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.