Fighting Fantasy: Assassins of Allansia

Not bad but not great. Better than Port of Peril and the abysmal Gates of Death.The books main issue is that it meanders between too many locations and the encounters aren’t fleshed out enough.It also suffers from multiple insta-deaths and errors like the fact that you’re starving on snake island but have 10 provisions to start with.Where’s Steve Jackson when you need him? Sorcery 2 next perhaps?

Although this isn’t in the same league as some of the author’s earlier classics, this is probably the best of the four Fighting Fantasy adventures that Ian Livingstone has produced since the original run of the series.It is certainly better than ‘The Port of Peril’ even though, to some extent, it also relies overly upon familiarisation with and references to past FF gamebooks. However, whereas ‘The Port of Peril’ often just did this for the sake of it and, being quite brazen and clumsy, somewhat to the detriment of old FF adventures, ‘Assassins of Allansia’ takes a more intelligent and interesting approach which benefits earlier works.The first stage of the book makes for quite a lacklustre and uninspiring beginning that completely lacks the excitement or interest needed to attract the reader to the adventure. You are faced with the considerably dull and slightly farcical scenario of agreeing to stay on a small island for a month to win the ‘princely’ sum of twenty gold pieces. Quite why you would decide to do this for such a paltry amount seems a little unbelievable. There isn’t really a great deal to do on the island other than look for food, which seems a little pointless as you begin the adventure with the usual provisions.However, the island section serves as a bit of a cover for the real scenario – that you are being hunted by numerous deadly assassins hired by Lord Azzur to avenge the death of Zanbar Bone. This makes the whole island episode feel a little pointless and unnecessary and merely tagged on to make the adventure longer. But, on a more positive note, you could argue that this is a cunning pretext to later surprise the reader with the true storyline (if the title or the blurb on the back didn’t already effectively give this away).From this point the adventure has direction and becomes more enjoyable as you attempt to chase down Azzur before his assassins can kill you. It soon becomes obvious that as part of the gameplay the reader’s objective is to take out all the assassins.Of course, this is a lot easier than finding a set of items or bits of information as the assassins are obviously actively seeking you out. Most don’t have great statistics and rely on trying to trap you in some way. Overall, the adventure lacks challenge and you’ll probably complete it in a couple of attempts.It maybe another romp through the established landmarks of Allansia but it also establishes that this is a sequel to ‘The Port of Peril’ where you are actually playing as the same character; which is something quite rare in Fighting Fantasy. Interestingly it also serves as a prequel to an FF masterpiece.

I really loved this book, the cover is amazing, golden with one of the bosses of the game, it's one of the best covers so far. The story is simple but great at the same time, if you're a fighting fantasy fan you'll love this book because you go through several places from other books and several creatures you already know from them, specially from Ian Livingstone's books, "City of Thieves" for example. It's really great that in certain parts the book doesn't reward cowardice, and doesn't reward foolishness as well, you have to pay attention to the details of the pharagraphs and what they are telling you, pay good attention to the details of certain characters and stories, so when you face them you know what to do. The only downsize of this book is the ending, unfortunately is really disappointing and you don't get to do something you're waiting to do for the whole book, but i guess Ian wanted to save it for a sequel or another cool or amazing book. Still the adventure is real fun, and I loved the characters and the options you have on this one, I think you can revisit and do it several times until you have the right path to get everything you need ;) I think it's a solid good book and the artwork it's ok, better than Gates of Death, but still we need better artwork to make the journey memorable, still I loved almost everything about this book, except the ending, 8 out of 10 for me :) will go back to it again in the future!

Assassins of Allansia is a pretty weak book, that I is a shame to the series. I will explain.I'm a fan of the FF series, but I think Ian Livingstone should really change how he write the books. Although Assassins of Allansia is a slight improvement over Port of Peril and the embarrassment that was Blood of the Zombies, is still far from good.Too many fights - almost one after the other -, with little time used to actually develop a good story. No puzzles, no twists. Just plain hack your way to the end.Normally for Livingstone books, you want to take everything that isn't nailed, but was refreshing to see that many items are just red herrings, or useful ones, but not required to proceed - all except one. But, as in Blood of the Zombies, he again task you to complete something 100% or fail. And, again as in BoZ, doing this 100% leads you to make some incredible dumb decisions, with the most sound ones leading you to failure.The book only escapes from a 1 star because I know worst books, and there isn't broken numbers.

Last years 'The Gates of Death' was a dreadfully disappointing read.Fortunately Mr Livingstone didn't write it.He did however pen The Port of Peril in 2017 and it failed to hit the spot for a lot of people. Myself included.Assassins of Allansia is a true return to form though. I really like this book.Let's hope we don't have to wait another 2 years for Ian's next effort?