Title: Champions Quest: The Die of Destiny
Author: Frank L. Cole
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Genre: Teen Fantasy
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 295
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9781629728506
Price: 17.99
Reviewed by Heather Harris Bergevin for the Association for Mormon Letters
Frank Cole isn’t, by copyright, allowed to use Dungeons and Dragons as a formal format mentioned in his books, but if your tweens are interested in learning to play and interested in DnD style stories, then Champions Quest: The Die of Destiny is a great book for you! With the resurgence of DnD after the popularity of Stanger Things, many authors are becoming more overt about their use of formal gameplay as a format for world-building, and Champions Quest is a good example of the RPG into storyline genre.
A young boy, Lucas Silver, is in foster care, depressed, and planning on escaping to the train station to head to parts unknown…unknown to his foster parents, the system, his friends, and even to himself. While he waits, however, for his train to literally get out of town, he is found by his friend Miles, who knows about his plan. While trying to dissuade him, they notice a nearby shop down a dark alley.
And, naturally (or in this case, preternaturally), their journey begins.
In addition to their friendship, Lucas and Miles’ team includes an added schoolmate, an obligatory antagonizing bully, and a madcap host of monsters and other mythical creatures to help them in their RPG. The book follows and explains dice rolls, gearing up, and other game play aspects in ways that tweens can understand and process.
Overall, Champions Quest is a great midgrade romp through swamps and forest lands, fighting juggernauts, spiders, kobolds, and other familiar Boss creatures, all without the monsters being particularly evil or menacing once they know them (so that younger readers don’t need to be worried about lasting fear). A gentle Jumanji, the game is fun and practical, with the real journey being, of course, the friends you make along the way. But who are the mysterious shopkeepers, and what part do they play in all of this?
Who will like Champions Quest: My niece Mimi and nephew Lewis, who, at 6 and 8, are ready for greater adventures, and yet not ready for something grisly like Hunger Games or even the later Harry Potter books. Rick Riordan’s younger fans might also enjoy this series as well as anyone who wants to learn a homebrew RPG where your fate is changed with the roll of a dice.