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A choose-your-own-adventure book series that I was very fond of when I was young. Would you believe that all my pocket money went into it!
Recently, I re-read one and was disappointed. It’s a book to play, not a book to read. Nowadays, with interactive games, the age of gamebooks is over.
It’s the story of Lone Wolf (that’s you), the last surviving member of the Kai, an order of warrior monks devoted to protecting the kingdom of Sommerlund, threatened by the Darklords. Your monastery has just been attacked (and razed) by monsters. All your brothers have been slaughtered. You must hurry to warn the king before the horde on your tail devastates the entire country…
Five lines amply summarise the plot of this first volume. It’s not exactly Shakespeare!
Let’s recall the principle of a gamebook: each volume is divided into 350 chapters of one or two pages on average. You start by reading the first one and are directed, according to your decisions, to another, then another, in random order. This reminds me that the binding of these books was of poor quality and the pages would always peel off.
The most interesting part in my opinion is the prologue, which is a bit more detailed than the rest and marked by the hero customisation phase. You assign random statistics to him, choose a certain number of powers (hunting, weapons mastery, intuition, telekinesis…), prepare his equipment… And in each subsequent volume, you can continue with your character as you left him, keeping his objects and weapons. The dedicated reader thus gets enhanced abilities compared to the johnny-come-lately who would jump on the bandwagon midway through.
A large part of these books is available online now, at this address:
Project Aion
For physical copies (and more), go to: Magnamund.com.
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Flight from the Dark
Les Maîtres des ténèbres