Mostly Murders

Illustrated by Russ Nicholson. Book 2 in the Fighting Fantasy series. Each book in this series works as a standalone.

More than just a story, The Citadel of Chaos is a Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure game with multiple endings and various decisions for you, the reader, to make. It is a game in a book, rather than a novel, and you should have pen and paper and dice ready at hand for this one.

In some books, choose your own adventure simply means choosing which branch of an already determined story to read. In the Fighting Fantasy books, there are far more than two possible ways for the story to go, and you could read the same book several times and get completely different outcomes.

You are a magician’s apprentice, and it’s up to you to save the world, or at least the peaceful citizens of the Vale of Willow by defeating the dread sorcerer Balthus Dire. You do so by rolling dice to create your character, and choosing between different ways to go and what to do when you encounter people or creatures, treasure, obstacles or dead ends. If you make the wrong choice or get unlucky you can even end up dying, ending your adventure.

This isn’t a book you sit down and read cover to cover. This is a game that you sit down and play several times, slowly collecting more and more knowledge of The Citadel of Chaos and Balthus Dire until you eventually know enough to be able to make it through the Black Tower and defeat Balthus Dire.

To me this was a blast from the past. I first encountered the Fighting Fantasy books in the 90s and I absolutely loved revisiting this book. It was as fun now as it was back then, and I highly recommend this to anyone who loves games and Dungeons and Dragons, and anyone looking for something different to read alone, as a family or with friends. The chapters are very short, so you can easily have one person acting as a narrator or dungeon master, reading aloud, and one or more people acting as the player, deciding where to go and what to do.

Choose Your Own Adventure