A review by runehallow
Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons by Michael Witwer

2.0

Two stars, mostly because I learned a few things I hadn't known before. Aside from this smattering of interesting facts, the book isn't terribly compelling or useful. Witwer lionizes Gygaz at every turn; this is less a biography and more a fawning, fanboy paen to someone that the author idolizes & is maybe a little in love with?? There's a lot of fluff in this book, starting with the cheesy framing device of starting many chapters with an excerpt from a symbolic D&D game meant to evoke certain dramatic suggestions about the course of Gygax's life (i.e.: a PC companion falls to trolls in a short dialogue just before a chapter about the death of Gygax's best friend). Many scenes from Gygax's life are extrapolated and fictionalized, albeit not in a particularly elegant or illuminating way. There's just too much blind devotion here.