Prince of Shadows

Gary Chalk collaborated with Joe Dever on the first eight titles in the Lone Wolf series, but then the partnership broke up. One of the results of this was Chalk's next project, the short-lived Prince of Shadows gamebook series, which lasted for just two titles released in 1988 and 1989, “Mean Streets” and “Creatures from the Depths”. Beyond having the same illustrator, the two books have a rather similar feel in their premise, worldbuilding and rules… in fact, you have to wonder if Dever wasn’t tempted to call his lawyer at any point. One way in which these books were very different, however, was their size and internal format. Permit me to demonstrate the former point:

So, what are they like inside? Ask that question not a moment longer, as here’s a blog post that’s going to tell you all about them.

“What they’re like” is, functionally, very similar to the Lone Wolf books. The rules use a Random Number Table, cunningly retitled the ‘Table of Fortune’, and you have to choose from a list of Kai disciplines – sorry, ‘Princely skills’. You see what I mean about Joe Dever calling his lawyer? The backstory hits a few similar beats, too – you’re a streetwise thief who is actually the rightful heir to a kingdom currently under the rule of a tyrant. There’s an ongoing story from volume to volume, although the series ending so prematurely stops us from seeing exactly how they would have played out. You’ll notice that Chalk had found himself a new co-writer for this series, David Kerrigan, a writer and journalist described as a ‘newcomer to the fantasy genre’; I can’t find out anything else about him, but these books feel so similar to Lone Wolf it’s hard to detect what he contributed.

Once you get into the adventure itself, then the unusual format comes into its own. The full-page illustrations are lovely, and the authors use them to their full capability by hiding puzzles and clues inside them on occasion. (It’s possible to do this with the standard-size book, of course, but the bigger pictures are just a great help to this.) There’s also the occasional special feature along these lines:

But these books are just gorgeous. Unfortunately, it seems that this may have been their downfall: I’ve seen (unconfirmed) reports that they were too expensive to sustain and that’s what led to the series ending so soon.

The actual gameplay is fairly straightforward, and also quite Lone Wolf-y; there’s logical reasoning puzzles, a combat system that’s again not a million miles away from Chalk’s other series. The adventures are reasonably challenging, with decent replay value. There are some nice death scenes, which are always a plus. The ongoing story arc, as mentioned, never really gets a chance to get going, so it’s hard to judge that factor… but they do leave me a bit sad that Chalk and Kerrigan never got a chance to write what was meant to come next, so they must have done something right. I’m finding it quite hard to describe these in any other way than “they’re a bit like Lone Wolf”, but they feel different enough – beyond just being differently sized – to avoid it feeling too much like a problem (apart from the knocked-off rules… I like my different gamebook series to have recognisably different systems. Maybe that’s just me, though.)

If there are any drawbacks, it’s that both books are confined to the same city and have fairly similar storylines about dealing with a shadowy ‘resistance’, which can make them feel a bit samey at times… but, again, Chalk and Kerrigan never got a chance to rectify that in future volumes. It’s always hard to judge something that’s not complete; not only that, we have no idea what the plans for the books that never were might have been.

But the design is what really makes these books; they stand out from every other series that was on the market at the time, despite their obvious similarities to the author’s other gamebooks. They’re a bit hard to come by – if the alleged reason for the series’ short life is true, they may well have had quite a small print run – but they’re worth picking up if you can find them.

(One tiny piece of trivia to end on: In my copy of book 1, the ‘Combat Value Chart’ on the adventure sheet has a big sticker in it with all the values on it. Were some copies erroneously printed with this section blank, and not fixed with the sticker? Was this ever fixed so the values were actually printed there? Answers on a postcard, as ever…)