Fighting Fantasy: Crystals of Storms

This latest adventure story from the Fighting Fantasy team is very much full of fighting and full of fantasy! A renowned games designer, Pratchett delivers a book that is imaginative and exciting but, most of all, is a fiendish a2nd complex game that will keep children busy for some time.

Readers’ own decisions drive this adventure, right from the very start. Readers choose their own character’s back story and this dictates the journey that will be taken: choosing one home town over another can be the difference between life and death.

Whichever initial path they choose, readers will be thrust straight into the heart of the action. In The Crystal of Storms, nobody is quite as they seem, and everyone is at war with someone, so there are very few moments to catch a breath before another conflict.

In Fighting Fantasy stories, readers have to use dice and keep track of their weapons and provisions, in order to take on villains and progress through the book. In The Crystal of Storms, though, unlike most Fighting Fantasy adventures, heroes don’t start with any provisions, so there is additional stress trying to win, find or steal some food before it’s too late! Newcomers may be caught out by this and few will succeed in getting all the way through the book without meeting a sticky end at the hands of goblins, scary cloudskins or simple hunger.

With magic waterfalls, giant crabs and corrosive grapes, children will enjoy losing themselves in this new world. However, its characters (heroes and villains) lack some of the originality and memorability of some other books in the series.

The outstanding quality of this book is the high level of gaming challenge. Tough dilemmas are frequently faced, including whether or not to let people live and, often, even the seemingly small decisions have enormous consequences!