Ian Livingstone
Reviewed by Mark Lain
Number 9 in
the original series started out life as a mini-adventure in Warlock magazine and evolved into a
sprawling epic when released in book form. This adventure is effectively three
stories in one, starting with your initial mission of having to hunt down and
kill a yeti that is causing a nuisance to passing caravans, followed by a
tip-off that you just can’t resist involving ridding the world of the Snow
Witch Shireela then heading out of the Snow Witch’s caverns only to have to
defeat a resurrected Snow Witch, and finally discovering you’re dying and
having to trek around Northern Allansia finding the only person who can heal
you.
Sadly, this
book was where Ian’s annoying habit of making his books unreasonably hard
began. Unless you have very high stats you don’t stand a chance as there are
just too many very tough encounters, most of which cannot be avoided if you are
going to win. In fact, from very early on you are faced with monsters with
skills and staminas in double figures, which makes this book hard-going and
doesn’t have the gradual build-up in encounter strengths that you would
normally expect. Due to this, the Snow Witch herself is not comparatively
strong (in the context of everything else that is thrown at you here) making
her one of the least memorable baddies in any FF. Yes, she comes back to life,
but the second terminal encounter with her is a silly scissors-paper-stone game
that is arbitrary to the point of unfairness. Plus, it is no great surprise
that she can resurrect (and you actually are expected to be astonished when she
turns out to be a vampire) as she clearly has fangs in the cover picture so one
of the book’s two big pay-offs is hardly gobsmacking news when it comes. The
revelation that you have been fatally cursed is more of a surprise, but this is
the point where the book really starts to fail as you will genuinely have lost
the will to live when you discover that the apparent purpose of the exercise
(given the title) is not the end and that there is an awkwardly tagged-on coda
that you now have to wade through.
... And this
is the biggest problem with this book: it overstays its welcome and becomes
fairly arduous after a while. If you can make it to paragraph 400 you are
genuinely exhausted and it really does feel like you have just trekked across
the Icefinger Mountains and into the wilderness beyond. I recall it taking
around 3 hours to play through this from start to finish and, due to it being
pretty difficult, it takes some motivation to start over. This book, arguably
more than any other FF produced, is the book where save points will come into
play as it’s just too long and drawn-out, as well as being pretty punishing.
Ian’s favourite tricks of being doomed to failure unless you happen to have a
catalogue of key items is very much in evidence, as is his desire to completely
ignore FF’s claim that anyone, no matter how low their stats, can win. In fact,
even with maximum stats your chances are not great!
As this is an
Ian Livingstone effort, notwithstanding how difficult and how endlessly long it
is, there is much to recommend it all the same. Ian’s typically vivid and well
fleshed-out environments and descriptive prose are nicely done and you do get a
sense of being in a barren icy wasteland, followed by some forbidding icy
caves. The encounters are some of the most locality-appropriate in any FF and
the desire to go overboard with wacky monsters that sometimes ruins FFs is avoided
here which does maintain a good atmosphere. As this is one of the few ice-set
FFs, many of the encounters are unusual and fairly unique which makes playing
this interesting, even if most ice-dwelling FF monsters seem to be practically
immortal if this book is anything to go by! Plus, Ian insists yet again on
providing us with some NPC companions, even if they don’t instantly die or run
off for once. Granted, they do eventually come a cropper but they do survive
long enough to actually add something to the adventure and to feel like they
have a place in the plot, which is very unusual for IL’s usually fated or
cowardly sidekicks and is probably FF’s only really effective use of companions
(although Masks Of Mayhem did a
fairly decent job of this.)
FFs are often
criticised for having either far-fetched or completely illogical plots, but COTSW does have a very logical flow to
it. The progression from one mission to another adds realism (as opposed to the
usual knowing what you are meant to do right from the word “Go”) and makes this
seem like more of an adventure in the sense of wandering and discovering what
you have to do next as you go along. It is, however, a shame that Ian got
over-involved in throwing twists and turns at us and this is ultimately at the
detriment of enjoying the story as it just goes on forever. After a while you
really do stop caring and hope that one of the excessively tough encounters or
a lack of a key item will be the end of you.
The art is also very unusual. This is the only FF that opted for woodcut-style heavily stylised illustrations, rather than fairly traditional fantasy art and, whilst the results are mixed and work better in some places (brain flayer, snow witch, crystal warrior) than in others (the yeti and hillmen are terrible) there is no denying that the art gives this book a very unique feel. It’s just a shame that the cover betrays one of the book’s secrets (see above) and I think the woodcut art should have extended to the cover as the cover is far too out of keeping with the interior art and seems a bit too conventional. As for the Wizard re-issue cover, this makes it look like it could be cheap porn as Shireela seems overly-seductive in a Lust for a Vampire style. Basically, they've never quite managed to nail the cover on COTSW, which is a shame as FF covers are often great and normally add a sense of theme/tone to what is waiting for you on the inside.
This is
probably one of the FFs I have played the least times, not because of a lack of
interest in the first two sections, but because of its sheer length and the
fact that the final third (tracking down the healer having escaped the
mountains) just does not fit and seems to be an afterthought to try to add
something different to the original short adventure purely for the sake of
adding paragraphs. This would have been better left shorter and ending after
killing Shireela for the second time. Granted we wouldn’t have the logical plot
element of having to get out of the caverns, but we also wouldn’t have to
endure the atmosphere-ruining and frankly inferior final section.
Sometimes
less is more and that is definitely the case here. Whilst this book has a lot
to recommend (initial atmosphere, unusual art, interesting and in-context encounters, useful
NPC companions, a proper flowing plot) it is probably the weakest of all the
Jackson/Livingstone-penned Medieval-era FFs due to its sheer length,
over-difficulty and, worst of all, the problem that it long overstays its
welcome. Play the first two parts and then either stop there, or play the third
part as a separate adventure on a different day otherwise a) you will be bored
before long, and b) you’ll feel like you’re reading a very schizophrenic FF.
And how can a bird man possibly have a skill of 12??
ReplyDeleteI always presumed it was the height advantage. The Night Stalker's Skill of 11 seemed more bizarre to me given the creature's description, the fact one of its hands was already occupied in the image and that your own disadvantage is already accounted for.
DeleteI like this book, but I found the name "Caverns of the Snow Witch" ironic, because you spend about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time there (part of the time getting there, then the long journey afterward). Maybe "Wrath of the Snow Witch" or "Menace of the Snow Witch" were too cerebral. I don't know. Ending? Hard. No PoH, you're dead. Simple. And given that you only stand part of a chance to even have that option available to you, that makes the chances to complete it pretty much slim-and-none.
ReplyDeleteAs against that, the book has a good feel and I like the fact that you have two companions for part of the journey, even if they act like dolts some time.