The Spell of the Winter Wizard is a children's, middle grade choose-your-own-adventure stylel book that is Number 11 in the Endless Quest series. It is a Dungeons and Dragons Adventures book also, which is what caught my attention when it landed in our Little Free Library. I'm a latecomer to Dungeons and Dragons and trying to learn the basics of it, thanks to my husband. Even as an older adult, I thoroughly enjoyed this adventurous quest! It had all the elements of a fairy tale and oh, so much magic! The path I initially chose was pretty mellow and just turned the bad guy, the wizard of winter, into a flower and saving my stepfather, the good wizard. My character is a young girl whose stepfather good wizard has just been whisked off by the evil wizard of winter and my cat has been turned into a reindeer.

After my initial chosen adventure, I went back and read through the entire book, with all of the various outcomes. The author's imagination is vast and the book contains talking clams who sail boats and trees who bleed when their limbs are cut off, and many, many other creative and magical creatures throughout. The situations seem endless. Many end in doom and death, but hopefully you choose correctly and wind up with a happy ending! ( )

I remember getting this book for Christmas, maybe in 1983 or 1984. I don't have my original copy, which had a gemstone on the spine. The cover artwork is pretty evocative, and I picked it up to read because of the winter going on around me. I remember having a pretty strong mixed reaction to it when I read it initially - I wanted these books to be about adult adventurers with full equipment and abilities, but this one is about a female adopted ward of the wizard of eternal spring, who is incapacitated with illness when he is captured by the wizard of eternal winter.

I found most of the entries and choices to have a deus ex machina type of plot, where the choices made are rather token. I suppose that all Choose Your Own Adventure types of books have this kind of issue, but this book was particularly strong.

The interior artwork is acceptable, but not great. I was surprised to find that there is an actual scene of the cover art in one of the stories - I had thought it was just bad advertising. Nevertheless, it wasn't quite what I thought it would be about.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book again, and recalling some of the pleasant memories of my youth. ( )