I have very little memory of Fire on the Water (1984), though I know I read it way back when. I think perhaps I didn’t vibe with it then, because I didn’t really vibe with it now. King says to fetch a sword from far away, so you go fetch the sword. There are a lot of stretches of traveling. I like a good meander, but I do feel like this one was padded out a bit. Not enough monsters, either. I’m in it for the monsters. In the end, you get to keep that rad magic sword, though, so that’s pretty cool.

You can definitely see Joe Dever starting to hit his stride. This one is far more complex than the pretty simple Flight from the Dark. And it does have some undeniably great moments. The naval battle at the end is pretty fab. My favorite bit it when you try to figure out which of your traveling companions is trying to murder you. That actually might be my favorite moment in the whole series.

Gary Chalk’s art not really doing it for me in this one, alas. That’s OK though, we’ve a long road to travel.