Book Review – Fighting Fantasy: Eye of the Dragon

by Ian Livingstone (Wizard Books) ISBN: 9781848311237

Now I seem to remember Ian Livingston. Where from? I’m not sure but I think he wrote bad fiction when I was growing up. You know Goosebumps style children’s books that come out once a month and have numbers rather than names. So I was not expecting much form this book. And I got very little.

It is a variation on the “go to page” format of my youth. Except the reader/player has a Dungeons and Dragons style character that can take damage and die. Presumably the objective of the book is to fight to the last chapter without dying.

Now I really don’t want to read a book that makes it my fault that the hero keeps dying. Maybe kids are different. Maybe they get some morbid pleasure form offing the main character and letting the bad guy win.

I could not figure this out until I saw that the co-creator was Steve Jackson creator of cult board games based on other games, movies and books.

Then it made sense. The bad author and the bad game maker got together to combine their evil skills and create a bad half-breed book-game.  Once you realise this it seems clear the objective of the book is not to win and have your hero live, but rather to not buy it and save the real world from bad fiction and games.

Christopher Dean
2/5
4/5 on the evil-o-meter

Buy the book here