Midnight Rogue, the twenty-ninth entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, is an entertaining change from the norm: you play an apprentice in the Thieves' Guild of Port Blacksand, and to be granted full membership of the guild, you must locate and steal a priceless gem known as the Eye of the Basilisk. It's a fun, punchy adventure with a unique plot, and also tries a few gameplay innovations not often seen in FF books; nothing groundbreaking, but I'm certainly glad it exists.
Right, that's that out of the way, let's errata the hell out of this thing. MASSIVE SPOILERS below the jump break, for the wary.
Unfortunately, the problems start right at section 1. You have the choice of three locations to go to in search of clues as to the whereabouts of the Eye: the Merchants' Guild, the home of Brass (the merchant who currently owns the gem), and the Noose (the general area surrounding the Thieves' Guild). The trouble is that these locations have to be visited in an exact order: you need to visit the Noose first, then the Merchants' Guild, and finally Brass' house - you need the information from the Noose to have any idea what to do, then you need a key from the Merchants' Guild to use in Brass' house. The book forbids you from returning to an area once you've been there the first time, so you can't go to Brass' house, find you don't have the key, go to the Merchants' Guild to get the key and then go back to Brass' house again. There's no indication that you have to go to the three places in any order at all. You also can't go to the Noose from either the Merchants' Guild or Brass' house, suggesting there should have been some prompt to start the adventure in the Noose.
There's also a plot hole in the book - to find where Brass has hidden the Eye, you need three clues, one from each of the three areas. The problem is that two of the clues are identical, and while from a gameplay perspective you need them because they all have different numbers attached to them and you need the three numbers to determine which paragraph you need to turn to, from an in-universe perspective there's no reason why all three would be necessary.
Those are the two problems with the book. There are a couple of smaller ones/interesting tidbits - section 218 is one of those rare occasions where, for some reason, failing a stat check is preferable to passing it (if not vital), but there is a reason why this might happen. It's because this particular book contains multiple cheaters' traps. Section 158 chides the reader for saying they have a magical weapon when there's no possible way they could have picked one up, whilst section 260 is even more interesting. To quote it in full:
You have come to the end of your adventure. You reach out a trembling hand to take the Eye of the Basilisk. Turn to 275.
And to quote section 275 in full:
You cheat! There is no way here except from 260, and there is no way to 260 from anywhere else in the adventure. Go back to 1 and start again - this time without cheating.
But given your player character is meant to be a dishonest, thieving criminal, isn't it a bit hypocritical for the book to take them to task for cheating? If author Graeme Davis was so keen to sucker cheaters, maybe he should have tried it in a different setting?
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