Back in the 80s, gamebooks were a big thing, with many a young person getting their first taste of fantasy roleplaying through the likes of the now classic Fighting Fantasy series; indeed, the genre focus of many of these books was epic fantasy along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons. Horror did, however, occasionally rear its ugly head, and with the success of the Call of Cthulhu rpg, the Fighting Fantasy series went on to include an entry of (largely non-Lovecaftian) modern horror in the form of the (now classic) House of Hell; there was also the short lived Forbidden Gateways series, which tried to transport something akin to the Cthulhu mythos into the gamebook format; however, other than occasional nods to Lovecraft, this was pretty much all there was by way of Lovecraftian horror in gamebook format (not forgetting, of course, the solitaire scenarios which Chaosium produced for Call of Cthulhu).
Until now. Until The Eye of Hastur - the first (and here’s hoping the last) of the Make Your Fate series. Granted, this seems to be written with young adults in mind, but I can’t see that it would take your average twelve year old more than fifteen minutes to successfully navigate what counts for a plot here to the conclusion of the book (I can attest to the fact that it takes about ten minutes fir your average, intellectually-challenged fifty-year old to attain this lofty goal). Add to that a woefully askew understanding of the Cthulhu mythos. Hold on to your sanity indeed.
One to avoid.
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