William Dear

Well, it's better than Mazes & Monsters though it shares the same problem: it's overlong for the subject matter. As for the reliability of the author, a character to be sure, I really didn't care going in about its reliability already being familiar with the facts in the tragic Dallas Egbert case. The book is a quick read but does tend to seem to spin its wheels simply to fill space though at times it seems to hit on a moment of genuine suspense here and there. It's simply not worth the time to read though I did like the descriptions of the steam-tunnels where Dear's "suffering" seemed a throw-back to the fiction of R.E. Howard, in a way. The chapter on the D&D game however was an absolute slog though a little funny in certain spots. The book overall is over-long and serves almost entirely as a relic of its time. Its only relevance now is as a footnote in the story of fantasy role-playing games as a part of the ridiculous Satanic-Panic of the 1980s. I cannot recommend this book.… (more)