Showing posts with label The Citadel of Chaos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Citadel of Chaos. Show all posts

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

The Citadel of Chaos

Following my nostalgic mood about my old childhood's reads, I have purchased a few more Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. At the moment, I am reading the second one of the series, The Citadel of Chaos. I say reading, but I am doing it slowly, as I have many other books I am reading at the moment. The Citadel of Chaos is the second book of the series (yes I am trying to read them chronologically) and it is the first time I read it. I was never attracted to it as a child, mainly because the image on the cover was unappealing: we had the one of the very first edition, with a crudely drawn Yeti-like creature looking at the reader, a Disney-like castle in the background (THAT was supposed to be the Citadel of Chaos?) The Wizard Book cover from 2002, which I have, is much better looking with this rather impressive hydra.

I am enjoying it, and so far it has been easier than The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, however two things bother me with it: 1)The monsters so far are mainly mixes of two animals or anthropoid versions of another animal (a rhino-man for instance). They mostly fail to be menacing. In a way, the furball with fangs of the first edition's cover  was pretty much a spot on illustration of the book's content, so far anyway 2)Just like for the first book, the big baddie is a powerful sorcerer. This is quite repetitive. Many of the gamebooks had dangerous wizards, I guess it is a trope to expect, but still. In our Dungeons & Dragons games, we often had to deal with evil magicians too. At least this one has a name: Balthus Dire. And the player character has better motivations: Balthus Dire has ambitions of conquest and is plotting to invade the Vale of Willows with his army of Chaotics (what the heck is that?). You play a magician yourself, which is pretty neat. And the names I found quite nice too: the Vale of Willows sounds quite evocative. So just for this I think this book will give me a fix of medieval fantasy until I play D&Dr again.