Grey Star the Wizard was a series of game books by Joe Dever and Ian Page. The books were set in the same world as Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books, and were in fact subtitled "The World of Lone Wolf". There were four books in the series:
- Grey Star the Wizard
- The Forbidden City
- Beyond the Nightmare Gate
- War of the Wizards
The books had very similar game mechanics to the Lone Wolf series, although with enough differences to be novel. The plot and themes were also very similar to Lone Wolf, with a basic theme of supernatural good fighting supernatural evil that at times could be a background for generic fantasy, and at other times could be surrealistically innovative and horrifying. In retrospect, I would say that the Grey Star books were perhaps a bit edgier and scarier than the Lone Wolf books, and less full of generic fantasy. Another major difference is that the Grey Star books are told as a single arc, with the entire series being the story of Grey Star sent in pursuit of a magical artifact, and his rather perilous journey he must undertake to find it. The books have a much more suspenseful feeling than the Lone Wolf series, where Lone Wolf has a chance to go back to the Kai Monastery to "meditate" between books.
As to how the books stand up after the test of time: game books don't have a lot of replay value, at least for an adult. But I have to say that for a 10 year old boy, who had yet to have access to video games or the like, these books were absolutely enthralling and terrifying. I remember I would play through and through the first book, seeing if there was a certain dire plot point that I could somehow avoid. As far as game books go, this was rather excellent stuff, to my young mind.