Sir Ian Livingstone

(This review first published in Fortean Times No 454, dated February 2025)

Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy
Ian Livingstone and Jonathan Green
Unbound 2024
Hb, 354pp, £30.00

It’s the tongue you notice first. Spiky, lolling, somehow inherently malevolent, it protrudes between the Shape Changer’s jagged teeth as he picks his way across a sun-dappled forest glade. Painted in elegantly subtle watercolours, Iain McCaig’s cover artwork for The Forest of Doom is perhaps the finest illustrative representation of the Tolkienesque realms created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson for their million-selling Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. The word “immersive” has seldom been more appropriate: in the mid-1980s there was a whole generation of schoolkids unable to walk the family dog through their local woods without imagining sword-wielding hobgoblins to the east (turn to 317) or a witch’s hut to the west (turn to 38).

This paving slab-sized hardback does an excellent job in showcasing the artwork that has always been an intrinsic element of the Fighting Fantasy ethos. The format is simple: an exhaustive romp through the range’s major artistic contributors in alphabetical order, from the airbrushed dragons of Chris Achilléos to the striking woodcut-influenced yetis of Gary Ward and Edward Crosby. Livingstone and fellow gamebook writer Jonathan Green provide accompanying text, with some telling and sometimes harshly self-critical evaluations from the artists themselves. “I still think I blew it, and refused to look at it for years after completion,” says Malcolm Barter of his evocative internal illustrations from The Forest of Doom, revealing that – for the best part of a decade – he declined to correct rumours on internet gaming forums about his “possible early death”.

For the most part, though, the artwork is deservedly left to speak for itself. Those who last picked up a Fighting Fantasy book in the days when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were topping the charts may find themselves overwhelmed with nostalgia. “Nobody draws caves, smoke or water quite like Russ Nicholson,” claims the text, and Nicholson’s visceral illustrations from debut 1982 gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain prove he was a dab hand at decomposing zombies, too. Ian Miller’s cover painting for the Borley Rectory-influenced House of Hell is blown up to A4 size, emphasising the darkly vivid aesthetic of this controversial 1984 gamebook. But there are also more recent gems to be found: notably Mike McCarthy’s artwork for Livingstone’s 2022 book Shadow of the Giants, which gives charmingly expressive personalities to the denizens of the Pagan Plains.

Completists will relish the inclusion of all 13 covers of the short-lived Warlock magazine and (deep breath) 36 overseas variations on the cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, more casual adventurers can simply enjoy a heartwarming return journey through the haunted forests and dastardly dungeons that combined to put 1980s geography homework very firmly on the back burner.

****

Full Ian Livingstone interview here:
https://hauntedgeneration.co.uk/2023/03/20/never-mind-the-warlocks-fighting-fantasy-at-40/

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