Young Indy and the Ring of Power?

I had several Young Indy books as a kid... but I saw here on The Raider that there was another published later by Random House called Ring of Power... Can't find a picture of it anywhere. It was published in either '98 or '99... a bit late for me to have read it. But I'm curious to see the cover art at least. Anyone have this? I've googled all over and I can't find a single picture.

...also, I figured I'd ask here... I didn't bother to search the forum for an answer to this, but I'll ask anyways. All those outdated sections of the site (ie the Literature section), when are they going to be updated? They've been down for as long as I can remember coming here.
 

walker

New member
I contacted the publisher

way back when it was first supposed to be published and they told me that YIJ and the Ring of Power had been cancelled. Sales of the Indy books were not encouraging at the time, so they opted to save money by not publishing the book. The same authors also wrote a book entitled YIJ and the Mask of the Madman. I contacted them directly and was told it pretty much suffered the same fate as Ring of Power.

Same thing happened with Fielding's Indiana Jones Survival Guide, which was supposed to have pubbed in October of 1997. That book and the Ring of Power are still listed on sites such as Amazon, etc., because publishers have to submit the bibliographic data prior to publication (I work for one), and Amazon is very bad at eliminating obselete information.

And again, same thing with Indiana Jones et les Bidiouns de la Mer, a French graphic novel. It was the fourth of a series and was solicited but never published. For Indy literature junkies like myself, these unpublished works really are the holy grail. I'm hopeful, however, that the new movie will encourage those publishers to work to finally get the books in print.

I remember Adam Hughes was poised to create an Indy limited series for Dark Horse Comics as well, but DH pretty much killed the series before he could do so. Also the DH series Indiana Jones and the Dance of Death suffered the same fate. Here's a description from the Indy timeline found on this very site:

"Indy has a dance with death on an island in the Indian Ocean. During an observation of native worshippers, many of them become ill with an outbreak of the plague. The source of the plague is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who is releasing his evils upon the world. Indy fights some zombies and barely escapes an earthquake which hits the area, killing the Horseman."
(Indiana Jones: The Dance of Death - Dark Horse comic)

That's always been a problem with Indy merchandise. No matter how many rabid fans post on the various Indy sites, etc., the general public doesn't seem to support Indy merchandise like they do Lucasfilm's Star Wars tie ins.

Keep your fingers crossed that this stuff eventually sees the light of day.
walker
 
Excellent, thank you for that very detailed response! Yes, hopefully this fourth film will create enough buzz to get things like this released. As a kid I loved the Young Indy books. Now I'm a bit nostalgic for them.
 
I looked for Mask of the Madman for a few months a couple of years ago. There was one seller asking $2,000 for a copy which was way too much. They only had it listed for a bit and I don't know what happened to it. I believe they even said it was a editor's copy. I also tried emailing the publishers, but they never wrote me back.
 
The Young Indy Holy Grail?

Young Indiana Jones and the Ring of Power
Stepping Stone Book
Authors: H. William, Megan Stine
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Publisher: Random House Trade (April 1999)

ISBN-10: 0679990496
ISBN-13: 978-0679990499
 

Lao_Che

Active member
Maybe someone on Facebook could ask HW Stine about the plot?

At least the Mask of the Madman blurb revealed Indy's horribly named cousin Lyle. ;)
 
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