Rating: 
Summary: If you've ever gamed...
Review: ... then read this book. A tale of a classic role-playing adventure, filled with humor, mystery, magic, sword-fighting, monsters, death, destruction, and yes, love.
If you've ever gamed until the wee hours of the morning, ever sat around a table with others drinking soda and rolling D20's, you'll want this book. Boy, talk about taking a stroll down memory lane! An adventure every gamer wished to experience, that their characters would survive and surmount such challenges.
Get the book - you'll love it!
Rating:
Summary: Benelux!?
Review: A sword called "Benelux"!? Bwahahaha! I'll bet this gag slipped past the editors as I'm sure they would have deleted it otherwise. The sequel to "White Plume Mountain" feels a bit more rough-edged and awkward in terms of story flow but still retains the fast paced humour and cynical dungeoncrawling mentality that made it's predecessor such a delight to read. The characters have been considerably more fleshed out but have lost nothing of their refreshing personalities - even Polk grows on you after a while. What really caught my eye are some of the most innovative ideas for magic-use I've seem yet, not to mention some of the most risque imagery and innuendos I've seen in an AD&D novel (again probably slipped past the editors). Reading "White Plume Mountain" beforehand is essential and for those who have actually played the original TSR module, there is an added level of nostalgia ("Geez, why didn't the party think of doing THAT!?"). Can't wait for "Demonweb Pits"!
Rating: 
Summary: Highly Entertaining!
Review: Another novel based on a classic TSR module. Paul Kidd does a good job with the returning characters of Justicar, Escalla, Polk, and Enid the Sphinx. While I found Kidd's WHITE PLUME MOUNTAIN to be a more humorous, fast-flowing novel, DESCENT is still a fine read. Kidd does a good job in personalizing the adventure for the protagonists: a problem with Escalla's family and her duties to them leads ultimatley to the party's descent into the earth to fight the dreaded drow. I highly recommend that you read WHITE PLUME MOUNTAIN first, because Kidd doesn't do much back-tracking to explain how these unusual characters came to be together. And if you've missed that story, you've missed something good!
Rating: 
Summary: DOA for the first ~100 pages, then gets better
Review: Descent into the Depths of the Earth is the second book in a series following the adventures of the Justicar (a ranger/magic user), Escalla, a powerful fairie, and five side characters: 2 interesting (Cinders the hell hound pelt, Henry the young fighter); 2 annoying (Benelux the sword, Polk the teamster); 1 plain boring who gets jettisoned half-way through (Enid the sphinx). The good: very imaginative use of spells and monsters familiar to players of Dungeons and Dragons; doesn't try to explain everything that happened in the previous book; dialogue and situations are sometimes funny. The bad: spends ~100 pages creating a...'plot of intrigue' that you'll try to forget as soon as they hit the dungeons; cutsy romance budding between the ranger and the fairie becomes annoying and diminishes the the character of the ranger; slapstick resolutions to major encounters feel like cop-outs; repetitive punchlines age rapidly. In White Plume Mountain I liked the ranger because he was a haunted, lone killing machine of blind justice. The author softens the character in this book and the next one (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) and we end up following the exploits of a comic book superhero.
Rating:
Summary: DOA for the first 100 pages, then gets better
Review: Descent into the Depths of the Earth is the second in a series following the adventures of the Justicar (a ranger/magic user), Escalla, a powerful fairie, and some interesting side characters. The good: very imaginative use of spells and monsters familiar to players of Dungeons and Dragons; doesn't try to explain everything that happened in the previous book; funny at times. The bad: spends ~100 pages creating a 'plot of intrigue' that you'll try to forget as soon as they hit the dungeons; cutsy romance budding between the ranger and the fairie becomes annoying and diminishes the the character of the ranger; slapstick resolutions to major encounters feel like cop-outs; repetitive punchlines get old real quick. In White Plume Mountain I liked the ranger because he was a haunted, lone killing machine of blind justice. The author softens the character in this book and the next one (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) and we end up following the exploits of a comic book superhero.
Rating: 
Summary: A Step Back After White Plume Mountain
Review: First off let me say I read Paul Kidd's previous book in the series "White Plume Mountain" and really liked it. However, I was quite disappointed after reading this book. I was glad to see the same characters return, but the storyline was severely lacking. The long detour that brought the characters to Keoland reminded me of a dungeon master completely out of ideas (oh we got lost, come on, the Justicar is a ranger and they were traveling through lands as civilized as you will find in the world of Greyhawk). Another thing that bugged me was the whole role of the Faerie kingdom and Escalla's family. It was way to faerie tale-ish (excuse the pun) for me. All I will say is that there are fairy princesses and a lame story to tie it to the book. I liked the dialogue between Escalla, Jus, Cinders, and Polk. It continued to be fun and amusing; the kid Henry was similarly funny but seemed a little shallowly developed. Enid was skillfully dumped (sarcasm) -hey be are diversion so the extremely powerful swarm of faeries won't find us...right. Oh well. I liked the battles in the underdark. Well that is until they reached the drow. The first patrol was way too easy to kill. The Justicar seemed to have gained the ability to kill everything in one blow. They should have checked that sword of his to see if it was a cross between a vorpal sword and the sword of sharpness. Lets put it this way...anyone the Justicar hit at least lost a body part and usually got cut in half, even powerful female drow priestesses. Oh and another thing, the final battle was done horribly. Lets see we had Private Henry on the machine gun (Oops I mean the magic repeating crossbow with the ammo magazine that held two-dozen drow poisoned shots and was reloaded with nearly no effort). It kind of reminded me of the landing at Utah beach in WWII. I guess Private Henry should get a promotion...with over a hundred drow on his personal kill list. Equally as bad was Lolth getting beat by getting her wasted on Faerie wine...ok that's believable (more sarcasm). Anyways I do not recommend this book even if you liked the White Plume Mountain. The next book in the series is "The Temple of Elemental Evil." It was my favorite adventure module when I was growing up. The author, Thomas M. Reed, appears to be a novice at novel writing. You never know he might be good, but I wish some experienced authors could be hired to work on this series.
Rating:
Summary: A Step Back After White Plume Mountain
Review: First off let me say I read Paul Kidd's previous book in the series "White Plume Mountain" and really liked it. However, I was quite disappointed after reading this book. I was glad to see the same characters return, but the storyline was severely lacking. The long detour that brought the characters to Keoland reminded me of a dungeon master completely out of ideas (oh we got lost, come on, the Justicar is a ranger and they were traveling through lands as civilized as you will find in the world of Greyhawk). Another thing that bugged me was the whole role of the Faerie kingdom and Escalla's family. It was way to faerie tale-ish (excuse the pun) for me. All I will say is that there are fairy princesses and a lame story to tie it to the book. I liked the dialogue between Escalla, Jus, Cinders, and Polk. It continued to be fun and amusing; the kid Henry was similarly funny but seemed a little shallowly developed. Enid was skillfully dumped (sarcasm) -hey be are diversion so the extremely powerful swarm of faeries won't find us...right. Oh well. I liked the battles in the underdark. Well that is until they reached the drow. The first patrol was way too easy to kill. The Justicar seemed to have gained the ability to kill everything in one blow. They should have checked that sword of his to see if it was a cross between a vorpal sword and the sword of sharpness. Lets put it this way...anyone the Justicar hit at least lost a body part and usually got cut in half, even powerful female drow priestesses. Oh and another thing, the final battle was done horribly. Lets see we had Private Henry on the machine gun (Oops I mean the magic repeating crossbow with the ammo magazine that held two-dozen drow poisoned shots and was reloaded with nearly no effort). It kind of reminded me of the landing at Utah beach in WWII. I guess Private Henry should get a promotion...with over a hundred drow on his personal kill list. Equally as bad was Lolth getting beat by getting her wasted on Faerie wine...ok that's believable (more sarcasm). Anyways I do not recommend this book even if you liked the White Plume Mountain. The next book in the series is "The Temple of Elemental Evil." It was my favorite adventure module when I was growing up. The author, Thomas M. Reed, appears to be a novice at novel writing. You never know he might be good, but I wish some experienced authors could be hired to work on this series.
Rating:
Summary: Great character return, bad story flow
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Kidd's work in 'White Plume Mountain', and I couldn't wait to read this one. However, while Kidd did a marvelous job with the character development (except for his rather brazen dumping of Enid), the story flow was greatly lacking, and left much of the early part of the book difficult to read through. Apart from the Justicar (a very high level Ranger) allowing his party to get lost by more than 500 miles, the entire novel read almost as badly (and with far too much similarity) to the disappointing 'Against the Giants' novel. While I do recommend this book to people who enjoy AD&D and/or 'White Plume Mountain', I do have to say that this work was very dissapointing. I would, however, very much like to see additional works by Kidd, especially featuring Escalla and the Justicar.
Rating:
Summary: Really funny
Review: I thought the dialogue and characters were hilarious. The murder mystery unfolding, clever magical fights and obsession with Escalla's clothing was great too.
Escally, Jus Pol and Enid are very appealing characters.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and Action Packed
Review: Man what a book! Finally an author who understands that if magic is abundant enough in the world to sell on scrolls it's going to be used a whole lot! It was a lot of fun reading this one. The hellhound pelt was a truly innovative idea. Escalla's character wasfun and very lifelike. Her interaction withthe Justicar was truly amusing. Now I'm going to have to go back and read WHITE PLUME MOUNTAIN just to see their relationship from the beginning. Ya gotta grab this one!
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