Bloodbones

Fighting Fantasy #60

by Steve Jackson, Jonathan Green, Tony Hough (Illustrator)

Librarian's Note: This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781840467659.

Bloodbones lives!

The dreaded pirate-lord Cinnabar, scourge of the twelve seas, plagued the seafarers of the Old World in a bloody reign of terror until a brave adventurer put an end to his evil. But now he is back from the dead, seeking revenge and with the dark powers of voodoo at his command.

YOU have your own score to settle – Cinnabar murdered your family when you were a child. Only YOU can end the horrific slaughter by destroying the pirate captain and his crew of cutthroats. Come hell or highwater Bloodbones must be stopped!

Part story, part game, this is a book with a difference – one in which you become the hero! A pencil and an eraser are all you need to make your journey. YOU decide which route to take, which creatures to fight & which dangers to risk.

Genres: Gamebooks, Fantasy, Fiction, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Young Adult

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Steve Jackson (born 20 May 1951) is a British game designer, writer, and game reviewer, who is often confused with the American game designer of the same name.

Along with Ian Livingstone, he is the creator of the Fighting Fantasy books. The US Jackson also wrote three books in the Fighting Fantasy series, which adds to the confusion, especially as these books were simply credited to "Steve Jackson" without any acknowledgement that it was a different person.

See also:
Steve Jackson, US game designer
Steve Jackson, author of works on crime
Steve Jackson, Scottish thriller writer

Reviews

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good writing and atmosphere and - of course - great art, but the story itself is linear, rather long, and much too rife with death-traps and other sudden mean surprises. Not as bad as Knights of Doom, but still.

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This single-player fantasy-role-playing "lost" gamebook written by Jonathan Green (Bloodbones was considered a lost book for several years, as it was initially planned as the 60th entry in the series before Puffin publishing canceled Fighting Fantasy with the 59th book. Title was later "resurrected" in 2000s.) is just my most favourite one of the FF series, together with Steve Jackson's House of Hell.
Martin McKenna's classic cover is a real blast, the storyline is excellent, the difficulty level is insane and the many path choices, the time passing rule in the first part at Port of Crabs, the always different kind of fights (poisonous creatures dealing more damage, fully armored Chaos Champions absorbing damage and so on), the pirate-voodoo fantasy atmosphere seeming a great mix between Pirates of the Caribbean and the grimdark setting of Warhammer (there are Old World and Chaos in Titan world too and Jonathan Green was a Black Library author) make this gamebook a must read and an hell of a ride for all fans of these.

And the skull door puzzle just made me crazy!

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pirate Hunting
1 May 2021

This is one of the newer Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and not surprisingly it is also limited edition (which I suspect a lot of the other books are as well). Anyway, in this book you are some guy (which is generally the case in pretty much all of the books, though there is nothing saying that you can’t be some gal either) whose parents were basically murdered by a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates, so you set out to hunt them down and kill them. Yeah, a tale of revenge, which is basically one of the many other games books that deal with revenge.

However, there is a catch, somebody has beaten you to it, though it does turn out that even though he has been killed, he isn’t necessarily dead (which is generally the case with fantasy settings – the undead and all that). It turns out that nobody quite believes you, but I suspect there is more than meets the eye to that one considering that the city that you start off in also happens to be a pirate haven, so I suspect that there is a bit of a protection racket going on here.

The adventure is split into four parts – scouring the city for clues as to where the pirate is located, travelling to the island that the pirate is going to, searching the island for the pirate, and of course the end game. The third part is probably the longest, and also the trickiest, especially since there is one puzzle that involves you deciphering a code, and it isn’t all that easy either.

It was somewhat easier than a lot of the other ones though, however it does require you to record notes, usually in the form of words that are actually spelt backwards. There are some trickier ones though, such as hidden references to the next paragraph you have to turn to (such as turning the letters of a word into numbers and then adding them all up), or making a note of a number when you collect an item (such as the number of sides a crystal has). Yeah, it’s one of those books where if you see a number, especially in relation to an object, then it no doubt will be used later on (which I must admit is much better than having a key with a number stamped on it).

All in all, it was an okay book, though nothing particularly outstanding. That has probably something to do with the countless numbers of books that have come before it, though I do note that every few years they release a selection of books, and include a couple of new ones in it as well. This was one of them.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloodbones was originally slated to be the 60th Fighting Fantasy book, but Puffin cancelled the series before it saw publication. So it’s neat that this “lost” gamebook has finally seen the light of day.

The adventure is no walk in the park, but it doesn’t feel unfair like some other FF books (I can’t recall the title, but I remember one book that required an unsuccessful Luck test to win, an ill conceived attempt to stop players from cheating). Nevertheless, you will need to roll high for your initial Skill and Luck scores to survive Bloodbones’ numerous combat encounters and ability checks.

I played the digital version of Bloodbones, which comes free with Tin Man’s Fighting Fantasy Classics app. I highly recommend picking up the app if you are curious to try Fighting Fantasy. Just be aware that Tin Man chose to nerf some items of equipment in the app, making it tougher than the original book.

[K.J. Shadmand · Rating 5 out of 5]

From an inauspicious start, I came to enjoy this book immensely. Mr Green shows his love for the fighting fantasy franchise in his capacity to work scenes into his gamebook that are reminiscent of many of the old-school classics. There’s so much in this gamebook - exploring a city, sailing the high seas, exploring a tropical island full of vicious beasts and Aztec-like warriors, and battling pirates, cut-throats, and sharks (which gave me some trouble!). It also had a high enough level of difficulty to give me trouble, without having me shout out in frustration. Perfect!

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suggest reading this book if you like adventure!

[Jainang Patwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book is interesting because it tells you to choose a page you want to go on and continue so it is fun and very interesting.

[Chris Ekral · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an impressive addition to the FF series, and one of the few more recent titles that stands up in quality compared to the older classic novels. It's fun and large, though fiendishly difficult (some of the fights are ridiculous). The atmosphere is great, however, and it takes you to places other FF books have rarely been. Well worth a read for fans of FF.

[Brent Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and interesting adventure that takes you to different locations each with their own feel. The game is fun and well balanced, providing a sense of challenge and luck, as well as a sense of fulfilment.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the storyline for this was good in the sense that you kind of need to play it a few times to learn which items you need to collect and sometimes there's hidden trails like you need to choose to follow someone then change your mind at the last minute, so if you like hidden choices then it's a good game.

However, I played this on the Final Fantasy app and I wont do that again because some gameplay was annoying, like the gambling part I bookmarked before I entered, played the first arrow game of chance and scored badly, went to my bookmark, reloaded to try again and rolled the exact same score 3 times in a row... this is meant to be like the books and the rolls are genuinely meant to be by chance but clearly that part was fixed.

Secondly, make sure you bookmark before you enter a puzzle response because sometimes it doesn't accept your answer even if you know it and tou can't go back once it's inputted.

I also did not like the fighting experience. I've played other apps where the dice rolls are a lot more user friendly.

All-in-all, the story itself is fine but the mobile app was trash.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloodbones is known among FF fans as the ‘lost’ gamebook. Puffin cancelled the series before it published, in 1995, and it didn’t see the light of day until Wizard took up the series and published it as their second title, after Blood of the Zombies, in 2006. I played it on the Tin Man app, which gives you the book for free. It’s the first time I’ve used the app and it worked beautifully. No pencil, eraser and dice needed, and I especially liked the mapping feature. It’s a really good way to play these books (though I still prefer to read a print version). The book itself is excellent - Jonathan Green is a wonderful writer and Tony Hough’s artwork is outstanding. It’s also rock hard. I died over and over again. One I’ll come back to.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I've been working my way through the Wizard series of Fighting Fantasy books for a YouTube series on my channel and I've just finished reading Bloodbones.

The book is great. The adventure is thematic and the environments that you explore make sense. The only real issue that I had was the amount of notes you have to make. Whether it be writing down the name of something to convert the name into a numbered reference, or simply remembering all the codewords that you pick up. It gets annoying as the adventure goes on.

You have a fun pirate adventure, fantastic enemies, a great final encounter, and a lot of note writing.

3/5. Arrrr me hearties!

[Bogdan Filip · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disclaimer : I have played the digital version of this adventure,not read the actual book.

While it is a great concept,the execution could have been far better.Maybe at the time this released,it was incredible,it did not age well.It contains way too many chances to fail automatically and by the end,if you don't find a certain item,you lose anyway.The story is mostly forgettable and some fights are very annoying like a certain battle with an aquatic creature.
Also contains a puzzle that could have been far better explained.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I played the app version. I haven't played many of these, but it seems like rolling for stats can make the game impossible, or a breeze (barring gotchas) . If you're about 2 skill less than your attackers, it's not going to end well. The interesting aspects of this game is exploration and sometimes finding the needle in the haystack. (And sometimes using luck in combat though using it too much can hurt you in other ways). Aside from the strange revenge angle of the hero, still a fun throwback adventure.

[Alexander Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review in progress...

[Jason Fawkes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mercilessly tough, with pirates of the Caribbean vibe, (and King Kong, the Tempest and others - it casts its net widely) this requires too many luck checks, and is a bit of a slog.
Decent art.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is great. Fun stuff, as usual for Jonathan Green a use of a theme to a badass degree of creativity and imagination. However…these difficulty settings are too high because I can’t play enough of the bloody thing without dying. And it’s a shame because what I have played of Bloodbones is so much fun.

[Darryl Sloan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of those "choose your own advernture" gamebooks that I've played since I was a teenager. This one is a story about a man seeking revenge on an infamous pirate, Cinnabar, who killed his family when he was a youth. He soon learns that someone beat him to the chase. Cinnabar is slain - sort of. He has become one of the undead. And so we have swashbuckling and magic. Standard fare for these Fighting Fantasy books.

The story was enjoyable. I was edging on giving this four stars. The big let-down is the amount of sudden death resulting from sheer bad luck rather than logical choice. I got to the very end only to discover that I was missing a crucial magical weapon needed to defeat the final enemy. So, I went back and found out how to solve that. Then I tried again, only to find out that I was defeated once again because I hadn't been taught how to use the weapon. So I back I went again and solved that (it turns out that whether you manage to get taught how to use the weapon or not depends on the luck of the dice at a certain point). All this is very frustrating and taints the enjoyment.

I feel there should really be multiple routes to success, rather than a single linear path where one wrong choice out of many innocent-seeming options leads to you failure down the road.

So, three stars.