The Game Masters of Garden Place: 10/18/20

The Game Masters of Garden Place by Denis Markell is a thinly veiled middle grade novel about Dungeons & Dragons. Here it's called Reign of Dragons but I suspect that's to keep whomever currently owns DnD from complaining.

A group of kids have been role playing for years with Declan, the neighborhood babysitter as their DM. Now he's off to college and the group feels at a loss. They try taking turns at DMing but no one is having fun anymore. All of them save for Ralph get interested in other things.

Ralph then ends up with magical dice. Of course these dice bring to life their role playing alter egos. Now everyone has to LARP to save the day from their alter egos and whatnot. The dice, of course, come from this book's Gary Gygax equivalent. The idea is that the game's creator is actually a wizard from another dimension.

I enjoyed Markell's previous book, Click Here to Start. This time, the set up and the ultimate pay off didn't work for me. The pacing is off and the set up just wasn't as engaging.

Three stars

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