Scholastic have released the next six books in their relaunch of the Fighting Fantasy series, which includes Charlie Higson’s brand-new Allansian adventure The Gates of Death.
Are YOU brave enough to face the all-powerful queen of Chaos, growing ever more monstrous behind the Gates of Death?
A terrible plague has devastated Allansia, striking its people down with a sickness that turns them into hideous, demonic monsters. You must travel to the Invisible City with a smoke-oil antidote, but the way is full of peril and predators at every turn – you can trust no one, for the demon curse may already be upon them…
The Gates of Death is joined by reprints of the classic Fighting Fantasy gamebooks Creature of Havoc, Deathtrap Dungeon, Appointment with F.E.A.R., Island of the Lizard King, and Sorcery! 1: The Shamutanti Hills – the first book of Steve Jackson’s four-part Sorcery! epic.
All six of these new Fighting Fantasy releases are now available from major retailers.
So there ARE full page illustrations for the covers in existence but Scholastic has chosen not to use them. What an odd decision, as is abandoning the uniform gold spines to replace with what looks like unicorn rainbow vomit on a bookshelf.
Anyway, just finished “The Gates of Death”. Really enjoyed it. So much better than Port of Peril. Fingers crossed that the next new Fighting Fantasy title will be written by the master of the medium, Mr. Steve Jackson.
Overall, I think this group of cover illustrations are better than the first wave, so I agree that it is surprising that they’ve chosen go with a revised design showing just a circular section. The spines are still gold (with an added mini image) – except for The Gates of Death, which is silver. I’m reading various comments online that people are enjoying TGoD so far, which is really good to know.
I wonder if Ted and Ralph make a cameo appearance?
Thanks for the news. I was just reading some reviews on the web for it, and it seems quite a nice book. Any thoughts on how it compares to other Fighting Fantasy?
My copy’s in the post. Will be interesting to compare Charlie’s style to that of other FF authors.
I enjoyed the adventure, it was entertaining and well constructed. Higson’s writing was far better than Livingstone’s last effort (re: Port of Peril).
Terrible artwork though. Really poor.
Good to hear that you found it worthwhile – I’m looking forward to playing it now. Scholastic should have retained the previous cover design and sought out a different technique for the interior art. FF was always known for its high quality illustration – not anymore!
Hi Michael. I completely agree – its really disappointing. I don’t get why the illustrations aren’t black and white line/ink drawings. The publisher would have known they were printing the books in black and white and these look like they were for a colour book. Even then they are still pretty poor – both on an objective level (eg, technically some of the perspective is just wrong) and on a subjective one too (eg, style is not my cup of tea, there’s not enough detail in the illustrations). If you have a look at Vlado Krizan’s art on google it works with a colour palette, not black and white. Those in charge at Scholastic want to get their act together.
You’re spot on – poor judgement from the publisher, not the artist. It’s such a let down now, as I now get little joy from the internal FF illustrations.
Rich, out of curiosity, did Higson still stick to 400 sections? I saw on amazon that the book was 300 pages, which feels a bit longer than traditional FF? (I want to order my own copy, but need to wait a bit for some complicated to explain logistic reasons…)
Hi Adrao. No, its 470 references in length.
Just answered my own question (copy arrived this morning), it’s 470 sections long. First feeling after only starting to read it is that there are many objects, and quite a few “loops”, which is a bit weird in fighting fantasy…
Hi there, I am new to this and I would like to get some of these books. But I hear so many things about the different editions and I would like to ask which ones are considered the best, please. I am looking to get the one with better quality, artwork and less printing errors. Thank you.
The new FF releases from Scholastic don’t feature the classic, high quality interior illustrations of old, so you’d be best to locate some second-hand editions from either the original publisher, Puffin Books, or the later reprints from Wizard Books (note that Wizard did not reprint the full series, but did publish a few new titles). See here: http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy for more info about the various publishers – the Puffin editions are considered to be the ‘best’. Ian Livingstone’s ‘The Port of Peril’, and Charlie Higson’s ‘The Gates of Death’ are recent books, so are only available from Scholastic.