The 50th book in the Fighting Fantasy series, the centerpiece of the range's 10th anniversary celebrations, a sequel to the very first book in the series -- and originally intended to be the last book of all in the series, but the special attention given to the range for these various milestones caused sales to spike and it carried on in its original form for another three years.
But that is not all Return to Firetop Mountain is known for.
Let's get the odd little mistakes out of the way first. If you have a Puffin edition of the book, the first sentence of section 256 was accidentally transposed into section 255 due to a printing error; this was fixed for the Wizard edition. (I do not have a copy of Scholastic's reissue from last year, but I would presume that is OK too.) Section 79 directs you to 352, but the correct reference to turn to should be 209; again, this was present in the original version but fixed by Wizard. Section 375 says that "If you want to enter the back room and have not done so already, turn to 132"; "have not done so already" is redundant, as entering the back room immediately results in you leaving the area, but it's possible this was an intentional piece of misdirection. I may be overthinking this, however.
More interestingly, section 65 says "Roll one die, then add 1 to the number rolled for each of the following pieces of armour you may be carrying: a shield, a helmet or a breastplate". It is not possible to have a helmet at this point in the game, but section 298 does feature a cursed helmet which gives you a permanent SKILL penalty should you put it on, which you immediately remove and discard; the Fighting Fantasy Wiki posits that you might have originally had the option to keep the helmet, which would seem to fit with previous instances of author Ian Livingstone giving the player cursed items which turn out to have a positive use if you keep hold of them (see, for example, the Ring of Confusion in Island of the Lizard King).
There are some other inventory-based oddities: section 162 only lets you take a sword if you have lost the one you started out with, but if you do take it, then the section the book directs you to says that if you already had a sword, you now have a spare! Furthermore, if you did lose your sword earlier, then you receive a SKILL penalty "until you find another sword" despite the fact it is possible to have several items which could reasonably be expected to work as back-up weapons, such as daggers and axes. In fact, one enemy (the Death Head, at section 277) only loses 1 STAMINA point for each successful hit unless you are fighting it with a silver dagger; is the book not expressly stating here that a dagger should work perfectly well in combat? Finally, multiple sections ask you if you have a lantern despite the fact you start the book with one and there is no opportunity to lose it; however, a lantern also appears on a list of items you can buy at a market early on in the book, so it is possible this was something that appeared as part of the stock rules (most other FF books include a lantern as starting equipment) that should have been deleted, but wasn't.
For the big oddity concerning the book, I need to explain how the final encounter works. There are golden dragons' teeth hidden throughout the book, which can be used in the showdown with Zagor to summon Elementals; Zagor himself is also summoning Elementals, and in addition to finding the teeth (each of which is numbered to indicate the section you should turn to should you wish to use it), you need to find out which tooth summons which Elemental to combat his (for example, a Water Elemental will defeat a Fire Elemental).
Yaztromo the Wizard tells the player they will need "at least two", but there are actually four you need to find, plus two others which are traps. One of the teeth you need isn't actually numbered, but it does still have a number associated with it (315, if you're curious). It is only possible to find out the tooth's number by finding the page of a book which tells you that the Fire Elemental is numbered 315, then finding out which other numbers go with which type of Elemental, and applying a process of elimination to determine that the unnumbered tooth must be that one. Is this a mistake, or a deliberate attempt to make sure the player tracks down all the information concerning the teeth? I can see evidence for both: it's difficult to see how the tooth could have not been numbered by accident, but in-universe it not being numbered doesn't actually make sense, since the numbers are how the player's character is meant to tell which tooth summons which Elemental.
By the by: section 315 also requires you to have a throwing dagger to be able to activate the Elemental, but it is not actually possible to reach that section without having a throwing dagger.
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