And after solving our scanner issues, we’re back with the Fighting Fantasy Book #25, Peter Darvill-Evans’ Beneath Nightmare Castle. In this one, the medieval fantasy world of Titan is injected with some fairly heavy duty Lovecraftian horror, making this one of the more genuinely scary entries in the series. Dave Carson’s illustrations, however, don’t quite match the horror of the text, but that is no sleight against the artist. No doubt, some of the more disturbing imagery would have to be toned down for the illustrations for what is nominally a children’s book. As such, some creatures (such as the Vitriolic Essence on the frontis, or the amorphous mass of twitching limbs and mouths that forms the main antagonist Xakhaz) look slightly silly, By contrast, the unused (for obvious reasons) picture of the woman with tentacles in her mouth is perfectly grotesque.
Finally, Terry Oakes’ cover illustration of the Spiked Maiden is an odd choice given her rather less-than-prominent role in the book. Surely some undead monstrosity would’ve served better as a cover model.