Review: Quag Keep By Andre Norton

Andre Norton was one of the most accomplished writers in the fantasy and science fiction fields in the 20th Century. She is kinda remembered now by the industry and fandom, but not like she should be. Her Witch World books are some of the best that our genre has ever produced, from plotting to characters to world-building.

I got this book for Christmas back in 1979 from my Dad (along with the game Wizard’s Quest). Dad was a long-time Norton fan, and he was tickled that she had written a book tied into D&D, which I was getting heavily into.

The backstory on this book is that Gygax invited Norton to play in a D&D session back in 1976, when the game was still new and wide open. She took some notes about her time in Greyhawk and wrote this novel based on the experience and wargaming (the term “role-playing game” was not widespread then) in general.

The book was the first to tie directly into D&D, though not wargaming as an in-book subject in fiction. That would be the Wargamers’ World/Magira series by German author and gamer Hugh Walker, which actually pre-dated Arneson’s Blackmoor as a campaign, and is deserving of its own post later.

I remember being kinda torn on the book, rather guiltily so because of Norton’s stature and how much Dad loved her. I never re-read the book, and my impressions and reasons for feeling mixed on it faded over the decades. I recently found my old copy, and it seemed like karma with the season being upon us. So I just read it for the first time in 42 years.

And I’m still mixed. She’s a master of her craft, and it is well-written, but it drags on and the ambiguity of its ending was unsatisfying. There is a lot to like, though.

Very simply, the plot involves people being drawn out of our world and into characters they have played in the world of Greyhawk. They don’t know why they have been thus summoned, and they get few answers from a wizard that recognizes what has happened to them and that it poses some threat to the reality of both worlds. The party of mismatched characters are put under a Geas to find the originator of this dire situation and make things right. The party goes on this compelled quest across plains and mountains and finally the Sea of Dust, ending in a magical quagmire and a mysterious tower. There they confront a dungeon master-like character.

The party is pretty cool, consisting of a swordsman (the viewpoint character), a berserker/wereboar with a pseudodragon companion, a battlemaiden, a cleric, a bard, an elf, and a lizardman. Norton really captured the diversity of adventuring party composition in the game, particularly in the free-wheeling elder days before the rules became codified as AD&D. Interestingly, there were unofficial bard and berserker classes published in Strategic Review/The Dragon at the time that Norton played with Gygax. Her description of the Berserker is in line with that published version of the class, including the ability to change into a boar at a certain level.

There are a lot of D&Disms, in particular the conflict between Law and Chaos. This was a staple of the early D&D game, as it had grown out of fantasy wargaming which usually featured armies of Law against the forces of Chaos. This was of course drawn from Moorcock, which was drawn from Poul Anderson (specifically Three Hearts And Three Lions). The conflict comes up often as the party – being of Law – tries to identify whether some of their opposition is serving Chaos.

Dragons show up of course, as both allies and enemies. There is a cool fight with an undead horde, which are called liches. A liche in D&D is a very powerful undead creature with spell-casting abilities; the description in the book of skeletal fighters is different from game-lore. There are a lot of places from the Greyhawk campaign referenced, besides the titular city and the Sea of Dust. Oddly, some are misspelled, like Geoff being referred to as Geofp in the book.

There is some reference to level titles, which were honorific titles given to characters as they advanced in power. “Swordsman” was the title for a third-level Fighting Man. “Initiate of the Third Circle” is the title given to the cleric Deav Dyne; this does not correspond to an official cleric level title, but does reference the level title for a 4th level Druid. There is a Druid character who is an enemy in the book (though it is never made clear why he serves the larger enemy), though it is pointed out he is not a servant of Chaos; Druids are Neutral of course, as is made plain in the text in a roundabout way.

So what gave me problems? Well, the pacing was rather plodding. The scenes in the city itself were cool, like the haggling in the horse market, and she really captured a seedy aspect of Greyhawk. The trek across the plains was rather drab (even though enlivened by an ambush) and the passage through the mountains was rather perfunctory. The elf of course found them a welcoming shelter his people had built under a big tree. The scene with the big dragon was not noteworthy, even allowing for another four decades of jadedness.

But the ambiguity of the ending, and therefore the whole story, left me tepid on the whole book. The whole bringing people into their characters is not explained, and the scene with the dungeon master is almost silly. The enemy and its nature are never explained. I get leaving things open so the reader can make their own interpretation. I get that having unresolved questions was a whole thing back in the 1970s; I remember a lot of it. I didn’t care for it then, or now, evidently. Was there ever really a firm idea in Norton’s mind as to why people were being brought out of our world to be placed in their characters in Greyhawk? It is not evident.

Maybe that is part of the point she wants to make in the story: what is real? Does the game take on a reality of its own? The last scene of Milo the swordsman rolling a die to determine their next action is metagamey and metafictiony, and kinda cool in that it tries to cut through, or rather dismiss, the ambiguity; but the lack of any real explanation as to who the enemy was (beyond an ill-described, semi-all-powerful dungeon master figure) and why this was being done is disappointing to me.

So: good and bad. I wish there was more clarity on just what the hell happened and why; but the characters were fine and some of the scenes were pretty cool.

There was a sequel that came out in 2006, just after Norton died. Evidently she had been writing it, and it was either in collaboration with Jean Rabe, or that author finished it upon Norton’s death. I have no idea what it is about, whether it features the same characters or tries to provide any answers, but I will probably try to pick it up.

On the whole, I’m glad I went back and read it. It wasn’t long, being under 200 pages, and it provides a fleeting glimpse of more open days of gaming.

Most importantly to me, as I read it I was taken back to reading it originally as a 13-year old kid, Christmas lights and the smell of cedar all over the house, Mom and Dad and my sister Kelly all gathered in the living room. Not what Norton intended to invoke, of course, but context always matters.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season with the people you love!