Fighting Fantasy: Sorcery 2: Cityport of Traps

Now, many of you will have played this book in its various incarnations since the 1980s via Puffin and later Wizard Books - needless to say the Sorcery books are veritable gamebook classics with complex spell systems and fiendish solutions to cunningly proposed problems - rolling a high Skill score won’t be enough to find your way through. Khare was the first Sorcery book I tried and it holds a special place in my heart...and it took ages for me to find all four spell lines to complete the quest.Fighting Fantasy books have always been propped up by decent illustrators, and in this case Sorcery benefitted from the quirky unique style of John Blanche and later Mel Grant for the Wizard Books edition covers. And they were both stunning illustrators. Since Scholastic took over the brand, however the new pictures have been a bit hit and miss: the Shamutanti Hills pictures were clearly derivative of Blanche’s originals, right down to the viewpoints and poses of the characters - not sure if this was the fault of the artist or their management, but they just tried to improve on perfection which is never wise. Luckily the illustrator for Khare in this new addition has been given the freedom to provide completely new perspectives on the visuals of the Cityport and they work brilliantly...if Scholastic continue with this mandate for future books I’ll be very pleased.Well done to Robert Ball for a new take on this classic book, and to Scholastic for allowing him to branch away from the first edition while enhancing it (but I still love Blanche’s original Aubrey Beardsley-esque illustrations).N.B. I have noticed a significant problem with the illustrations though - the book is missing two key illustrations which are important to solving two puzzles - namely the Bronze Statue’s weakness and the Innkeeper’s guillotine Machine diagram! Without these being shown in pictures I think that they can only be solved by luck! Shame but the new illustrations are still worth five stars, even if the game os now harder to solve :)

I am in my 50s and yearned for a bit of nostalgia so I bought this book. All you need is two six sided dice, steal them of your kids and a pen. get a plank piece of paper and follow the instructions in the book. Before you know it you'll be fighting monsters and finding treasure. NO BATTERIES required. have fun. Geff

Good book for gamers

Delightfull edition of this classic Fighting Fantasy book :-)

Came packed and arrived in perfect condition. I remember playing this gamebook when I was in my 20s and now can play it all over again. I highly recommend this product and Amazon is an amazing place to shop. Top marks and happy gaming everyone :)

Book arrived before estimated date.Book status was worst than expected, with some pages damaged due to humidity and some pages with broken corners.However, it is a great game book from the 80's