Mountain of Mirrors (1982) was the first Endless Quest I got (at a school book fair) and my excitement over the cover and even Jim Holloway’s interior art only made the betrayal of this book sting all the more.

You’re an elf. Something has cut off supply trains to your village (monsters). You go into the mountains to investigate. There, you find long passages with no choices to make, choices that are pointless and a good number of opportunities to give up. Like, actually written into the story. “Abandon your quest?” Seriously?

Dreadfully boring.

Getting back to the larger history lesson though, the success of Endless Quest (millions of copies sold!) led TSR deeper into the book trade and directly to the publication of the Dragonlance novels in 1984, which in turn were so successful that TSR found themselves to be one of the biggest fantasy and science fiction publishers of the late 80s and early 90s.