate". Nothing else truly explains Vonotar's nonsensical, blundering and yet somehow successful venture into the Darklands, the inefficiency of Darklord super-spies, the inefficiency of ALL the Kai super-monks to sense what was coming, when there were expressly no pains taken by the Darklords to, say, magically conceal it.

Above and glaringly beyond, there is absolutely no explanation how Banedon, the most inept of the Brothers of the Crystal Star (as stated both by the Kind and Uber Wise Grandmaster (TM) and noted by Banedon himself), in the final twenty pages of the book becomes this badass Combat Mage who fells Giak and Kraan in spectacular ways, because suddenly "he had confidence in himself" and used "powers he thought he had forgotten".

I did not have any tremendous expectations, but truth be told, it was kind of disappointing.

[Nabil Hussain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic debut of a thrilling fantasy swords and sorcery saga!!

This book is wonderful. I greatly enjoyed the story. I played the Lone Wolf gamebooks by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk as a child in the '80s and was whisked away to a medieval fantasy fictitious world of high adventure and exciting magic. I enjoyed the fantastic saga of Lone Wolf as it extended book after book. I enjoyed the Grey Star, World of Lone Wolf series as well. This book served to be a splendid recounting of the events that led to the emergence of Lone Wolf. It was dynamic and magnificent. It was well written and was thoroughly riveting. John Grant wrote superbly and filled the Lone Wolf saga with new characters and background information on the universe of Aon. It was simply excellent!!

[Martin Kollouch · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Jak je možné, pomyslel si, že jehňata jsou tak čilá, hravá a chytrá stvoření, ale když vyrostou, stanou se z nich tak neskutečně hloupá zvířata? Je to s lidmi taky tak? Dalo by se tím vysvětlit hodně neštěstí na světě." (s. 133)

Nebylo to špatné, čtení mě bavilo. Ale nemohu zase říci, že bych z knihy a příběhu byl nějak ohromený. Charakterizoval bych to asi tak, že to nebyl špatný začátek a těším se, jak se to bude odvíjet dál, ale zatím to nic ohromného není.

[Đenis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nakonec se to povedlo, a to dokonce na drakrat, jednou omračením u brány a jednou přes katakomby.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the Choose your own Adventure game books, these aren't as compelling