Hero of Washington Square

Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #7

by Rose Estes

Entrusted with strange green diamonds and followed by desperate spies, the reader must make decisions which will determine whether nuclear weaponry information remains secret.

Genres: Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, Fiction, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Childrens, Espionage

157 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

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

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

An endless quest book based on the "Top Secret" RPG. If you liked Top Secret, then you probably read this one already.

[Frank Vasquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun, dumb little book! I would’ve loved this as a kid, and definitely did today, decades beyond kid-dom. It’s got its problems, including an early on dead end because of a dude named Mike that I never actually met. But, you know what, it’s a choose-your-own-ending and you get to do that several times over and the stuff leading up to those endings has got lots of charm.

[Miss Jools · Rating 1 out of 5]

Obviously this is aimed at kids, but it's really not good!

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best of the endless quest books, and a bit too childish for real Top Secret games. It is extremely easy to become the Hero and to be dead, and there are not a lot of avenues to take the story down. Although if you are very lucky you can find the rich girlfriend option, which I found appealing.

[Anthony St. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hero of Washington square is a book where you are the main character and you get to choose what you do. I gave it 3 stars because it was pretty good but not very exciting. Most of the book is you being chased by people. When I read it I ended up getting away from the bad guys and calling the police. Then I was in the news and everyone said I was the hero of Washington Square.

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bobby McCloskey doesn’t fit in. He isn’t as sporty as his classmates and his only real friends are the homeless people Pigeon Mary and Bagel Ben who hang out at Washington Square. When a prospector named Sam Brock shows up, Bobby finds himself thrust into a web of intrigue and mystery. Sam discovered strange irradiated green diamonds and people are trying to find him. With his parents going out of town and Bobby having to memorize “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Monday to keep himself from failing, Bobby has some decisions to make and saving his friends could mean danger.

Written by Rose Estes, Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 7: Hero of Washington Square is a Choose Your Own Adventure style young adult novel. Following Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 6: Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons, it was the first entry in the “Top Secret” category of the books and features art by Timothy Truman.

Choose Your Own Adventures was pretty prevalent in the 1980s, but with the popularity of the series, Dungeons & Dragons got in on the action. With the previous entries, Rose Estes stuck with themes similar to Dungeons & Dragons…here, the series begin to branch into more typical Choose Your Own Adventure fodder…and it isn’t one of the best entries.

Like many of the Endless Quest books, the character has a pretty decent moral compass…to a fault, but being a “realistic” Endless Quest book it runs into problems. When talking about elves and dragons, it doesn’t feel as bad as when Bobby simply doesn’t decide to help his friend and spends the weekend memorizing a poem…or the fact that to save his friends Bobby has to distrust the police and even starts fires with gasoline. The whimsical nature of the fantasy versions of Endless Quest seem to fit a bit better and feels less problematic.

The mystery itself simply avoid reading around either rescuing Sam or teaming with your friends Mary and Ben to take down the men (and therefor rescuing Sam). The divergences in the plot are multiple and there are a bit more paths for the “good ending” than possibly in other Endless Quest books. As much as getting the ending where everyone gets caught that is bad and all ends well is the goal, I like the more ambiguous endings where Bobby is probably going to die a horrible death at the hands of cold-blooded robbers…but without saying that.

Endless Quest books are fun and revisiting them is also fun. I still find myself reading them with my hands meshed in the pages so I can “backtrack” if I don’t like where the story is going. With their availability online in PDF format, it is possible to get your hands on most of the titles, but nothing matches the strange texture and size of these books that take you back to childhood. Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 7: Hero of Washington Square is followed by Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest Book 8: Villains of Voltumus.

[S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strangely not written in the first person. Ridiculously juvenile, even for a series written for young adults. The worst of the Endless Quest book - at least up to this point.

[Filbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the weaker TSR Endless Quest books so far, but still fun. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, the Top Secret role-playing game didn't have any iconic characters, locations, or organizations when this was published, so this is just a generic spy adventure story for kids that just happens to have a TSR trademark on it. Even so, I still enjoyed it for what it was. Pigeon Mary is the GOAT.

[DavidO · Rating 2 out of 5]

THis book isn't very good. It seems to have been written in a day. There is very little variety in your choices or outcome. Half the chocies end with the criminals being caught and the other half with you being caught. You don't get to do too many things in this book.