Crystal of Storms is a disappointment - not because it's the worst book ever, but because most of it is actually good.
I'll avoid going into too much detail, but be aware that there are probably unmarked spoilers ahead.
Book and CoverIn an act of supreme spite and irony, Scholastic did not produce a 'porthole' style cover for this book, which has the dubious distinction of having what I consider to be the worst cover of any Fighting Fantasy book (the only close contender is the original Citadel of Chaos cover by Emmanuel, but that one doesn't quite evoke the same feeling of embarrasment when you find yourself holding it), by Eva Eskelinen. In this one instance where seeing less of the picture might actually have been better, we're treated to a full-page image instead, showing a cartoon flying dog and a sad/worried cloud emoji with a storm in the background. While I won't make any assumptions on if this is what they would actually like, it looks like a marketing department's idea of what might sell the book to preteen girls of the internet generation. Despite its cartoonish look, the colouring is quite dark, so the bold style doesn't even get a chance to visually pop.
Scholastic's love of cheap shiny foil endures, with the lettering on the front front and the entire spine coming with golden foil that rubs off after some wear. This seems a bit unwise for a gamebook that is likely to see more wear than a regular book in even a single reading
As with all the Scholastic Fighting Fantasy books, the quality of the paper is poor.
As with The Gates of Death, this book features a 'celebrity author' in Rhianna Pratchett and features her name prominently on the cover. Unlike The Gates of Death's Charlie Higson however, this author's name hopefully inspires some confidence in their ability to write a gamebook, as Rhianna Pratchett has been a videogame plot writer for some time, having written for titles like Overlord and Tomb Raider (2013).
Internal ArtThe interior illustrations are also by Eva Eskelinen, and fortunately, while not exactly to my taste, they arguably do a better job than the cover and are a bit of an improvement over Vlado Krizan's attempts in the previous Scholastic books. They are also very cartoony, stylized and lacking in detail, but have a more organic, less angular look than Vlado Krizan's art, and the style feels more like a conscious choice rather than just an inability to produce the detail required. They are also often considerably more dynamic, features some interesting poses, angles and composition that help draw the eye. That said, it's still not great, with a style that would probably fit better into a fantasy-themed picture book for very small children, and has little of the gothic grandeur of the best Fighting Fantasy artists of the old Puffin range. The images are also greyscale, and which, combined with the low quality paper, makes them look muddy, though the highly stylized cartoony style means there isn't that much detail to lose.
The simple, cartoony style means there really isn't much to the interstatial images, though at least they show the collection of weapons and potions that are of some relevance to the gameplay style of the book.
Unlike previous entries, Scholastic no longer felt compelled to try and make the pages of the book look stained/crumbling, which is a visual improvement.
StoryCrystal of Storms is the first book set in Pangara, an new Titan-based setting created for the book. It consists of a series of floating islands hidden in the calm centre of a huge storm, held aloft by magical Storm Crystals. The islands are hidden away from the rest of Titan, and would like to keep their existence secret. The action starts when the central fortress-island and the main seat of government, Nimbus, suddenly falls out of the sky and into the ocean amidst a blast of raw elemental energy.
The protagonist of the tale is an officer of the Sky Watch, the police force of Pangara. Apparently the rest of the Sky Watch were all on Nimbus when the accident occurred, and you only avoided sharing their fate through sheer chance. This leaves it to you, as the last active officer of the law, to travel from island to island to investigate the cause of the accident, starting with your 'home' island and then moving on to the others. Eventually you dive under the waves in a bathysphere to brave the perils of the deep, find Nimbus and search its partially-flooded underwater ruins for survivors, answers, and the cause of the calamity.
The plot and its progression generally makes sense, the encounters with both people and monsters are fairly logical and it all builds up to an interesting and well-written climax at the end (though the fact that the sunken Nimbus still has as much air inside as it does stretches believability). However, because there are so many islands to explore in a 400 paragraph book, we don't get to see much any of in much depth or for very long, which gives the sense of them being rather tiny and/or empty.
Although Pangara is set in Titan, it is a fairly radical departure from the rest of the series. The magically-floating islands and storm crystals are seen nowhere else in Titan, and it features a number of species unique to it, such as Canidor (winged dogs, as on the cover), Cloudkin (sheep-like living clouds, as per the cloud emoji on the cover), and Stormborn (elemental humanoid beings). The biggest addition however are the goblins - these goblins are very unlike the nasty, sadistic creatures found elsewhere in Titan. Here they live alongside humans, and practice 'technomancy', creating Magitech devices, usually utilizing Storm Crystals, such as flying machines (both large ones for moving between the islands and smaller, personal winged devices) and bathysphere submarines, among other things. Their main personality flaw appears to be greed, but they are largely responsible for Pangara's advanced level of technology. Interestingly, we do see some old faces too - the Wheelies from Citadel of Chaos make an appearance here, which is amusing to see and a nice callback.
As a self-contained setting, Pangara is perfectly fine, and the new additions are interesting to explore, even if we've seen most of them somewhere else before. Due to the higher technology level and the friendly relations between humans and goblins, the setting feels more optimistic and lighthearted than most other danger-ridden places in Titan, for better or worse. That said, the differences in tone and setting do contribute to making the book feel like quite a departure from the mainline series' classic fantasy roots. I can't shake the feeling that the setting/plot was developed first, with the problem of how to then integrate that into Titan having been a consideration that was only addressed later. That said, decent attempts are made to address and explain it, and the isolationist nature of Pangara is in fact an important plot point.
Despite Pangara and its creatures having a more light-hearted tone, the book does a much better job of assuming the correct tone based on the situation. The fall of Nimbus is played off a significant disaster that has the populace understandably either worried, worked up or feeling lost, and the protagonist reacts realistically to various discoveries and revelations.
The protagonist being a Sky Watch officer investigating a mystery is one of the strongest aspects of this book, particularly in the earlier portions. The protagonist may come across various people, locations and clues that point them toward was actually happened with Nimbus. The unraveling of this mystery makes for some of the most engaging and memorable parts of the story. It makes me wish there were more Fighting Fantasy books that involved trying to unravel a mystery like this one. However, while pursuing these clues makes for a more interesting tale, from a gameplay perspective, it's very unrewarding, as I'll explain in the gameplay section below.
The prose is handled decently. It remains simple but sufficient to fire the imagination most of the time. The tone varies from lighthearted to serious, but does so a lot more deftly than the dire Gates of Death. That said, it does at times threaten not to take itself seriously enough, such as when you are asked to look for a "Thingie", "Whatsit" and/or "Doobry" for one quest. Apparently your character knows what these things as you sent to find them with no description or instruction, and manages to recognize them as such. It's veering on the side of a bit too silly.
I should mention that while the plot wraps up nicely, it also leaves a bit of a plot thread hanging for a possible sequel. It's not obnoxious and I would be interested to see a continuation if there was one.
Gameplay/Structure/ErrorsMost of the rules for Fighting Fantasy are handled normally here. Stats are generated the normal way, and your equipment is mostly standard. There is no 'starting Potion' in this book, and you don't start with any Provisions either. However, and unlike most books, the food you do find has different names and provide different Stamina boosts. This can be a little annoying for bookkeeping, but does add a bit more flavour (pun intended) to the provisions box, and in at least one case, the exact type of provision you have actually matters. There are rules for Testing your Stamina, which comes up a few times in the adventure, though the results for failing are usually pretty mild (usually some additional Stamina loss).
It is possible to find a variety of weapons during the adventure. They vary in terms of their Attack Strength bonuses they provide, and if they do any additional damage or not, but otherwise aren't particularly remarkable. Unsurprisingly, a boring old +1 Attack Strength is and remains probably your best option. More probably could or should have been made of this, overall it ends up not mattering all that much.
You also find a lot of potions during the game. They are mostly not particularly imaginative, providing healing, or temporary Attack Strength bonuses. One of the more interesting ones lets you ignore the Attack Strength penalty of your weapon, AND provides an Attack Strength bonus, for a combat, effectively letting you use weapons that otherwise you might have avoided. The potions create something of a strategic component, as saving the right potions for the right moment can be crucial.
This is one of the few Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that explicitly features a codeword system, where the text sometimes asks you to write down a codeword, then later asks you if you have that codeword. This is done to track things you've done in the past, like finding a clue or talking to someone. Unfortunately, while there are no actual errors with it, it goes under-utilized. While occasionally used for something else, for the most part it is used to determine if you've come across clues that would explain what happened on Nimbus. One would think this is important, but it actually isn't: near the end of the adventure, regardless of the clues you've gathered, a character kindly info-dumps the entire story for you, thus rendering all your own investigations moot. Making things worse, there is very little other incentive to gather clues: doing so exposes you to more traps, combats, Luck/Stamina tests and the book's only numerical puzzle. Anyone looking for all the clues will also suffer an unavoidable Skill penalty, and there are no means to restore your Skill in the adventure (well, there is one item that raises Skill, but as that raises your Skill over its Initial level, you're still stuck with less Skill than you could have if you didn't look for the clues). Making things worse, there are very few 'material' rewards for these investigations, meaning you're likely to actually have more trouble getting to the end of the adventure if you've gathered the clues than if you haven't. This is really unfortunate design, as it actually serves as a disincentive to engage in what I consider to be one of the most interesting and entertaining aspects of the book.
The book is structured as a series of hubs. You start the adventure on your home island (which you get to choose) and meet a companion who will help you with any combats (Attack Strength and damage bonuses) and encounters on that island. You are then free to visit other two 'outer' islands. Once you complete a small mini-quest there, you move to another island, which you explore to find a certain person, then enter another 'hub' area on the last of the remaining floating islands, looking for clues and McGuffins. After that the action moves under the ocean, where you enter yet another hub in Nimbus, eventually needing to find more McGuffins and the endgame.
However, the hubs are badly designed. It's clear that attempts have been made to account for you visiting or re-visiting places, but it's handled very inconsistently. Some passages say "if you haven't already", but others that really should say this do not. There are a number of encounters that can end up being nonsensically repeated if one revisits an earlier island, even though it's clear that the adventure was designed to let you revisit islands in case you missed something the first time around. For example: picking Cumulus as your home island and returning there later will loop you back to your first arrival on the island, including gifting you a bunch of starting Gold Pieces (and your sword) each time. None of the other starting islands have this problem, so it's just sloppy playtesting. Similarly, there are characters that need (one-time use) items from you to open up a new area to explore, but after giving the items, you still have the option to leave. While leaving means you can come back later, the book's failure to track your earlier action means that you'll need to nonsensically give them the one-time use item all over again - which you likely won't have anymore at this stage. It gets worse later in the book. The worst example happens within Nimbus, where you must make a series of actions to reach an important character, but it also repeatedly gives players the option to turn back. While the book makes efforts to keep you on a 'separate path' that ensures you don't lose your progress, it is extremely easy (possibly even necessary, depending on earlier actions) to leave this path and end up back in the original set of paragraphs instead... and as these paragraphs sometimes DO say "if you haven't already" for going back to the area you left, it leaves you completely stuck. Either you follow the instructions and can't proceed to the endgame, or you don't and end up in a loop, repeating your earlier actions.
What makes this ultimately so incredibly frustrating is that a codeword system - ie, the exact system that is both included and under-utilized in this book - would have been the most logical way of solving all of the above issues. Yet it doesn't get used for this. This failure in design leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration and can easily destroy the immersion that the otherwise good prose has been trying to build up. The fact that half-hearted attempts were made to address these issues, but that they were applied inconsistently reeks of a lack of effort and playtesting.
In terms of difficulty: the start of the adventure is easy with the help of your companion, which also helps to endear you to them, since they give you a tangible gameplay benefit, unlike a typical Ian Livingstone companion (also unlike most Ian Livingstone companions, they also don't die like flies). However, the difficulty does ratchet up heavily once the player starts using the bathysphere. In this section the player effectively has a -1 Skill penalty, is prevented from benefiting from their weapons' bonuses, and is given 20 Stamina that they cannot restore in any way, and they have to fight at least one opponent with Skill 10 that also inflicts a temporary Skill penalty near the end of the battle. I personally believe this section is the one that some of those potions are for - the rules don't state that you can't benefit from Potions in the bathysphere, and I don't think that it's too much of a stretch of the imagination that a potion that increases your combat ability would also translate to being able to pilot the bathysphere better in combat, so this section is perhaps doable, though likely very rough, for a character with 10 Skill and decent Luck. Less than that will likely end badly though. Overall the adventure seems balanced only toward high-Skill characters, and anyone lower will likely fail. There aren't many instant-death paragraphs however - if you die, it'll likely be from Stamina loss.
One part that is designed rather well is the final battle, which offers more choice, narrative and interactivity than the usual rollfest of some of the early books:
during this fight, you are getting help from a character you met earlier, who fights on your behalf. They have fixed stats, but you can use some potions/limited use items to boost those stats for the fight. This ensures the final fight can be balanced in a predictable way. And when the fight does happen, it isn't just a series of Attack Rounds. Instead, depending who is getting hurt, you get updates on how the battle is faring, including potential special attacks thrown your way that you need to avoid with a Skill/Stamina/Luck test. It makes the whole fight more dynamic and descriptive and appropriately epic.
OverallIn terms of story and prose, Crystal of Storms is better-written and more interesting than most of Scholastic's latter efforts. Certainly better than The Gates of Death (which doesn't really constitute praise of any sort), and in my opinion better than The Port of Peril and Assassins of Allansia. Despite the setting feeling a bit derivative and disconnected from previous books, it makes an admirable effort to reconcile itself with canon. The depth of the setting could have been improved if there'd been more chance to explore the different islands and get more than a superficial view of their culture and inhabitants, but such is the price of a location-hopping Fighting Fantasy adventure. Tonally it's lighter than many Fighting Fantasy books, but it doesn't seem obnoxious or tone-deaf in the process. The mystery is an interesting one to unravel, and it's very disappointing that there is little gameplay incentive to pursue it properly and roleplay an actual policeman.
Gameplay-wise it employs single-use potions/items to strategic affect, though the high-Skill enemies render this adventure quite hard at parts.
Its ultimate failing are its structural errors: unintended loops and 'soft' dead ends can really kill the suspension of disbelief and fun required for a good gamebook. With additional testing, fixing and balancing this could have been a lighter but unique, refreshing and interesting adventure. As it stands, it's failures at properly handle revisits to previous areas leaves it something of mess.
I'm more disappointed in this book than in The Gates of Death. The Gates of Death's awful prose renders it terrible regardless of its other issues. This book however was very close to being good.
Final Note
Rhianna Pratchett is Terry Pratchett's daughter, and while their writing styles are different, I can nonetheless see some influence from Terry Pratchett in aspects of this adventure.
If it could be properly structured and tested (and maybe with a different illustrator), I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to this book.