Richard Clarke is a famous author and story collector, who's decided to travel to the forests of Brovania, a small European country, in search of the Lost Legend, a manuscript of an ancient story that was locked in a silver chest and is supposedly lost on Brovania. His son and daughter, Justin and Marissa, are with him as part of the search, which leads them into one of the strangest adventures of their lives.
It is one of the nineteen original series books that was not adapted into the 1995 TV series.
The book provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The book starts with a story involving a hunt for a legendary blue sea lion in Antarctica.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Justin and Marissa's mom is never seen nor mentioned.
- An Aesop: You can't get something for nothing. Owning the Lost Legend comes at the cost of being lost forever.
- Leave well enough alone. There are some things that were not meant to see the light of day.
- Bears Are Bad News: As Justin notes at one point, Mr. Clarke has a fondness of telling stories where bears are the villains.
- Bottomless Pits: One of Mr. Clarke's stories is about an imp that lured kids into one of these, where they fell and fell forever. And later on, Justin believes that he and Marissa have fallen in one of these, but it was just his imagination as it turned out to be a naturally large hole.
- Chekhov's Gun: Justin uses one of the robot mice that attacked him and Marissa earlier to ward off a giant cat later on.
- Covers Always Lie:
- The artwork depicts snow on the ground around Ivanna, even though there is no mention of such thing in the story and it is implied to take place in the summertime. The only snow that appears in the story is at the beginning, but that was only part of a story that Mr. Clarke was telling his children.
- Also, Ivanna's dress is brown even though the book states that it is grey. Plus, the mean look on her face and synopsis summary on the back make her seem as though she will be an antagonist when she's actually helpful.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Turns out that finding the Lost Legend makes you lost... in a mystical forest seemingly until the end of time.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The book's title, Legend of the Lost Legend.
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: When he and Marissa fall down a deep hole at one point, Justin screams that it is the pit with no bottom. However, the hole actually turns out to have a bottom, and Justin sheepishly thinks to himself that it was silly of him to have said that out loud.
- Epic Fail: Apparently, Justin and Marissa are so bad at camping that they cannot find firewood in a forest. Their father is very exasperated by this.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: At the beginning of the book, the sled dogs that Justin and Marissa were riding suddenly stop, all tense and unwilling to go further. They presumably sense that they're on thin ice.
- Foreshadowing: At one point when Justin looks at Luka, he notes that if his whole body hair was completely shaved off, he would look just like a human. And by the end of the story, it turns out that he actually is a human.
- Gingerbread House: When the two Clarke children see a cabin in the woods at a distance, Marissa wonders if it will be this type of cabin. Justin responds by rolling his eyes in annoyance and snarking.
- Heavy Sleeper: Mr. Clarke. When his children try to wake him up to join them in following Silverdog, he just keeps on sleeping no matter how they try to arouse him from his slumber, forcing them to just follow the dog alone.
- It's All About Me: Richard Clarke is obsessed with finding the Lost Legend and essentially dragged his kids with him on the hunt for it, while treating them poorly for not being of more help.
- Mega Neko: Justin and Marissa come across a black cat pair of these that catch them and almost swallow them whole. Justin manages to get him and Marissa to escape with his quick thinking, but not before they are swallowed almost whole and covered in saliva.
- Nested Story Reveal: The first two chapters start with an adventure in Antarctica. Chapter 3 reveals it was just a story that Richard Clarke was telling to his two kids.
- No Antagonist: Unlike most Goosebumps books, this one has no actual villains or monsters, and it's more of a fantasy story than a horror story.
- Not Helping Your Case: When Mr. Clarke tells his kids that they have been unhelpful throughout this trip so far such as not getting any firewood, Marissa protests that they didn't know where to look for it. Her father points out that they're in a forest, which is filled with firewood.
- Ominous Fog: The first night that Justin and Marissa leave their tent to follow Silverdog, the woods are filled with this. Justin himself finds it creepy.
- Quizzical Tilt: When Justin is in the woods alone with Luka and he asks him where Marissa is, Luka responds this way.
- Raised by Wolves: Ivanna claims Luka was this when he first appears and starts acting wild towards Justin and Marissa. It turns out she was kidding; he's really the mastermind behind the whole event.
- Red Herring: The whole adventure that Justin and Marissa went through wasn't for the Lost Legend, it was for a mystical egg.
- Ruritania: Brovania, the country the protagonists visit in search of the titular Lost Legend.
- Secret Test of Character: The kids' whole experience in the Fantasy Forest turns out to be one, to see if they can figure out what was real and what wasn't, and overcoming the fake stuff.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After everything that Justin and Marissa go through in the Fantasy Forest, it turns out that Luka doesn't even have the Lost Legend—and he thought they were looking for something else. When the kids clear things up, he points them to the people who actually have it, who are perfectly happy to be rid of it.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: When Justin and Marissa meet the white dog who turns out to be the friendly dog Silverdog, Marissa tries to warn Justin away from him by reminding him of one of their father's stories about this trope, featuring a dog that looked and acted friendly in order to lure out victims for its ghost dog friends.
