This genre isn't really my thing, but the real issue for me with gamebooks is how good the game is. And in this case there are a few issues. The biggest one is that random chance plays far to great a role in what happens, and a lot of the choices have consequences that are completely unpredictable. I think the only way to actually win in this book is through trial and error and luck. There are bits where knowing the right thing to do will improve your odds, but there are other places where you can just die through no fault of your own.

The game mechanics also feel rather untested. Just playing through it once I could see a lot of missed potential and room for improvement. There are some neat ideas here, but I think that some playtesting and tweaking could have done a lot of good.

Unlike the Lone Wolf series, I doubt I'll ever come back to this one, but it was all right. I'll read the rest of the series.