A new book from Drew Wagar is always a cause for excitement. I cannot stress enough how good the Shadeward Saga is, and as you’ll have seen if you’ve been following these book reviews, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his other works, too. It feels like a long time since we first heard about Drew’s plans for the Hegira Saga, bringing more stories to the fantastic universe of Shadeward, and then it felt like the release date for this first novel, Contravention, came upon us so fast I hardly had time to think

Similarly to The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge is a videogame I have no personal experience with. At least with the first game, I’d played a little of the Android remake by Chris Wild. Not so with its sequel. Mike Singleton’s Doomdark’s Revenge was originally released the same year as its predecessor, again for the ZX Spectrum system, and significantly expanded the first game’s scope. There were now hundreds of characters, and a brand new realm to explore. The Icemark also had a much larger map than that of the land of Midnight in the previous game, and many more routes to success. Understandably, making such a novelisation sounds like a monumental challenge.

I know I’m always in for a good time when Drew Wagar releases a new book. The Elect Saga is an interesting series; not technically new, but newly released wide. Drew announced to us on his Discord that he was re-writing and re-editing the short fan-fiction series he’d written years ago for the Elite-inspired videogame, Oolite, removing any copyright offending content, and releasing it out into the wild for all to read.

The Lords of Midnight is an adventure strategy game that was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, written and created by Mike Singleton. This 2018 novel - the first in the Midnight Chronicles - by Drew Wagar is the official novelisation of that classic game. The story behind the creation of this book is a fascinating tale all on its own, but one I’ll leave to Drew (contained within the book’s Author’s Note). Now, I need to be clear here: I never played the game - it came out four years before I was born - in fact I hadn’t heard of it until relatively recently.