Talisman of Death

 

If you're reading these reviews in order of publication, you may be confused. Why is my second review for the eleventh Fighting Fantasy to be released? There's a simple answer: it was the second book I've got. For whatever it's worth, I'm going to be reviewing these books in the order, as far as I remember, that I played them in (and the cover I use will be the version I first owned, in case you're curious).

Whilst the book list in the front of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain meant I was technically aware of the existence of other books in the series, as it was an old book, the idea of actually getting others didn't occur to young me (I think the Wizard series was actually being printed by this point, but I wasn't aware of it). So it was only a chance spot whilst shopping with my mum in a charity shop that saw me obtain Talisman of Death and turn Fighting Fantasy from 'a book I have' into an actual hobby. Anyway, on to the review:

As a book

It didn't register until it was pointed out to me, but the plot of Talisman of Death is basically that of Lord of the Rings - you have to save the world of Orb from the potential power of the titular Talisman by transporting it back to your own world (you are actually a normal person from Earth, transported to Orb by its' gods and granted the capabilities of an at-least-fairly-capable warrior), so it's not a one-for-one clone, but when you factor in your being chased by mounted wraiths and being saved by an eagle at different points of the book, the comparisons become fairly obvious. A bit of a lack of originality doesn't detract from the book, though, which is excellently written.

For clarity the whole 'you are actually from Earth' isn't particularly relevant to the book, but it's a neat plot device in that it justifies a) the book 'dropping you in' to the world, b) you not having any preexisting knowledge of Orb and c) triumphing by taking the Talisman successfully through the portal to Earth isn't condemning your character to leaving their life behind and trying to get by in an alien world (although that would be interesting from a narrative perspective). 

Anyway, the world of Orb is very well-realised through descriptive writing and a coherent sense of place, and although most of its' inhabitants are not unlike those you might encounter in the established Fighting Fantasy world (to the extent that it was established when ToD was released), the whole environment feels distinctive, with a flavour of it's own. Whilst no individual characters get a huge amount of page-time, most people that you meet have their personalities well conveyed during the time you spend with them. Similarly, the locations that you do visit all have their own sense of atmosphere that makes you want to explore as many different paths through the books as possible, and the overall journey feels suitably . I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the best-written books in the series and is well worth reading even if you don't intend to play it 'properly'.

As a game

There's a unique aspect to Talisman of Death that needs to be described first, so that any assessment of difficulty can be understood in the proper context. Basically, there's a sort-of checkpoint/resurrection system and a lot of would-be instant deaths send you back to either pretty much the start of the book, or after exiting the city which forms the middle part of the book (your inventory gets reset too, so it's not something you can game). Going back to the first checkpoint is obviously similar to just restarting (but you get to keep good stats if you rolled them!), but the second is much further in a means that making a mistake or missing an item in the last portion of the book doesn't have to lead to the frustration of losing all your progress as you'll only have to replay a relatively small portion of the book. There are still actual instant deaths, primarily if you fall into the clutches of the servants of Death rather than just dying somehow and as far as I'm aware, death in combat is permanent, which is a little inconsistent if you're killed by a normal opponent and would be frustrating if you narrowly lose one, but might overall save some frustration because...

Combats are mostly fair/avoidable, but with two mandatory fights with Skill 12 opponents. Both of these in themselves can be made easier if you've taken the best path to reach them, but even in that scenario, a character without stats in the upper range of things will be fighting an uphill battle. So, to circle back to the previous paragraph, there probably wouldn't be much point in a Skill 7/8 character getting repeatedly resurrected and brute-forcing through most combats, because they aren't getting past the big 2 anyway (I mean, it's not actually impossible, but it'd be orders of magnitude quicker and less tedious to just restart with a stronger character).

I do mark the book down slightly for the two fights in question as, even though it's narratively reasonable that they're as tough as they are (one far moreso than the other, really), they can come across as unfair difficulty spikes in an otherwise pretty-well balanced book.

Combat aside, the book is pretty fair. The checkpoint system, as discussed, mitigates a lot of failure options and usually, making a mistake in a given situation means that getting through it is just harder, not impossible. At lot of the actual failures (and the ones you can be resurrected from) arise from doing something a bit stupid too - you're not required to make counter-intuitive decisions in order to succeed and you don't get the feeling that the book wants you to fail it, like you do with some others. Overall, with the exception of the aforementioned combats, the difficulty is pitched very well indeed.

The art

Another good outing for the artwork, with several striking images. I do appreciate how pretty much every character of note gets an illustration, which helps a lot with forming a mental image of your journey.

Overall

I've tried to be restrained in the main portion of this review, but I really do love this one. There's a bit of a nostalgia impact, but it's genuinely superbly written and nearly every aspect of the game side of things, it gets right. Despite the nitpick with the difficulty curve and the fact that it arguably lacks a truly original/memorable aspect/encounter to set it apart from other books, it's definitely in the top tier for me. 9/10.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

The one that started it all: for thousands of Fighting Fantasy fans, for gamebooks in general, and for me. I was not one of those initial fans back in 1982 (I wasn't yet born!) - eight-year-old me I discovered this book twenty-something years after that, in a big cardboard box of books my dad brought down from the attic for me to peruse. 

I wasn't actually initially hooked by The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I'd previously read some old copies of a few of the Lone Wolf gamebooks and enjoyed them, so I'm not sure why this one didn't initially click with me. Once I got into it, though, I loved it, and it kept me entertained for a long time indeed.

But I'm not here to judge this book for it's impact on childhood readers, iconic and important as it is for precisely that. I am here to review it as critically and objectively as I can. There is a place for subjectivity - if I like a book, then that's a good thing and I don't have to justify that. But for anyone wondering purely if this book is worth buying for it's narrative and gameplay experience, here are my thoughts:

As a book

Whilst by no means a badly-written book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain would have been unlikely to have received much attention at all had it's plot and writing found themselves in a traditional novel, rather than a seminal, genre-creating work. The plot is more or less as simple as they come: explore a dungeon, killing various nasty creatures as you go, in order to get your hands on a stack of treasure. There's nothing wrong with that, but some people might want more from the narrative of their gamebooks. 

Equally simplistic is the setting. Aside from being a presumably distinctive landmark in-universe, Firetop Mountain doesn't have much in the way of theme or flavour and is in fact a pretty generic dungeon. This was probably a smart choice in practical terms - if you're creating a whole new type of book, playing it safe with the setting in order to focus your efforts on the mechanical side of things makes sense. It does mean that readers are generally unlikely to find their fantasy horizons broadened by the book, however, as the environments and encounters won't be anything they haven't come across somewhere before. For example, nearly all the creatures you will fight in the opening stage of the book are orcs. In-universe, that's got internal logic going for it: there's (seemingly) an orc settlement within the dungeon so yeah, there will be a few of them around to fight. But that doesn't mean it can't get a bit samey.

The actual text does it's job largely well. Whilst some parts of the dungeon don't lend themselves to much in the way of description (there's a lot of tunnels and junctions you'll come across that feature nothing distinctive and you'll make decisions about which options to take with no context or additional information to guide your choice), when there is something more significant to describe, this is conveyed pretty well from situation to situation - what is more lacking is an overall sense of atmosphere. Potentially, this is a result of the dual-authorship: initially, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone wrote half the book each, then realised that the shift in writing styles was rather jarring. As a result, Steve re-wrote Ian's content in his own style, solving that particular issue. However, I do wonder if some of the potential atmosphere was lost in translation, so to speak - and on top of this, I can imagine that the re-writing might have been quite a rushed affair.

Overall, the writing is good enough, definitely better than 'bare minimum' for the genre, but not anything special. Basically, if you're not enjoying the game side of the book, I don't think you'll end up sticking with it for purely it's literary qualities. 

As a game

Gameplay wise, TWoFM is pretty solid. The difficulty level is actually quite fair - whilst the true path does have one unavoidable combat that lower-statted characters might struggle with, opponents tend to be pretty managable and/or avoidable, so even the weakest character can have a decent crack at mapping out a bit more of the dungeon (winning with the weakest possible character isn't actually out of the question, but you'd have to know the most risk-free route route and get a bit lucky). 

On top of that, the book is quite generous with handing out bonuses with you - you get (often multiple) Luck points back for pretty trivial things and even a Skill/Stamina restoration bonus from feeling 'proud of your victory' at one point (really!).  In fact it's not a very harsh adventure in general, with very few ways to fail outside of dying in combat, or (leading us nicely on the next section), not finding the keys you need to claim the treasure at the end.

Basically, you can get all the way to the final stage of the book (including killing the titular Warlock), then fail because you didn't find the correct keys earlier. This sort of thing is not universally popular in Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and it's a view I have a lot of sympathy for - some later books require you to have taken an incredibly specific path through them in order to win. Here, though, I don't personally mind it. Firstly, the rules actually tell you that will need to find certain keys to ultimately claim the treasure, which mitigates the kick-in-teeth feeling you often get from "don't have this item? Then you fail!" after trekking through an entire adventure. Secondly, I guess I just enjoyed exploring Firetop Mountain to find what I needed (I think the fact that you are exploring actual new routes to find keys you missed, rather than making slight variations to how you approach the same situation, or some of the more contrived 'true path' nonsense from some later books helps here).

There is also a somewhat 'marmite' aspect to the book - the Maze of Zagor, which forms the final quarter-or-so of the adventure, before the final showdown. Mechanically, it's really just a series of passageways and junctions for you to successfully find your way through, complicated by secret passages and traps that send you back to an earlier point in the maze. It often gets criticised for turning into a slog of flicking between paragraphs you've already tried, looking for an option you've missed and without much else happening. I think that's a reasonable critique and unless you fluke your way through, it can certainly outstay it's welcome as a challenge. From a more detached perspective though, I think Steve Jackson deserves credit for creating such a challenge within the format.

To sum up, it's a well-constructed game that will feel simplistic to more experienced gamebookers, but stands perfectly well on it's own merits.

The art

Just a quick section, as I'd never tip the balance of recommending a gamebook based on the art. Russ Nicholson's illustrations add a lot to the adventure - his distinctive style gives a lot of personality his depictions of what would otherwise be fairly generic situations and he captures a lot of dynamism too - my personal favourite is the Giant Sandworm bursting out of the ground to attack you.

Overall

For nostalgic reasons, this is a hard one for me to rate. Whenever I play it, I enjoy it like it's an 8/10 gamebook. However, objectively, being as cold-hearted as I can, I'd give it a 6.5/10 - someone wondering which gamebook to play next shouldn't avoid it, nor should they particularly prioritise spending their money it either, unless they're curious about it for it's significance in the genre, which is entirely likely and legitimate. And of course, if someone is looking to try their first gamebook to get into the genre, there's no better book to recommend.