MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENTS gamebook
TSR ENDLESS QUESTS BOOKS GAMMA WORLD
review by Wmpyr
This is a fascinating book one that has been very memorable over the years for me. At first I wasn't too impressed with it, because I kept wanting this to be a Conan type story. After all the main character on the cover looks like a barbarian, but instead of being a charismatic king of all warriors, he is more like a caring brother from a humble village that is clueless to the technologies of the ancient world. You encounter a Han Solo type character who has a robot sidekick, and they were pretty cool. It seems to me that this story was influenced by science fiction classics such as Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Most of these kinds of books can be a bit too kiddy but this one seemed written for the older teen. I remember in particular some swamp mutant monster that had a ton of humanoid arms on it, dragging my brother down into the murky swamp until it became quiet. This book feels more mature than Lights on Quests Mountain which is another one set in a similar type setting, except that one has a more fantasy type story. There were some frustrating deaths, and reading this as a kid I found it to be a bit difficult, and harder to progress than Return to Brookmere. I do like the Gamma World post apocalyptic future type setting. Some people are living in tribes trying to start over, while others scavenge through the ruins for lost technologies, and let's not forget the mutants from the radiation. I have to say all in all, this book left quite a memorable impression on me.
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