Kyrandia, Dungeon Master, and Marcus Sedgwick

So, a few weeks back I had this really crazy idea. For whatever reason I was thinking about old video games I used to play. By old I mean this is stuff I played on a Windows 3.1 that came on 3.5 floppies. Not terribly old compared to some games, but old compared to the kind of stuff we've got today. Specifically I was thinking about the Legend of Kyrandia and Dungeon Master. Then I got this really crazy idea. What if the library had these games for me to play? I had to find out. I was already online, reading about the Kyrandia franchise on Wikipedia, so it was an easy matter for me to get onto the library webpage, login (I have my library card number memorized. I don't know why, apparently I just login to the site that often). I was pretty sure they wouldn't have them, but I felt it was worth checking. To be fair, these games are available for free online, but I tried downloading them before on my old Dell laptop they just wouldn't work. I would download DOSbox and everything, the things just wouldn't play. It was a waste of time, same story with Dungeon Master. And after that experience I'm just not willing to try the download route again, even if that was with Windows Vista and I've now moved on to an Acer Windows 7 (So much better. I've always hated Dell, and it's nice to finally have a machine that isn't one). Anyway, I typed 'Kyrandia' into the search bar. No dice. Then I try 'Dungeon Master'. It pulls me up exactly one result. Marcus Sedgwick, The Dark Flight Down. Well, it's not Dungeon Master, but I guess you can say I believe in serendipity, so I go ahead and place it on hold.

Fast forward a few days to when I finally head off to the Library to pick it up, and then further still to when I'm home picking up the book. Oh, it's a sequel. Actually at the time I wondered if it was actually the final volume of a series. It wasn't exactly clear. It just said it finished up the story started in The Book of Dead Days or something like that.

So off to Wikipedia I head, to figure it out. Just one other book, the aforementioned Book of Dead Days. So I put that on my hold list as well, and later read both books. They're both rather short easy reads, but the story is good, fairly original, and both predictable and unpredictable, in that way where you guess things almost correctly. For example, I rather suspected that Boy was the Emperor. After all, no one had seen the Emperor in ten years, Boy had been wandering the street for ten years, it seemed logical to me. But as I said, I was close but not right. No spoilers (Though now if you read the book you will probably guess right.). I would recommend it, if you've have time for an easy read at about a young adult level.