Merlin's eccentricities are showcased in each book with Merlin acquiring a new dwelling, more bizarre and off-the-wall than the last. In Castle of Darkness, Merlin lives in a log castle. He's moved to a crystal cave in Den of Dragons. By Gateway of Doom, he has moved into the lightning-blasted remains of an ancient druid oak. Voyage of Terror shows Merlin trying out a magical bubble spell which places a home of sorts at the bottom of the well in the town square of Glastonbury Village. In Kingdom of Horror he has created a home in the shape of a large six-sided die up in the Welsh Mountains. Realm of Chaos actually showcases two of Merlin's homes: the first being the enormous barrel-shaped house he is living in at the beginning, and the second one being a sort of abandoned fortress in the Astral Plane. Tomb of Nightmares has Merlin living inside a hollowed-out roc egg, presented to King Arthur by a drunken Arab sailor and given to the wizard when the King had no other idea of what to do with it. Only the final book in the series omits specific details about Merlin's home, though wherever it stands, there is a one-way door out of it which leads into Hell. Verses by Rigaut de Barbezieux, a late 12th or early 13th-century [13] Provençal troubador, where mention is made of Perceval, the lance, and the Grail served. [14] Anti-Frustration Features: Unlike Fighting Fantasy or Lone Wolf, the books allow a certain amount of fudging; you can roll for LIFE POINTS three times and keep the best result, and being killed rarely requires you to start over at the beginning (and you can usually ignore any already-killed enemies). The authors of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle used the Grail as a symbol of divine grace; the virgin Galahad, illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, the world's greatest knight and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic, is destined to achieve the Grail, his spiritual purity making him a greater warrior than even his illustrious father. [23] The Queste del Saint Graal ( The Quest of The Holy Grail) tells also of the adventures of various Knights of the Round Table in their eponymous quest. Some of them, including Percival and Bors the Younger, eventually join Galahad as his companions near the successful end of the Grail Quest and are witnesses of his ascension to Heaven.

Pip's Instant Levitation (P.I.L. for short) - Allows Pip to levitate straight up or down, but if used indoors it causes a concussion when you hit the ceiling and the loss of half your current Life Points. Admittedly, I hadn't initially been all that interested in delving into the "Grailquest" series - but once I did, it wasn't all too disappointing. Knowing what it expects - and wants - of its readers, the series takes off in a surprisingly decent, mythologically-Arthurian-sound-enough way (and was actually recommended to me by a medievalist professor). In fact, the introductory sequence(s) and non-interactive sections are the clear highlight here; the obvious research is used with sparing creative liberties and open-endedness. Unfortunately, on a personal level I'll admit I found the primary adventures to be surprisingly difficult, and progressively so - and the actual "gamebook" parts of these gamebooks don't manage to stir up anything special (not to mention several continuity errors in each title). I was right in believing the series wasn't my cup of tea, and while these stories aren't anything more than a one-off way to spend an afternoon, there are also a solid number of reasons other readers might enjoy these books. Not holistically recommended by me, though keep in mind some readers can definitely be pleasantly surprised by these books. Loomis, Roger Sherman (1991). The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Princeton. ISBN 0-691-02075-2

User Comments

Dragon Rider: You get to have a go in Legion of the Dead. It is still a baby, but is near-unkillable because it has so much LIFE POINTS.

Cody: Merlin's young apprentice, introduced in Legion of the Dead, who brings Pip to Avalon via the Net Spell after Merlin disappears and is presumed dead following a fall from a tree. In the 20th century CE, it formed the basis of the highly influential poem The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot (1922 CE), which then informed the literature of the writers of the so-called Lost Generation, most notably Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926 CE) in which the protagonist, Jake Barnes, is both the Fisher King and the knight who must bring healing to the wasteland of western culture in the aftermath of WWI. James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, and many other notable authors drew on the Grail legend in their works, and scholars in the present day continue to mine the stories for existential and spiritual significance. The Grail Legend (also known as the Grail Quest, Quest for the Holy Grail) developed in Europe c. 1050-1485 CE. It most likely originated in Ireland as folklore before appearing in written form sometime before 1056 CE in The Prophetic Ecstasy of the Phantom, an Irish tale. The concept was popularized by the French poet Chretien de Troyes (l. c. 1130-1190 CE) in his Perceval or the Story of the Grail (c. 1190 CE) which he left unfinished and was completed by other poets in the work known as the Four Continuations. Bling of War: Knights in shining armour, dressed in bright colours, with ostrich feathers on their helmets. Justified in that this is a way to aid identification on the battlefield; the text noOne tradition predates the Grail romances: in the 7th century, the pilgrim Arculf reported that the Last Supper chalice was displayed near Jerusalem. [34] [35] In the wake of Robert de Boron's Grail works, several other items came to be claimed as the true Last Supper vessel. In the late 12th century, one was said to be in Byzantium; Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Grail romance Der Jüngere Titurel associated it explicitly with the Arthurian Grail, but claimed it was only a copy. [8] This item was said to have been looted in the Fourth Crusade and brought to Troyes in France, but it was lost during the French Revolution. [36] [37] There are also regular vampire enemies, a vampire made out of gold, another made out of jade, not to mention the dreaded Vampire Carrot. A mysterious "grail" (Old French: graal or greal), wondrous but not unequivocally holy, first appears in Perceval, the Story of the Grail, an unfinished chivalric romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story inspired many continuations, translators and interpreters in the later-12th and early-13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who portrayed the Grail as a stone in Parzival. The Christian, Celtic or possibly other origins of the Arthurian grail trope are uncertain and have been debated among literary scholars and historians. Robert Christianized the earlier pagan motifs of the Arthurian Legends and also introduced the famous symbol of the Sword in the Stone (a different weapon than Arthur's sword Excalibur) which establishes Arthur as the true king of Britain but presents it as a sword in an anvil (which would become a stone only later). Two other writers working at about this same time, Beroul and Thomas of Britain, contributed further to the development of the legends – Thomas reintroducing the elements of courtly love established by Chretien – but the Grail legend would next be developed by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170-c. 1220 CE) in his Parzival. In the fourth series of The Grand Tour, the trio goes to Nosy Boraha where they accidentally find the Holy Grail while searching for La Buse's buried treasure. [65]

The Didot Perceval [ fr], purportedly a prosification of Robert de Boron's sequel to his romance poems Joseph d'Arimathie [ fr] and Merlin. Aristocrats Are Evil: While the series has a fair amount of Reasonable Authority Figures, others, such as Guy Vexille, Sir Simon Jekyll, and Duke Charles of Blois are thoroughly nasty individuals.Psychologists Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz used analytical psychology to interpret the Grail as a series of symbols in their book The Grail Legend. [29] They directly expanded on interpretations by Carl Jung, which were later invoked by Joseph Campbell. [29] Philosopher Henry Corbin, a member of the Eranos circle founded by Jung, also commented on the esoteric significance of the grail, relating it to the Iranian Islamic symbols that he studied. [30] Medium Awareness: The characters are all aware that they are in a gamebook, and talk freely about dice, LIFE POINTS, and section numbers. Though Chrétien's account is the earliest and most influential of all Grail texts, it was in the work of Robert that the Grail truly became the "Holy Grail" and assumed the form most familiar to modern readers in its Christian context. [21] In his verse romance Joseph d'Arimathie, composed between 1191 and 1202, Robert tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper to collect Christ's blood upon his removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison, where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release, Joseph gathers his in-laws and other followers and travels to the west. He founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.