Pyramid Review

Curse of the Shadow Beasts

Magelore Series Book I

Published by Sterling House

Written by Christine Morgan

$11.95

Christine Morgan has been a game fan in general (and a GURPS fan in particular) for years and years. She was a prolific contributor on the old Illuminati BBS, and she and her husband subscribe to Pyramid. In fact, her first publishing credit, a Supporting Cast article, is with Pyramid.

So why are we reviewing her fantasy novel, Curse of the Shadow Beasts? Well, it's not some kind of subscriber nepotism program, I assure you. This book was an enjoyable read, and I think you'll like it, too.

Especially if you're a GURPS player. While GURPS doesn't have a specific "setting," this is as close to a GURPS novel as you can probably get. The magic used by the wizard characters works the way it does in GURPS; the various fantasy races and monsters take their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses right out of their GURPS writeups. So if you're a fan, there's already a certain comfort level in reading the story, since the world behaves in a way you're accustomed to.

And the story is pretty good, too. After the obligatory introduce-the-characters scenes and a few random monster attacks, things start to get serious when a motley crew of adventurers delve into the mountain stronghold of a long-dead archmage. Arien Mirida is an elven mage seeking the answer to a curse on his family line; Cat Sabledrake is an Elfkin (half-elf, half-human) thief who is searching . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: March 12, 1999

Copyright © 1999 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.