The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange

I was a little worried when my preview copy of The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe arrived on my doorstep.

You can see the cover to the left. It has a red dragon sitting in front of what appears to be a character sheet for a role playing game. As you may have guessed from the title, The Elfish Gene is Mark’s memoir about growing up while playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Look, I know I am a complete and total geek.  Heck, I write for a website with the word Geek in it!  I get to write about awesome geeky stuff.  So, this makes me a complete and total geek, and I accept that.  I cherish it.

However, looking at the book, I realized there was somebody out there who, dare I say it, grew up even more geeky than me.  Someone who might even be currently unhealthfully geeky.  Strange geeky, even.

So, I worried, just for a moment.  Would I like the book?  Or would it make me feel uncomfortable - the same kind of embarrased and uncomfortable feeling I got as a kid watching reruns of Leave-it-to-Beaver when the Beave did something totally stupid?  I felt for him, but I also felt embarrassed for him and uncomfortable watching him screw up, knowing he was going to get in trouble for it.

I mean, who in their right mind would write a memoir about playing a single game?  And how could he possibly hold my interest over 277 pages?

Well, I shouldn’t have worried.  This is a good, funny book, and I am enjoying the heck out of it so far.  Barrowcliffe used to be a stand-up comedian before wrting his first book (this is his third).  He has an excellent writing style that is light and funny, and when he describes the game, you feel his excitement as he rolls the dice.

Let me share with you the first couple of paragraph of the book.  I hope this sample intrigues you as much as it intrigued me:

An elf cloak is designed to render its user invisible.Worn in the Coventry shopping precinct when the City soccer team is playing at home, however, it has rather the opposite effect.

What follows explains why, on 24 October 1981, I was thrown into a fountain by soccer hooligans and how I eventually came to wish they’d done it years earlier.

The U.S. Version hits shelves in November.  However, you can purchase the European version now.

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