{"id":4618,"date":"2008-09-30T14:59:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=4618"},"modified":"2010-02-22T15:00:45","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T21:00:45","slug":"book-report-the-lost-city-of-zork-by-robin-w-bailey-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/30\/book-report-the-lost-city-of-zork-by-robin-w-bailey-1991\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Lost City of Zork by Robin W. Bailey (1991)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This book brings back the memories.  Memories of text-based games I started, but couldn&#8217;t actually get through.  Or far into, for that matter.  We bought a number of titles from Infocom for the Commodore 64 (<i>Zork<\/i>, <i>Zork II<\/i>, <i>Zork III<\/i>, <i>Deadline<\/i>, and <i>Suspended<\/i>), but I only completed <i>Deadline<\/i> because I got the hint book and it showed me the important pivot point required to get to the solution.<\/p>\n<p>This book precedes the games and attempts to recreate the odd flavor of Zork.  It doesn&#8217;t do so well.  One can approach the book as a rather lightweight, lighthearted fantasy book and enjoy it a bit, though.  Plus, it gives backstory for the Zork world, so if you&#8217;re an aficionado, you probably ought to read it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the plot: a farm boy banished from his village goes to Bophree to seek his fortune, only to find a tyrant newly in power.  He&#8217;s impressed into the navy, survives a shipwreck, and returns with a sidekick and a sorceror to Bophree to find all the other magicians are missing.  They&#8217;ve got to find the conjurors and overthrow the dictator.<\/p>\n<p>The book starts out okay, with some nice backstory, but about halfway through its event-driven plot starts to run things, and then things happen, deus machinate, and coincidences occur to solve the problems.  Then it ends.<\/p>\n<p>Eh.  It ain&#8217;t Tolkien, but it won&#8217;t take you a month to read.<\/p>\n<p><center><b>Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=stlbrianj-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0380753898&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=FFFFFF&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book brings back the memories. Memories of text-based games I started, but couldn&#8217;t actually get through. Or far into, for that matter. We bought a number of titles from Infocom for the Commodore 64 (Zork, Zork II, Zork III, Deadline, and Suspended), but I only completed Deadline because I got the hint book and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5556,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions\/5556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}