What can a boy do against the dark sorcery of Thornstabber?

Dragontales is an interesting series of gamebooks from the 1980s. They read a lot like YA fantasy novels in a Disney vein, but less Beauty and the Beast Disney and more Black Cauldron Disney. A notable gimmick with Dragontales is that the books alternate black and white covers: white means female protagonists, and black means male protagonists, presumably in an effort to market the series to boys and girls. Each story has a new hero with a many-path adventure, and at least one of those paths involves a romance with an NPC.

Storm Rider was the first of these books that I got my hands on, and while it’s not the most memorable entry in the series, it did hook me into buying more volumes. I like the episodic nature of the books, in that each volume promises a new adventure with a new hero, rather than an ongoing saga as with Lone Wolf or Cretan Chronicles.

There are no game mechanics in Dragontales, just fantasy stories where you decide what the hero does every chapter. And they’re meaty chapters, too: with most gamebooks you’ll rarely get a chapter longer than three pages, but Dragontales chapters usually average 5 to 10 pages a pop. It also doesn’t have a lot of “game over” endings: every ending you reach is a proper conclusion to the story, it’s just that some are better than others…both victory-wise and quality-wise.

Storm Rider puts you in the role of a half-elf named James Longstrider. Your dad has gone missing, presumed deceased, and now you have to worry about claiming your birthright in an empire of mostly racist elves who make fun of your big non-pointy ears. Your claim to your father’s noble position in the High King’s court is challenged by the hilariously named Robaron Thornstabber (a villain name if ever I heard one…why do fantasy villains always inherit the most obviously evil names?), who goes full Elf Hitler and insists only purebloods can rule, and he’s the only capable ruler in general anyway. So your first choice boils down to whether you learn weather magic and become the Storm Rider like your late dad, proving yourself worthy of your seat at the table; OR accept Thornstabber’s challenge and go polish your knuckles on his dinky elf chin.

The first few times I read this book, I always went the magic tutelage route, because I was convinced that if my pansy sixteen-year-old non-magic-wielding patootie picked a fight with a big, bad magical warrior, it would mean a one-way ticket to instant “game over.” The magic learning path leads to a cantankerous old wizard who outsources his duties to other magic users, each of which specializes in a different type of weather magic. For example, to learn to control rain and fix the local droughts, you can become the student of Weeping Sylvia, a lady who can’t stop crying over every little thing. Or you can learn to wield lightning from a snarky dragon who’s got more bark than bite. Etcetera.

But on my last reading I took the “beat up the town bully” path, and lo and behold, it took me on an entirely different story arc where I don’t bother learning magic at all. I just traveled to Castle Naughty-Elf to kill Thornstabber real dead. Like I said, Dragontales doesn’t really go the “40+ game over endings” route like most gamebooks. Every ending is a logical conclusion to the tale, but some are rewarding and some anticlimactic. Obviously it’s more heroic to end the story beating the villain in a sword duel than running home to tell the High King how big the Thornstabber army is and leaving the King’s army to deal with it.

Oh, and no matter what path you choose, you have a backtalking magic cat named Tombody dogging your every move, for lack of a better phrase. James interacts with a lot of different people and creatures, but Tombody is his sidekick…whether he wants him or not. Even Tombody himself doesn’t seem thrilled to be this dumb kid’s sidekick, and yet for whatever reason the mangy cat can’t seem to leave him alone…

I said Dragontales books read like YA fantasy, and the narrative definitely shows it. This is a much more involved reading than your average CYOA or Which Way book, but it’s not exactly JK Rowling, either. Rhondi Vilott’s writing mostly gets the job done, with occasionally questionable word choices like, “Three armies each the size of a normal army…” So three armies, then. Got it. Overall Storm Rider is a brisk, easy read, and the fact that it isn’t trying to kill you with every chapter is a nice change of pace.

As for the artwork, it’s not bad. A little rough around the edges, but it’s hard not to like the cat on the opening page, who looks like he’s just found out what violin strings are made from.

One annoying quirk of all Dragontales books, though: whenever you’re given a choice, it will tell you to “Turn to Path X (Page Y)” rather than just giving you the page number. Because of this, you will occasionally turn to Page X instead of Page Y, confusing the path number for the intended page number. I don’t know why Vilott thought this was necessary. Just gimme the page number and stop trying to confuse me, man! I got a kingdom to save and a pansy dark elf to slap around!

Storm Rider isn’t the most memorable of the Dragontales books, but it’s not a bad introduction if this happens to be your first foray into the series. I found Pledge of Peril and Secret of the Sphinx to be more stand-out examples, although that’s not to say Storm Rider doesn’t have some solid moments. Just remember that if you are going to give this series a whirl, make sure you get a black one and a white one so you can get a good taste of the variety.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.