Did you know that TSR, the company behind Dungeons and Dragons in the 80’s and early 90’s, had a series of CYOA books? These were the EndlessQuest books that started in 1982, and brought YOU, the reader, on perilous journeys across the various settings of D&D. They were pretty great, eschewing the RPG mechanics of other contemporaries such as Steve ‘The British One’ Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy series (I even played one recently) and Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf series, and instead just had some classic CYOA adventure choices. Will you **** things up with your +2 magic sword? Turn to page 6. The ghoul eats you. Classic.
Anyway, something that many don’t know is that there was a spin-off of this series that started a year later, one that focused on something a little different….teen romance. This was the HeartQuest series, designed to appeal to the teenage female demographic. Each of the six books starred a plucky, young would-be heroine, destined to great things if it weren’t for something holding her back, and it was usually the threat of being married off by her family. They take to the adventuring road, and get swept off their feet in a whirlwind adventure. Said adventure usually involved meeting one or two dashing romance tropes of male companionship, and maybe, just maybe, if YOU played your cards right, YOU’d even find some charmingly wholesome romance. Will you swoon into Prince Chad ‘Strong-But-Not-Threatening’ Handsome’s stoic arms? Or will you instead go for the shy but still-conventionally-attractive-and-brave Nigel Smoulder? Turn to page 88. You found true love, and also you’re a princess now. Oh, and I guess you killed the dragon, too.
It was a commendable idea, even if the sales figures didn’t agree; the series only lasted 6 books before being cancelled, with the last two books having a particularly low printing run which turned them into some pretty good collectors items. Commendable, but I’m not sure exactly how successful the series could have been really. I’m not sure exactly how many women were into the avenues where they’d see any advertising or marketing for the books, such as in Dragon magazine, but I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t have been enough at the time to sustain the books to the same extent as the EndlessQuest series. Were they quality books, and just overlooked by the teenage girl audience who was probably more into…whatever teenage girls were doing in 1984? Let's find out.
I’ve never played any of the HeartQuest books until now. I’d heard of them of course, but have never paid them more than a cursory glance as I added them to my growing hoard of gamebooks. So, I decided to finally play one. Cephalopods need some romance too, you know? We’re not all into just drifting around in the water and eating things, maybe some of us want to be a princess, too.
I figure this could be an entertaining little adventure, so don’t take it so seriously. There’s no mechanics to cover this time around like in the Fighting Fantasy books as it is just a pure narrative experience. Why Lady of the Wind, the last book in the series? It was the first one I saw the cover of; I have really strict and detailed methods of choosing things, clearly. So sit back and enjoy Lady of the Wind, and this cephalopod’s quest for adventure and romance. The decisions we face will be arduous, and maybe even a little silly. Just remember, from the tome itself;
My heart is ready, and my suckers are puckered.
Will I succeed and find love? Once again, I don’t know; I haven’t read through the book before writing this intro.
The Run
So I failed 4 times on my quest. Lady of the Wind doesn’t **** around. It's very much like the usual CYOA trope where there are just wrong decisions that will either get you killed or even worse, married off for a dowry.
A fate worse than death for someone like us, carefree teenage girls who love the wind in our tousled hair.
In Lady of the Wind, you are Ivee; a carefree girl of marriageable age who really likes her horse, Dowell. The great stallion is apparently the fastest in the ‘fief’, and when Ivee gallops with him, ‘they are one with the wind!’ I guess that makes you the titular 'lady of the wind'.
You’re just hanging out, galloping around as ‘horse girls’ often do, when you spot your nasty stepfather talking to a stranger on the edge of your family’s property. The stranger is described in a way that makes it readily apparent what we’re in for with this book;
Dashing, with just a little undertone of roguishness and with a twinkle in his eye? I’ll try to contain my ink spray.
Your stepfather is apparently a really big asshole, because he just agreed to sell Dowell to this stranger; dick move, dude. His primary motivation for accepting the stranger's offer of 200 gold is that he wants to use it for your dowry. He thinks you’ve spent too long not being married off for money, and he wants to rectify this as soon as possible. Even worse?
It’s like no one even gets me! *Posts vague, sad poetry on medieval MySpace*
You decide to chase after this stranger to demand that he rescind his deal, and here we have the first little tingle of some romance. The rakish stranger is Bond Hoffman, who is a horse trainer and racer who knows a good horse when sees one, evidently. He gives you a counter offer when you demand that he leave Dowell alone; he instead offers to hire you as a horse trainer for his operation, and asks you to so scandalously run away with him the next morning. This is of course after he fully plays the noble and chivalric romance option up, and comments on how ‘stylishly’ slender you are;
Of course Ivee sees right through this obvious false appeasement and emotional bribery, and-
Goddamnit, Ivee. Being a seventeen year old girl has to be rough, man.
From here the book carries you forth across an adventure that always sees you become a wizard's apprentice. HeartQuest, likewise for EndlessQuest too of course, is a very linear CYOA which may seem like an oxymoron, but is fairly common for the genre, particularly at this point in time. The decisions you make rarely create a narrative branch, and it's more just to create some sense of excitement to the story, as often these choices result in either failure or maybe a differently worded but otherwise identical passage to the other choice. There are a few choices that do change the progression for at least a few passages, but these are almost always related to the true draw of the story, the romance.
In Lady of the Wind, you are seen and then immediately courted by two handsome fellows; will you go with the intense and exotic desert prince Shar (not sure why they gave him the same name as a neutral evil goddess of night, loss and pain from the D&D pantheon, as this is supposed to be an actual D&D product which is easy to forget), or the earnest but shy fellow wizards’ apprentice, Silvar, who's hair is streaked with bands of silver? Be still, my beating heart for I cannot decide! What about Hoffman, from earlier you may ask? Well, he was a red herring; if you go with him, and his always wet curls for some reason, in the beginning you discover that he's a horse thief (imagine that) and he gets arrested and you're sent back home to get married off. Bad end.
Both heartthrobs have their advantages and certain je-n’ais-quoi’s. Silvar is a kind, childish goofball who's a year younger than you, and is frequently referenced how he's shorter than you as you’re both in that awkward phase growth phase where girls are usually taller. He also routinely gives you jewelry for no reason out of nowhere but then immediately plays coy about it. I know what you're doing, Silvar. Ivee would never fall for this obvious ‘nice guy’ act, and-
Godamnit, Ivee.
Shar, meanwhile, is a noble swashbuckling man of action, who's also older than you and the story just kind of glances over that. He's also very direct, and after you have to rescue him at one point very early after meeting him, he spends the ride back on Dowell kissing the back of your neck, grabbing at you, then proposes marriage literally the next day by shoving a necklace on you without even asking. HeartQuest, please, I can only swoon so hard. Also, by like only the midpoint of the story Ivee (and by extension you, of course) are just so draped in gifted jewelry that you’d make Flava Flav blush like a schoolgirl; you've got multiple necklaces, got ring drip on practically every finger. Ivee got some swag, man.
Nice. Shar’s off to a good start.
I'm obviously not the target demographic here, or of romance novels in general, so I won't bother raising some obvious points about how this gets a little weird multiple times. It's romance fiction afterall, and if I was a potentially nerdy teenage girl, or someone otherwise inclined to pine after romance men tropes, I'm sure I would get into it. It was frequently funny when I’d forget this is an actual Dungeons and Dragons product, then would suddenly get reminded of it when your wizard master would drop a “okay toots, time to learn how to cast Reduce Person as a 2nd level spell” on you.
Something in the books favour; they stay consistent to a tee with how magic in D&D works, frequently mentioning somatic, verbal and material components and even mentioning how you can only cast one spell a day. You make your spell book, and there's even a section where Silvar finds a scroll, and goes to read it using the Read Magic spell after mentioning it could be cursed. This is a very real danger you have to worry about in early editions of the tabletop game when reading looted spell scrolls, and one that can easily kill you if it is cursed.
There is a little more to the book than just the romance, but it's always just something kinda there to prop up the romance. There’s an evil wizard named Evil-Wizard or something, it doesn't matter; you and your harem of bickering suitors defeat him in what is an actual fairly cool little battle section. Ivee even gets in on it, tearing into some gargoyles with her dagger.
Never underestimate the fury of a teenage girl. Not even gargoyles are safe.
Once the men meet each other, of course the bickering and moody angst starts. There's this particularly funny section where you're trying to lower yourselves down into Evil Wizard’s lair, and of course both men have differing opinion on how to do it; Silvar wants to use magic, while Shar wants to climb down as he's all swashbuckler-y and stuff. There's a third option, where you bring the men together (so they can both get jealous, of course). Anyway, choosing either of the men’s options are immediate violent ends and the only possible solution is the third choice. Classic.
Men, am I right?
Ultimately the book is fine for what it is. It's not much of a CYOA adventure as the decisions are the weakest part of it, and I personally think that's a missed opportunity but complaining about that would be a little pointless. It's a romance story first, full of overly dramatic wish fulfilment romance fantasies, after all. To complain about it would be like complaining there's too much fighting in Street Fighter; what else do you expect? I hear some of the EndlessQuest books have female protagonists and don't focus on it, so maybe I'll check some of those out next time. I think there's a market for actual full CYOA’s with romance and swooning on top of being an at least somewhat serious adventure, especially nowadays, but that's just me.
Just picture this; you're deep in the dungeon, and the ghouls are at the barricaded door. You're a swordmaiden of something-or-other, it doesn't matter, and Strongman McDreamy calls for you to help him hold the door. But alas, beside you, Dashing Rogue Man instead calls for you to retreat, his cloak billowing around you for protection, his breath on your neck drawing tense. If you choose to barricade the door, you’ll get another ‘flag’ point for Strongman but you also have to contend with the serious issue of fighting ghouls. Dashing Rogue Man may have a good point, but can you leave McDreamy? What of the kiss you shared under the moon last camp a- uh, I mean, I think that would sell. Maybe Lady of the Winds did get to me a little bit, or maybe it's the few minutes I've spent reading the over 1000-reply ‘which user would you date’ thread here on the site. That thread is wild.
One actual complaint I do have, and one I think should have been obvious; there's no full picture spreads of the two lads. Come on, where's the dreamy centerfolds?
This is really the only decent art you get of the characters, complete with Silvar being all ‘nice guy broody’ there in the back of the room.
Oh, and which suitor did I pick? It was the hardest decision of my life. Do I go with Shar? Together we could drift aimlessly through the golden sands, the winds behind us under the glow of the guiding sun. Each day would be a warm breeze on our skin, rolling tides beneath our feet. We’d know nothing but freedom and love and me and him- I mean, Ivee. Him and Ivee. You get the idea. He's more than a little forward, bordering on chargeable offences, and in any other story would be really creepy honestly, but we’d be free. We'd be free, and I'd be a princess too so that definitely also influenced it a little bit.
Or do I go with Silvar? He's earnest, and prone to bribery, and really can only be described as a ‘nice guy’ who happens to throw out a lot of Magic Missile. We'd study magic together, and eventually we’d fly around dropping Fireballs on unsuspecting populaces while tossing out Power Word: Kill- I mean, save the world from evil or something.
I went with Silvar, as he seemed the least likely to commit spousal abuse and I mean who doesn't want to learn magic with a goofy little guy? Together we rode off on Dowell who got magically turned into a pegasus by a djinni. The ending was a little weird. I think you may have ascended to demi-goddess status as there was a prophecy about you or something?
My final score I think is going to be a 6/10, but take this with a grain of salt of course. The actual CYOA aspect was almost nonexistent, and the romance was there but kinda goofy and silly and maybe a little demeaning sometimes. But, like I said, that's coming from someone who's only read this book for entertainment value, and who knows nothing of the true escapist value of a whirlwind romance story for the heart of someone inclined to swoon for this stuff.
Bonus round; here's some out of context passages that I thought were hilarious.
Remember kids, always trust the random gruff voices that speak to you from the darkness of a forest offering free soup.
Goddamnit, Ivee.
Until next time, where we’ll probably read an actual CYOA book. Unless…
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