Kingdom of Horror (1985 UK, 1987 US) is the adventure you meant to go on in the previous book before Merlin’s spell got messed up. You were supposed to find Excalibur and help defeat an invading Saxon army. While you were in Greece, Arthur took care of the Saxons, but he’s still missing his sword. Without it, his kingdom is in chaos.

As much as I love the clever set-up, this is not the best book in the series by far. It’s too hard, too arbitrary. Pretty much everything you do has a pretty good chance of killing you. The humor in this one feels forced and doesn’t do nearly enough to offset the grimness of the proceedings. Can’t win them all, I guess.

There are lots of little things I wish worked better. The long running gag about Merlin’s ever changing house pays off in this book—here it is a 6-sided die. You have to go there pretty often to find the right sort of supplies, and you roll a die to see which way you enter. That’s neat! Rolling a 1, though, kills you instantly, because that’s the face that is on the ground. That’s…not fun. But I love the idea of having to go back again and again and never know quite what you’ll get when you get there.