Lord Fear's Domain

Over five years ago, this post detailing everything you could possibly want to know about Knightmare tie-in adventure gamebooks was published to the blog. But as mentioned, there was one omission -- the seventh and final Knightmare book, Lord Fear's Domain, which was left out because a) it was not a gamebook, but a straightforward puzzle book, and b) presumably due to reasons of a short print run, it went for silly money online at the time and I couldn't really justify shelling out for a copy, especially when it wasn't a proper gamebook. (A few reasonably priced copies have shown up on Amazon more recently, which is going to be helpful for reasons that will become apparent.)

Imagine my delight, then, when on the date this post was originally published, I was in a charity shop and found, amidst a pile of obscure titles by well-known children's authors, a copy of the 'missing' Knightmare book in question. We are sticklers for thoroughness here at Ludicrously Niche, so here is an addendum to that original post covering Lord Fear's Domain.

Knightmare: Lord Fear's Domain

Published: 6 October 1994

Written by: Dave Morris

Illustrated by: Internal illustrations by Russ Nicholson

The book kicks off in very familiar territory to the gamebooks, with the beginning of a short story set in the Knightmare universe. Dave Morris is once again on writing duties, and the tone of the story is similar to the previous two entries (Treguard doesn't even show up at all, but there's a strong showing from the series' various other supporting characters). A few pages in, however, teenage protagonists Paul and Lucy are transported to the realm of Knightmare, come across a riddle they have to solve, and the book continues in a similar way, with a new puzzle coming up every few pages in their quest; riddles are the most frequent, but there's also dot-to-dots, mathematical and logic puzzles (including a few "stock" ones such as the "one of these men always lies and one of them always tells the truth" one), mazes, codes, with the main story occasionally being broken up by crosswords (personal favourite clue: "Die twice (4)") and wordsearches. Quite a lot of thought has clearly gone into the presentation of the puzzles, and things are greatly helped by the high-quality illustrations provided by Nicholson, who also illustrated the inaugural Fighting Fantasy book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and Morris' Fabled Lands RPG series.

The book's big selling point, however, is the fourth-wall-busting conclusion, where Paul and Lucy finally meet up with cover star Lord Fear... and as he's planning just how best to kill them, Lucy asks if he's going to set them some puzzles, and when he asks why she explains that's what everyone else they've met has done, and he's completely bemused by the idea. The whole thing is just hysterically funny, if a bit too long to write out here.

This was the very last Knightmare tie-in book, published during the broadcast of the eighth and final series. There's no indication that Morris knew this was to be the range's swansong (Knightmare's future still being up in the air at the time of publication); it could be the case that he wanted to try something different for the final book, although (and I admit my own projections come into this) it could also be the case that he felt the previous two books aimed at younger readers hadn't been totally successful, and this explains the format change for the final book. Nevertheless, Lord Fear's Domain is a lot of fun and a pretty good send-off for the series.