Rating: 
Summary: Reads Like a Role-Playing Game
Review: Two Important Notes: 1) I am not a role-playing enthusiast; 2) This book is based on one of the original Dungeons & Dragons role-playing adventures.This is a short summary of the book: A pair of adventuring brothers teams up with a hard-nosed "Xena" type woman to clear the forest around a mountain citadel from bandits and monsters. That's not the set-up of the story, that's the whole thing. This is the first book of Ru Emerson's that I have read. Her writing style and dialogue seems to bounce between contemporary and Tolkein-esque. But the main drawback is that the plot is lifted directly from one of the earliest D&D games, and it shows. There really is no plot, just a series of episodes with some battle scenes serving absolutely no dramatic purpose, and there is at least one character that is introduced in the last 50 pages that had no purpose other than to make the heros look more noble. All in all, I appreciate the attempt to revisit these older adventures in the "Greyhawk Classics" line novels, but next time they should choose an adventure worth revisiting. Sometimes there are reasons why those games aren't played anymore.
Rating: 
Summary: OK for a quick read
Review: Well, I haven't played the original module, but I have enjoyed the other Greyhawk books, so I did pick this one up. As everyone else has pointed out the story is pretty simple. Basically a couple of caravan guard groups get together to wipe out bandits and monsters. That's really the whole book. It is simply a quick forest/dungeon crawl. There are no real surprises or twists and honestly I found the end a bit anticlimatic and just a little silly. It is an ok read for and afternoon or evening, but you might think about picking up something else first. On the other hand, I did enjoy Ru Emerson's other Greyhawk book, Against the Giants, a bit more, the characters and story are just a bit more interesting, though it reads much the same way.
Rating:
Summary: OK for a quick read
Review: Well, I haven't played the original module, but I have enjoyed the other Greyhawk books, so I did pick this one up. As everyone else has pointed out the story is pretty simple. Basically a couple of caravan guard groups get together to wipe out bandits and monsters. That's really the whole book. It is simply a quick forest/dungeon crawl. There are no real surprises or twists and honestly I found the end a bit anticlimatic and just a little silly. It is an ok read for and afternoon or evening, but you might think about picking up something else first. On the other hand, I did enjoy Ru Emerson's other Greyhawk book, Against the Giants, a bit more, the characters and story are just a bit more interesting, though it reads much the same way.
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