(this post was originally posted out of order when I was covering 1984, in this reposting I took the opportunity to place them closer to the correct order)

The problem with doing a chronological list of D&D releases is the fact that I keep finding new things to add, and as we go on sometimes those things will be in the past. That’s the case here, and there are four Fantasy Forest books, a TSR D&D gamebook series I was completely unaware of, which came out at the end of 1983 but which I didn’t cover back then.. So here we are! 

I usually follow the wikipedia page for D&D fiction for the publications but this series (as well as the HeartQuest books) are absent from that page, which is not the case with the Endless Quest books, so it has nothing to do with them being gamebooks. This series is then aimed at a third demographic segment, of Endless Quest is aimed at kids, mainly boys but not gender specific, of about 12 years old and Heart Quest is aimed at slightly older girls of around 14 with its romance plots, then Fantasy Forest is targeted at young kids of around 7-8 years old.

You can tell from the cover which has a call back to the TV series, that it is squarely aimed at the same audience as the cartoons. Shorter than the Endless Quests, more profusely illustrated, and with simpler plots it has a good Jeff Easley cover, but I’m not a particular fan of the Mario Macari Jr. illustrations inside. Storywise the book is set in the present time, but as the main character gets lost in the woods behind his house, he is transported to a recognizably D&D fantasy universe for some adventures with Unicorns and Dragons and Knights… oh my.