By Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer

Penguin Random House, out now

A sumptuous visual guide to Dungeons & Dragons… and much more

If you think that this is book simply for those who love role playing games, think again. As someone who has not participated, I came to this very much as an outsider, but thanks to the excellent presentational work, both in the text, choice of illustrations and design, I can now understand the attraction far more.

There are over 700 different pieces of art in this book, so even if there’s something that simply isn’t to your taste, then there’s something else a few pages on that will have you staring for a moment. It’s not simply cover designs, but ads, merchandise, prototypes and much more – studies for paintings are reprinted alongside the final design, conveying how much work is involved visually while the text puts the illustrations in context both in the real world and in-universe, providing a fully authorised history of the game. (Chances are you didn’t know how Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD was an inspiration…)

Verdict: Both as a history of D&D and as an art book, this deserves a place on fantasy fans’ bookshelves. 10/10

Paul Simpson

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