Moonrunner (Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks) [Paperback]

Steve Jackson (Author), Ian Livingstone (Author)

Book Description

Series: Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks

After the war of the Four Kingdoms, many believed the Inquisitor General, Karam Gruul to be dead. But as a bounty-hunter of great renown, the reader is telepathically summoned to the Badlands and the city of Blackhaven, to be told by Guard Marshal Bennet, that Gruul is again perpetrating evil acts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Puffin Books (March 26, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140349375
• ISBN-13: 978-0140349375
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,118,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolute favorite edition of the Fighting Fantasy Universe, May 13, 2003

By 

S. Rook (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moonrunner (Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks) (Paperback)

You play a bounty-hunter with a specific agenda, to bring to justice the worst offenders of war-crimes perpetuated by villains in the recent War of Four Nations. There is only one left, Karm Gruul, and recent evidence shows that he has finally come out of hiding. There can be no doubt that his reemergence speaks of some evil plot and you are the only one who can track him down and stop his schemes.

The descriptions, artwork, characters, and overall tone of this book place it as my unquestioned first choice among the Fighting Fantasy books. I've read perhaps 20 of them altogether and the only other one that comes close to being this good is Deathtrap Dungeon - but there has obviously been more work put into the setting for Moonrunner.
Although you play the hero, there is more to his past than usual and by the end you learn that his goals are much personal and the path he chose, that off the bounty hunter, was a means to an end.

As always, I love how there is a specific setting and timeline to where most of the fantasy versions of these books take place. It's not unusual for one to make reference to places or events that take place in other books - although this one seems to take place further in the future and doesn't have as much to relate to (although the intro on your charcter lists some nifty exploits).

Highly recommended to anyone that is interested in these sorts of books.

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the Series, September 12, 2011

By 

Schammie (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moonrunner (Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks) (Paperback)

The best of the Fighting Fantasy series. Eschewing the usual Dungeons & Dragons-derived settings, Hand sets this gamebook in a grim, grimy city environs modelled on pulp fiction and horror cinema. You, the hero, are a bounty hunter asked to track down a war criminal who masterminds a shadowy conspiracy. Magic and monsters abound, but they're pervaded with a sense of the weird and menacing and even the items which help you in your quest seem like dangerous relics rather than +5 swords of power. Lest this sound a bit too forboding, the whole affair is shot through with some wonderful gallows humor (wait until you start haggling with the local gravediggers!) Apart from the quality of the writing, this is also a very well-designed gamebook - it's tough but fair, and while you're unlikely to win your first time without cheating, multiple victory paths are accessible to characters with average stats. Highly recommended if you like this sort of thing.