April 12, 2006
The Internet is Wonderful
When I was a kid I used to read pretty much any books I could get my hands on. I read through most of the young adult section at my local library, several times, by the time I reached my teens. I read a whole lot of questionable choose your own adventure books, since those were quite popular at the time. There was one book in particular that I remember reading over and over. It was about a circus, and not just any circus, but a circus in a D&D world. Owlbears and displacer beasts take an animal act to whole new levels of nifty. I remember loving that book. At some point the library got rid of their whole collection of chose your own adventure books. I figured I had lost it forever, since I had neither the title nor the author.
Fortunately, I have the internet. It took a while ("book and owlbear" gets you nothing useful on Google), but I eventually tracked down the book. Its called Circus of Fear and it was published as part of the Endless Quest series of adventure books that TSR put out in the 80's and 90's. I believe much of the series is set in Greyhawk. The other thing I had forgotten about the book was that the main protagonist in Circus of Fear is a young woman. She has a companion who is a young man, but the entire book was told from her perspective, not his.
Anyway, as soon as I had the title I plugged it into Abebooks and suddenly I had my pick of over a hundred and fifty copies, starting at a dollar a piece.
Naturally, I bought two.
To be fair, the book is not as brilliant as I remembered it being, but it is remarkably good considering the genre. I still love the Owlbears and I'm happy to have one little bit of my childhood back, courtesy of the internet.
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