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.

It's Only A Gamebook... Isn't It?

If ever any television series was crying out to be adapted for a series of adventure gamebooks, it was Knightmare. And that’s exactly what happened, with six books published between 1988 and 1993.

(There was also a seventh book, Lord Fear’s Domain, which will not be covered in this article for two reasons. The first is that it wasn’t a gamebook but a straightforward puzzle book, and the second is that I can’t find a cheap copy online. For the record, books #1, #2, #4 and #6 were ones I owned from my childhood, and books #3 and #5 were purchased second-hand for the purposes of this article. Where were we?)

Each book is split into two halves – a novella running to between 70 and 115 pages, and then the adventure game itself, which ran to anywhere between 90 and 170 sections. (The reasons for the dramatic differences in length will become clear in due course.) For each book, I watched an episode of the television series that would have been broadcast around the time the book was released, and then played the game and compared the two. (Alternatively, I just rambled on about the book for a bit.) The only way is onward – there is no turning back!