Product Description

Fighting Fantasy™ is a brilliant series of adventure gamebooks created by games masterminds Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

Each book pits YOU - the reader - against a terrifying hoard of adversaries. Monsters like the foul Bloodbeast, the devilish Ganjee or noxious Orcs are all out to put a violent end to your daring quest. Often the choice is to kill or be killed… dare you enter the realm of Fighting Fantasy™?

The once-peaceful world of Orb is in terrible danger. Dark forces are at work to unleash the awesome might of the Evil One – and only YOU can stop them. YOUR mission is to destroy the Talisman of Death before the dark lord’s minions reach you. But beware! Time is running out …

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211355 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Steve Jackson
is, with Ian Livingstone, the originator of the Fighting Fantasy series. Among other things, he now runs the computer game company Lionhead Studios.

Ian Livingstone
is, with Steve Jackson, the originator of the Fighting Fantasy series. Since Fighting Fantasy’s huge success, he has become a major figure in the world of computer games, and is currently Creative Director of Eidos, the name behind Tomb Raider

Customer Reviews

The Talisman of Cool
The Talisman of Death is an excellent Fighting Fantasy game book. In fact, it's one of the best of the series in my opinion for its originality and well developed fantasy story.

In this book, you play an unwilling adventurer who's plucked from obscurity and plunged into a dangerous, violent, medieval/fantasy world called Orb by supernatural beings.

The mission that they burden you with is to carry an indestructible talisman, that's sought out by evil forces, through the land and off the world via a magical portal. As the talisman cannot be destroyed, this is the only way of keeping it out of the villains' hands and saving Orb.

So, you set off on you hazardous quest on your own. During your adventure, you get to experience the world's land and towns and cross paths with various friends and enemies, all the while being pursued by the forces of darkness who want to kill you to get to the Talisman.

My favourite bits of the book are meeting the dangerous warrior women and their leader. Also, the crooks in town are interesting too. The ending is particularly exciting and you have to keep your wits about you if you're not to get tricked!

Although I feel that this book was inspired by the Lord of the Rings in some ways, it's an original work that stands upon its own two feet. A great adventure that you'll enjoy if you like collecting Fighting Fantasy.

It's one of my personal top five books in the series.

Not too tricky fantasy adventure
Although like all of the series credited to the series creators Jackson and Livingstone, this book was actually authored by Mark Smith and Jamie Thompson, better known for the Way of the Tiger, Duel Master, Falcon and (in Thompson's case) Fabled Lands gamebook series. The title and cover are slightly misleading - this is a high fantasy FF, not a horror title like "Return of the Vampire" or "Beneath Nightmare Castle". It's not especially spooky and the monsters/NPCs include things like trolls, dark elves, orcs, a dragon, griffon, roc, wolf, ninja, chaos god, etc, as well as various undead. The story I found less believable than most FF's, partly because of its reliance on a "transported from your own world" scenario reminiscent of the Dungeons and Dragons TV series, rather than actually placing the character in a fantasy world. This said, it has a good mix of options and elements, and holds together fairly well as a fantasy scenario.

It is not particularly difficult in terms of the plot structure, but it's hard at a statistical level - the player will have to beat several Skill 12 adversaries to succeed, so a high-stats character is a must. This aside, one of my criticisms is that it is too easy in gaming terms, with the "good" choices being fairly obvious in most cases and the actual path through being fairly short - too much text volume is spent on lengthy sidetracks a player will only enter as a result of taking a wrong choice they are unlikely either to make or to repeat. It is therefore only likely to take a few reads to reach the end. Another problem is that it is fairly linear - though branches split within various sections, it splits too easily into three mini-adventures (before, during and after Greyfriars) which are self-contained in relation to each other. It is not, however, linear within each part, with various "good" paths through the before and during sections.

The rules are fairly standard for FF; the only real addition is a resurrection option after most of the non-combat deaths (from bad choices, failed skill or luck rolls etc) - a nice addition I felt, reducing the frustration of replaying, especially in the more difficult later parts of the adventure.