Gamebooks

[Barrington Boots]

Thank you both. There's a good story in this one but I can't help but feel the writeup is possibly a bit on the long side..! The next one may be shorter!

(Not to put pressure on but I hope you are thinking of a good one for the later in the year 🎅🏻)

Erk! Early pressure! 

[Trooper McFad]

Thank you both. There's a good story in this one but I can't help but feel the writeup is possibly a bit on the long side..! The next one may be shorter!

(Not to put pressure on but I hope you are thinking of a good one for the later in the year 🎅🏻)

Erk! Early pressure! 

I have one in the bag already 😁

[Barrington Boots]

Slaves of the Abyss Part 3

So: I've foiled Bythos' attempt to destroy Kallamehr, but it's a real pyrrhic victory as half the country has been reduced to soulless husks. As I'm looking to sadly ride away into the sunset up pops Caduceus, the snake I met at Aletheia's hut, who tells me that I should follow Bythos to the abyss itself and defeat him if I'm to free these souls, as poor old Enthymesis has failed. He directs me to a river that flows into a cave where there's a portal to the abyss.... ok yeah. It's a bit of a stretch but stakes are high so lets do this! I cobble together a makeshift raft and soon I'm following a river that flows into a mountain and eventually wind up at a rocky beach, lit by a guttering torch, with a passage leading deep into the underworld.
I follow the tunnel, passing through some illusionary flames and briefly aiding some silver-skinned humanoids against some frog-creatures, before winding up in a large chamber. Here, horribly, I find a lump of green slime in which a human face is embedded. This is all that remains of Enthymesis - he croaks a warning with what little life he has left and warns me to avoid the sand in the middle of the room for it leads to the abyss, and to flee as something terrible is coming. I want to go to the abyss, and I certainly don't fancy meeting whatever has melted Enthymesis, so I head to the sand and as soon as I reach it I'm dragged down beneath it. The pressure is tremendous and just as I think I'm dead again I burst into a strange outer-space like domain and am sent hurtling downwards at speed until I black out and awaken in a cold chamber full of thick mists, resting on a vast pile of magical treasures.

Things get strange. I immediately eat the herbs from the pomander, as instructed. Poking about reveals a number of unusual magical items (including the golden fist from the temple earlier!) but nothing obviously of use. I'm about to head off when a silvery shape shoots past me, crashes into the floor, shatters and reforms into a strange limbless, beaked and winged reptile, translucent and pulsing with energy. It flounders about until it finds a silver chalice which it eats and then flaps off, the chalice fully visible through its skin. I follow the thing onto a plain of crystal but lose it in the mist. I decide to follow a sound of moaning - as I'm looking for trapped souls - and come across a huge chain, embedded in the floor and reaching up into the clouds where the moaning originates. Climbing the chain brings me to a starry void where hangs an impossible wall of bars, suspended in space, behind which are indeed the trapped souls of the folk of Kallamehr, all miserable and emaciated looking. I cannot free them, so I descend the chain and cast about for help. A little further on I come across some huge crystals jutting up from the floor, each containing a mummified human form, their faces contorted in agony. In the final one I can make out the features of none other than Sige, who whispers to me for freedom - she has been betrayed by Bythos and left here to die after she mucked up killing me, but I turn a  deaf ear to her plea.
After a skirmish with some kind of oily otherworld predator I discover a bowl shaped depression ahead, strange reptiles soaring above it and glowing sand at its centre. Electing to stay and observe, I witness several of the flying creatures drop into the bowl and deposit magical treasures before flying away. Then, after a lull, six warriors of crystal (art shows them looking the ones from Snow Witch, and Midnight Rogue, which is cool) arrive, form a circle and with mechanical precision proceed to pound the treasures into glowing dust before marching away again.
After they depart another figure emerges, this one cowled and feeble-looking, chanting a strange song about broth for Bythos - broth for the master - magical broth to rule the abyss. He was carried here in a crystal chariot before hobbling down to the bowl to gather up the dust within. I lurk at the edge of the bowl and when he emerges, leap out and mercilessly cut him down. Then disguising himself in his robes I climb aboard the chariot, and it whisks me away through the stars to a gigantic palace, also formed of crystal. Within another robed figure hurries me into a chamber where rests a vast goblet over three feet high. I do as indicated and pour the magical dust into the liquid within. The other robed figures leave, so bearing in mind the chant I just heard, I take a chance and drink the liquid.

The broth is foul, but before I can worry about it a door opens and in strides Bythos - fully restored and now 50 feet tall. Muttering about my lateness he seizes the goblet and drinks deeply, then reels in shock as I buckle in pain, crying out as the power of the broth flows through me. I begin to grow hugely, ripping through the robe until I too stand 50 feet in height and facing the horrified Bythos. Who has the power now, eh? He hurls a blast of freezing ice at me, but the herbs I have eaten protect me and the ice burns away on my skin. With a howl, Bythos smashes through the wall and leaps away and flees across the plains with me in hot pursuit. Eventually we stops by the chain and we battle it out hand to hand in some kind of Kong vs Godzilla kaiju style fight until he eventually falls, shattering into a million fragments on the ground.

Seizing the chain I haul upon it, bringing the floating cell to the ground, and then split apart its bars freeing the wretched occupants, thousands of them, before leading them back to the palace. At the palace gates I am greeted by robed servants proclaiming me ruler of the abyss. Now I am ruler, I demand to know how to travel back to the earthly plain: Bythos, it seems, used a magical ritual to do so but not enough of the reagents remain for all to return: it can be me, or the citizens of Kallamehr. There is no real choice here. I allow the souls of the people to return to Kallamehr and I must remain trapped in the abyss forever, alone.
Using the powers now available to me I scry upon Kallamehr and am rewarded with the sight of the people, happy and prosperous under their new ruler, the kindly Madhaerios. Caduceus is also here and offers me his wisdom. Together, the two of us can unlock the mysteries of the universe, and embark upon adventures undreamed.

I read that Paul Mason originally intended the ending to be one of sacrifice - killing Bythos traps you in the abyss forever (the happy ending being Madhaerios being the new ruler - the bad ending being Sige in control, something she presumably planned for, as otherwise why give you the pomander?) - but the bit about becoming all godlike and having future adventures was tacked on to make things happier. This I assume is the 'best' ending but there's a couple of others: you can return to an empty Kallamehr, leaving the citizens souls wandering in the abyss forever, or if you free everybody but didn't expose Sige then she ends up ruler so your victory isn't really complete. It's not explicitly stated, but I'm guessing this is why she gives you the pomander as she's hoping you'll kill Bythos.

Anyway, that's it! Totally recommend this one.

[Richard]

It certainly is a brilliant book! Thanks for reminding me how good it is with your detailed reviews, they were fun to read. I think I'll take another look at it this weekend.

[Barrington Boots]

Awesome, I hope you get a chance and enjoy it as much as I did. Glad you enjoyed my writeups too.

My wife was away this weekend so I had a chance to tackle the next book in the series already: Sky Lord

Now I said I was looking to do a shorter write-up for the next book - but this one isn't getting one at all, just a bit old critique.

Sky Lord is absolutely terrible. It has the two worst things a FF book can have - combats are numerous and very very difficult, and the choices you make are nonsensical. It reminds me a lot of the adventure I wrote for the 2022 advent calendar which was trying to be funny, with intentionally daft choices that often didn't really make much sense. I think that kind of thing is forgivable in a 45-paragraph joke thing for an online forum, but not for a published FF book.

The writing is sort of semi-jokey, with a lot of silly concepts, but the book isn't a full-on farce so it all the stupid names and accents and things feel out of place. It's also written in quite a perfunctory manner in places - after a multiple-paragraph chase segment with a man-eating blob throughout an abandoned ship, there's a test of sorts where various random uninformed choices you've made potentially weaken it, and the next paragraph is just 'you overpower the blob'. Weak stuff!
The book uses a lot of vehicle combat, which is way harder than the normal combat, and there's a special space battle near the start where you have to constantly change your pitch, roll and yaw without explaining what these are (I had to look them up on the internet) or get blown up. That battle has no bearing on the main plot either, so it feels like an exercise in using up paragraphs. There's another one later where you just get given a choice of 'funny' buttons to push in a ship battle with no rhyme or reason and you basically win or lose at random.
That sort of writing permeates the book and masses of the choices are seemingly based on chance. Square door or circle door? Blue soup or green soup? Stop mid-blob-chase to play snooker or play basketball? There's rarely any logic or intelligence on the choices and you could probably play the book just by flipping a coin for a good chunk of it.

The art is by Tim Sell, who did House of Hell, and seemed of a poor standard throughout. I didn't especially like his art there, but it did have some atmiosphere about it. Here it definitely doesn't do anything for me at all.

Playing through this one felt like a waste of time tbh. The fate of the main villain contains a nice twist although the book descends into contrived stupidity again immediately afterwards. But that's the best thing I can say about this really. It's probably the worst FF book I have read, worse than the mess that was BotZ, the tedious Starship Traveller or the uber-difficult Chasms of Malice, and I believe it's the last Sci-fi book in the series and I can see why. If this had been my first book instead of Forest of Doom I'd never have played another.

[Blue Cactus]

When I was a kid I had maybe eight or ten FF books and I was often drawn to the SF ones, more's the pity. Starship Traveller, Rebel Planet, Sky Lord, when I could have been exploring Port Borgos or meeting Yaz-Tromo 

[Richard]

FF34: STEALER OF SOULS

This was one of my favourite gamebooks when I was a teenager, yet I have never replayed it, so I was excited to find out whether it would still hold up today. It looks very promising: it is written by Keith Martin, who wrote one of my other favourite books, Master of Chaos (which I revisited a few years ago so I know it's still good), and the interior art is by my favourite FF artist, Russ Nicholson, whose private commission hangs on my wall. There are some truly spectacular illustrations in this book, which must rank as one of his best books in the series. This is all topped off by a brilliant cover by David Gallagher, and a colour map by Leo Hartas on the inside cover.

Having finished it last night, I can say that it is a competently written dungeon crawl, no more. I can't see what made me so enthusiastic about it that compelled me in 2003 to write on an FF-nostalgia website that this was my favourite gamebook. It's alright, and it shows some early promise by the writer, but it is let down by too many arbitrary "east or west"-type choices. The art is the only thing that really makes it stand out.

The introduction establishes that I am a veteran adventurer of great renown, and that I have been hired for a top secret mission by someone who spares no expense in paying for my transport to his city from far away, with luxury accommodation along the route, which makes it all the more puzzling that I begin the adventure with absolutely no money at all, but never mind. He tells me that a dastardly archmage called Mordraneth is plotting to take over the world, but my mission is not to go after him but just to sail to the Isle of Despair to rescue his prisoner, the wizard Alsander. Some other wizards and warriors are going after Mordraneth instead. I'm disappointed to be sent on a side-quest, but off I go to the island in a ship, earning the respect of the crew when I fight an oversized Stormbird that attacks us on the way. (I don't want to have to start over just because I lose a fight or a dice roll, so I have cheated and maxed out my stats.)

Arriving at the Isle of Despair, there isn't a harbour or beach big enough for the ship to land at, so I disembark in a dinghy on my own, where I fend off a hungry giant Skull Crab by throwing some of my provisions into the sea. On land, I am met by a friendly giant; the crab was his pet, so my not killing her means that I don't have to fight him. He gives me enough food for three meals, and also a scroll on which is written an obscure but ominous warning about "the Stealer of Souls," which reminds me of this Family Guy sketch:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F8mYLi3PGOc

Taking my leave, I then lose two of my newly-acquired meals by walking around in the rain and getting soaked, so I'm now back to the same amount of provisions I started with. Oh well. I then have the option of heading north to some hills or west along a well-used track (at least there is some information about the choices here). I choose west (but after later reading the alternative, I should have gone north). At a crossroads I go south and meet some friendly natives, who want to trade with me but I have no money and nothing to barter with (if I'd gone north earlier I could have picked up enough gold and treasure to buy some useful stuff). This is a bit concerning, because I don't know if any of the items I have missed out on getting are going to be indispensable later on; I'll just have to wait and see I suppose. 

After an uncomfortable night's sleep, during which I lose two stamina points (the best accommodation is reserved for people who have something to trade), in the morning the shaman warns me not to head north at the crossroads I came from, so I return there and head west. After a while I see a building in the distance, so I leave the trail and head cross-country to the building, arriving at sunset. Inside there is a prisoner in chains, and my options are to attack him (really?), help him or wait and see what happens. Being a little suspicious, I elect to wait, and it turns out the prisoner is an illusion: he is really a Dark Priest and he attacks me for a loss of six stamina points. I easily kill him though, and spend the night in the building. Successfully testing my luck means that I don't have nightmares, and I get two stamina points back for a good night's rest.

In the morning I find a trapdoor and go down it into a tunnel. Another lucky roll of the dice means that I avoid a rather unfair auto-death paragraph involving being absorbed by some living rock creature in the walls, and I arrive at the gated entrance to Mordaneth's Iron Crypt. I don't have whatever article I needed to get in, so I bend the iron bars by rolling higher than my skill score on 2 dice plus 3. Inside, the corridor appears to end in a wall, but this is just an illusion -- the first of many in the rest of this adventure, because Mordraneth is an expert illusionist. Gong through a concealed door, I surprise two goblins and kill them. I am then offered a choice of three doors by which I can leave the room: north, south or west.

What follows is the weakest part of the book, so I won't describe it step-by-step, but just give an overview. There are lots of N,S,E,W choices to make, and lots of locked doors where the book keeps asking me if I have an ebony key, which I could have bought from the villagers but couldn't afford, which is quite annoying. Encounters include a living stone statue of a minotaur (there's a beautiful picture of him), some orcs, more dark priests, a knight (I take his chain mail, which restores a skill point I had lost earlier), and a weird flying monster. On my travels I also pick up a crowbar, which means that when I am next asked if I have the ebony key I can just prise open a door instead, and in that room I collect a bronze ring and a platinum amulet, which are both handy later on. But overall, this section of the book leaves a bad impression, until I get to the end of it, where there is a good bit.

I eventually come to a torture chamber, where I make conversation with the torturer (an ogre), who tells me he has been interrogating a wizard -- it must be Alsander! He hasn't been talking, so Mordraneth has run out of patience with him and has ordered his execution -- I have only just got here in time! I kill the torturer, rescue the wizard, and -- plot twist! -- he tells me Mordraneth isn't where my employer thinks he is, he's right here on the island, and only I can stop him. (That so-called twist should have been very obvious really, but I still remember how exciting it was for me when I first read it in *checks copyright page* 1988, so I'll allow it.)

Alsander also teaches me some spells. I'm allowed to choose three from a list of seven, and I can only use each spell once, except for Dispel Illusion -- because I have the platinum amulet, I can cast that one twice. I choose Dispel Illusion, because I've been told that Mordraneth is a master of illusions. I also choose Dispel Fear, and Restore Luck because I'm already down to 7 luck points. (The other options were Fire Globe, Healing, Restore Skill, and Speed.)

The wizard then teleports home, leaving me on my own to find Mordraneth. Moving on, I kill two Dark Elves who are guarding a magic portal to Mordraneth's inner lair, his "Empire of Illusion." I enter the portal...

[Barrington Boots]

This is excellent! Really enjoyed reading it and glad that I'm not the only one writing these!
Look forward to seeing what's next..

[Richard]

Thank you! I'm enjoying re-visiting this series.

Stealer of Souls, part 2

The final phase of this book is a bit like the Maze of Zagor at the end of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but much better. It is a maze without the complexity of the original (with its interminably dull paragraphs that do nothing but ask if you want to continue down the passage you're in or go back the way you came). There are no compass-point choices of direction here; instead, you are given a choice between two or three differently-coloured passages, and they are not all completely random: each colour is sometimes a hint at what to expect in each passage. For example, the red passage leads to immense heat (not actual flames but almost as bad), black leads to pitch darkness and then a spectre, and so on (although not all of these are helpful -- I didn't get any clue from ochre, for example). More importantly, each passage contains a monster or a trap, instead of wandering around in Zagor's empty corridors that make up half the book but only have about three encounters in them. Mordraneth's maze is colourful both literally and figuratively!

It's my favourite part of the book, as the action comes thick and fast, and there is a sense of Mordraneth watching your progress, with occasional paragraphs where you hear his voice gloating about your impending doom. This adds a sense of danger. There are also several encounters where you can't be sure if you are dealing with an illusion or not, and I wasted my second Dispel Illusion spell on something that turned out to be real.

My first corridor is the red one, with the great heat, but the bronze ring I picked up earlier magically protects me from that. This leads to an orange tunnel where I am attacked by an eagle; I am told that it is only an illusion, but the illusion is still so real that I am obliged to fight it as it can wound me. The next choice is black or green. I was already offered black earlier, but not green, so I suspect that green might mean progress and opt for that. This tunnel gradually turns into a blue colour, and then I nearly drown in water. After that I use up one of my Dispel Illusion spells to get rid of some nippy rats, and next I encounter some guy who wants to touch my head in blessing. I don't trust him so I don't let him, and leave down a passage I haven't been offered before. The walls of this passage begin to quickly close in on me, and I didn't choose the Speed spell, but I do have the crowbar I used earlier, and I use that to escape. (It's rare in FF to get an item you can use twice!)

In the next location I am attacked by a hideous evil flying "Death Skull", which the book tells me is not an illusion. It has blood dripping from its eyes. There's a cool picture of it. It's so scary that I have to reduce my Skill by one point for the duration of this fight!

The next encounters are an illusory strong wind which threatens to blow me off a precipice, a skeleton warrior with a sword, and a blue dragon that breathes lightning! Mordraneth even has a better class of dragon than Zagor!

I'm attacked by a giant spider, and use my Dispel Fear spell to avoid losing some skill and stamina points, but this is still a tough fight and I am down to 9 Stamina points by the end. I scoff some provisions just in time for my final encounter with Mordraneth himself. I find him above me on a balcony, and he's casting a spell. I am out of spells, so I have to run up one of two staircases to get to him. He throws a fire globe at me, but my magic bronze ring which saved me from the extreme heat earlier works again and reduces the damage. We duel with swords, and he has a Skill of 10, which is (I think) the highest in the book. I win, because I cheated and gave myself a score of 12, but the book is pretty fair overall, as this seems to be the only high skill encounter in the book that you can't avoid, although it would still be a bit unpleasant if you were starting with a Skill of only 7 or 8. (The spectre takes a Skill point away from you permanently each time it wins an attack round, but I didn't meet him on my playthrough.)

The showdown with Mordraneth could have been a little longer and felt like a bit of an anti-climax after all that (this guy was supposedly going to conquer the whole world), but it still feels nice to reach paragraph 400!

This isn't the best FF book, but it is far from being the worst, and it is elevated by Russ Nicholson's superior art. There are some fantastic illustrations:

The statue of a minotaur at paragraph 274
A room full of skeletons, 331
The spectre, 112
The prisoner in chains, 379
The flying Death Skull, 296
A wall carving showing Mordraneth conjuring a spectral spider from the corpse of an elf, 216
The knight in chainmail, 75
The skeleton warrior, 169

Despite its shortcomings, I am still fond of this book.

[Barrington Boots]

Excellent stuff Richard, thanks for taking the time to write this all out!

It sounds like a fun one. I'm going to give it a couple of weeks for this to fade in the memory a bit, and then tackle it myself. I've skimmed over the art and it's really good, some of Russ Nicholson's best imo (not sure about an image of an evil balloon near the end, but the other ones you flagged up are really great)

The internet tells me Keith Martin was actually Carl Sargent? If so I'm unsurprised this is a good book.

I've been having a crack at Blood Sword but the combat system isn't working for me atm.

[Richard]

You are the Hero! confirms that Keith Martin is indeed Carl Sargent, and that this is the first of his seven books in the series.

[Richard]

Does anyone here know if the Fabled Lands books are good?

[Barrington Boots]

I've not read any of the them, but I do rate Jamie Thompson (and Russ Nicholson). Must be worth a look!

[Blue Cactus]

Does anyone here know if the Fabled Lands books are good?

Nope, not familiar with these ones.

[Richard]

Jimbo, did you ever finish Sorcery 4?