Item - The Caverns of Kalte

The Caverns of Kalte was obviously the third of Dever's brilliant series and it's one of my favourites.

Though the actual book is rather short, this is because there are so many options and ways to go. The thing that makes the book so good, however, is the snow setting. It's exciting and atmospheric and easy to imagine.

There are many cool ideas like Ice Barbarians with archer-children in their backpacks, and the journey through the caverns to the castle is just brilliant.

In short, one of the best of the Kai series, but they are all excellent. Highly recommended.

More reviews by Braxus

I have very fond memories of this book, but having replayed it, I'm not exactly sure why. It certainly doesn't strike me as a bad book by any means, but it doesn't really stand out either. It's a perfectly decent entry in the series, with all the usual characteristics that make a Lone Wolf book fun, but it doesn't strike me as being a really special book the way it did when it first made an impression on me. I think that initial reaction must have been due to the atmospheric icy setting; although I maintain that Dever's style of writing is adequate but nothing too special compared to his greater skill in game design, he does have some nice touches here that help to convey the peril and beauty of a frozen environment -- the threat of snow blindness, the interesting Cloudmaker Mountain, the constant threat of cold-adapted creatures. It all goes by rather quickly, but there are certainly some nice sights along the way.

More reviews by Demian

As someone who enjoys Nordic skiing and most winter activities, I loved the ice barbarians on skis, with their backpack baby archers!

More reviews by Dtar

The third book in the Lone Wolf series is a bit of a step back from the tour de force that book 2 was. While book 2 had a wide variety of scenarios, including the possibility of losing all your possessions, The Caverns of Kalte is a much more straightforward adventure, spending all your time on an icy glacier and the caverns inside.

You are sent to capture a renegade wizard to the hilariously named land of Ikeya (IKEA). The adventure seems well-balanced, it took me about 3 or 4 tries to get through. (It also provided me with a personal dilemma. When my first character dies, I lose all of his possessions, including the incredibly strong Summerswerd, never to get it back. I didn't know if I should award the Summerswerd to the new character. In the end, I awarded myself two new Kai disciplines, I did complete two books, but not the possessions. I was happy to say I was able to succeed without the uber-powerful Summerswerd, which I didn't like much anyway. I'll stick with my warhammer, thank you very much.)

There seems to be a high number of unavoidable combats. One thing I'm not so keen on in the Lone Wolf world is that all of the monsters are given original names, like Bagnar or Kal-somethingorother. Maybe I'm just old school, but I prefer fighting goblins or yeti, rather than their no-name equivalents. While I'm complaining, I'm kind of fed up with the "pick a random number" options. It just feels like there should be a more interesting way to do this.

This book feels very much like an Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy book, with the wandering about and collecting needed items. I got definite Caverns of the Snow Witch vibes throughout.

Anyway, it's fine, but I'm starting to see some limitations to the Lone Wolf format. But to be honest, I'm just killing time till I get the courage to try book 3 of the Grey Star series.

More reviews by Kveto

Rating: 2/10]
[Recommended? NO]

Expecting the unexpected has proven to be the best strategy when approaching the held-in-high-esteem "Lone Wolf" series, and in my newfound awareness of the limitations of this format I was more suitably prepared for "The Caverns of Kalte". After a solid first adventure and a relatively disappointing sequel, it was fitting that the third adventure would both bring together the best and worst of its predecessors while being an entirely different sort of innovation on the format - one which makes for a mixed bag of a read and playthrough. It's a tough thing to get right when a particularly complex gamebook series expects readers to be able to adjust to a completely different sort of adventure each time, and here, I can't tell why the talented Joe Dever forsakes so many of the qualities he got down brilliantly back in "Flight from the Dark". While the tried-and-true combat system is as great as always, this book is seriously let down because of the astonishingly high difficulty level, frequent use of extremely arbitrary path splits (along the lines of 'pick a random number'), exhaustiveness of the narrative's unmeasured approach to the journeying aspects, and - differently so for this title - a real absence of focus on the characters. The decisively plot-driven story isn't about the now seemingly one-dimensional protagonist as much as it's about what the reader would do in his place; the second story relegated him to a self-insert hero, and from this point on that's all he seems to be, which is a shame, since there seemed to be a few chances to explore this part of the world this time around. With all the time delving into the details of this frozen, barren wasteland, why not explore the alliterative way Lone Wolf's life imitates his own condition? A precious opportunity wasted, perhaps - an unused way to make the atmospheric world reach both the head and the heart.

Since the third time wasn't the charm, for me, "Lone Wolf" remains a moderately enjoyable interactive fantasy adventure series with a few obvious faults amid the definite strengths - especially hindered by emphasis on arbitrary number selection passages, and failing to feel out the meaning of this world, I don't think this series is entirely my cup of tea. While I wasn't personally affected or impressed by this gamebook, it is still quite easy to tell why the series has garned the reputation it has - there's plenty of enjoyment for the right reader here, though not nearly as much long-term value as the first entry - and there's some value in seeing the legacy of the series a little differently through this darker, more dangerous quest. ^^

(Mysteriously disappears into the shadows.)

More reviews by Shadeheart