2025 read #65: Quag Keep by Andre Norton.

Quag Keep by Andre Norton

192 pages

Published 1978

Read from September 12 to September 13

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I learned about this book the other day in a fantasy-themed chat channel. It has the distinction of being what appears to be the very first Dungeons & Dragons novel ever published, so early in the evolution of D&D (and the TTRPG genre) that Norton describes it as a “war game” throughout the book.

We begin with a scene to remind us that dorks have been dorks for at least fifty years: Eckstern, the war game’s “referee,” dramatically unboxes a painted miniature, much to the fascination of his friends. Norton attempts to introduce the then-esoteric concepts of miniature gaming and collecting to the normies, while also not talking down to aficionados. She fails at both. It’s an awkward way to open a novel.

If you guessed that perhaps the weirdly detailed miniatures might enchant our everyday dweebs into the strange realm of Greyhawk, you win, uh. Not much. Because it’s pretty obvious. If you guessed that mystical dice would be built into the costumes of the characters the lads inhabit, that’s a weirder choice, so good job foreseeing that. (“They are like gamers’ dice,” our warrior helpfully explains, “save that there are too many shapes among them to be ordinary.”)

I think the way Norton consistently shoves game-manual concepts into her story is both a bad storytelling choice and a fascinating look into how fantasy and gaming, two musty old subcultures on the precipice of terrific evolution over the ensuing decades, overlapped and fed into each other at this early juncture. Witness this totally natural bit of exposition from page 14:

He had no fear of the berserker even though the huge man might well be deliberately working himself into one of those rages that transcended intelligence and made such a fighter impervious to weapons and some spells.

It’s the “some spells” that sets it over the edge for me.

Quag Keep is the original and archetypal “I turned my campaign into a novel” book, and perhaps it just wouldn’t have been the same without magical dice bracelets and two warriors compelled to chat when they meet in a shady tavern. Contrast it with a much more recent D&D isekai, Perception Check by Astrid Knight, which has decades of genre familiarity behind it and doesn’t need to integrate game mechanics into its descriptions (and is much better as a result).

While this would probably work better as someone’s meta game campaign than as a novel, and nothing here is particularly good, it isn’t wholly unenjoyable, in a masticated, regurgitated pulp sort of way. A fight against undead in a dust-swallowed ship would be a solid D&D encounter to this day. However, this being Norton, we cannot escape without some “women are as alien as the thoughts of a dragon” bullshit.