The Seven Serpents: Final Thoughts

I've been trying to keep a regular blogging schedule lately, but I missed my usual Saturday post because I hadn't quite finished exhaustively reading The Seven Serpents.  What can I say, the book has 498 entries, it's a lot.

The Seven Serpents, written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by John Blanche, is the third book in the series, and this is where things get serious.  Book 1, The Shamutanti Hills, was a leisurely beginning to your quest.  Sure, the hills are dangerous, but there are still plenty of peaceful folks and getting through alive isn't all that hard.  Book 2, Khare - Cityport of Traps, is quite a bit deadlier, but there's no antagonist as such.  You might get murdered or sold into slavery, but that's just everyday life in Khare.  The Seven Serpents is different, though.  In this book, you have enemies.

In many ways, this is where the actual plot of the series begins.  The first two books are just travelogues, and don't have any meaningful ties to the story of the Archmage and the Crown of Kings.  But in Book 3, the Archmage's spies are aware of your mission, and the deadly serpents have been dispatched to bring word of your approach to Mampang Fortress.  It brings a level of threat and tension that wasn't present in the previous books.

And then there's the books setting, the Baklands, a barren wasteland roamed by barbarian tribes and weird monsters, where it seems like everyone you meet is a wizard of some sort.  Even the laws of nature behave weirdly in this place (although that could be the influence of the Serpents in some cases).  It's not quite as intriguingly bizarre a place as Khare, but as wilderness settings go it's a lot more fun to traverse than the Shamutanti Hills.

The book isn't super-difficult to survive, but Steve uses the Seven Serpents to good effect as a way of ramping up the challenge.  Sure, you can make it all the way from Khare to Xamen alive, but how many of the serpents did you kill?  Getting through with all seven serpents defeated is a challenge, especially before you know all of their weaknesses.  My only complaint is that you have to defeat at least two of them; it would be nice if the option was there to traverse the whole book without fighting a single serpent.

This close reading of the book has done a lot to raise The Seven Serpents in my estimation.  For the longest time I've thought of it as the lull between Khare and The Crown of Kings, and I've always been more fond of the city/dungeon adventures than the wilderness ones.  But there's a lot to love about this book: it's full of great encounters, the path to victory is wide open, and yet it still presents a decent challenge.  I've been sleeping on it for far too long, I reckon.

COOL STUFF I MISSED

I covered pretty much everything in the second half of the book, from the Forest of Snatta onwards, but there are a bunch of cool encounters I missed in the Baklands.  There's a Temple of Throff, the Earth Goddess, where you can possibly bring down her wrath, or rescue an imprisoned priest.  At one point you can be attacked by the Serpent of Fire while you're camping, and get carried off to an encounter with some Klattamen.  Coolest of all is probably the creepy encounter with the Seven Spirits, who try to get you to renounce the goddess Libra.

MISTAKES AND RED HERRINGS

There aren't many glaring errors in this book, although there are a couple of entries towards the end that are technically unreachable.  You can't reach the end of the book without defeating the Serpents of Air and Time, but the book still asks if you've beaten 0 or 1 Serpent when you get there.  This makes references 386 and 496 impossible to get to.  Logically, because the Sun Serpent has been captured by Fenestra, reference 479 shouldn't be valid either.

When making fire to fight the Moon Serpent the book gives flash-fire powder as a possible method of doing so. As far as I can tell there's no flash-fire powder in any of the books so far.

It's impossible to have the Staff of Oak Sapling by the time you reach the Temple of Throff, but the book still gives you the possibility of casting FIX there.  Similarly, the book allows the casting of GOD and ZEN at various points, when I don't think you can get a Jewel of Gold or Jewel-Studded Medallion beforehand.  I need to check that I didn't miss anything in book 2; I know for sure that neither item is found in book 1.

The following items can be found in this book, but serve no purpose: a rat spine, some fake holy water, some green leathery leaves, and some yellow bird feathers.  This is in addition to the useless items still lingering since books 1 and 2: a locket; a huge broken stool, a giant's net, various dead giant body parts, some poison, and some moldy goat's cheese.

BEST DEATH

There aren't a lot of instant deaths in this book - just eight in total - but the ones that are there are all top quality.  I'm a big fan of the one that follows if you get tricked by the Seven Spirits, and the one entry where you get killed by the Time Serpent.  Nothing beats the following entry for sheer gruesome absurdity though:

Yes, that really is the Analander cutting off his own leg.  Every aspect of this is ridiculous: the seeming ease with which the job is done; the fact that the pain merely makes you gasp; the lack of concern over what would surely be fatal blood loss.  Not to mention the total disregard for the fight with the Earth Serpent that should still be going on.  I really want the gamebook that details the Analander's one-legged journey back home, though.

S.T.A.M.I.N.A. RATING

Story & Setting: The Seven Serpents takes the Sorcery! plot and livens it up with a race against time, and some genuinely dangerous antagonists.  The series has a good overall story, but both of the first two books simply involved getting from point A to point B (with book 2 making that journey quite a bit more difficult). Book 3 raises the stakes, and really makes it feel like the story is coming to a head.  It falls down a little in the setting though: the Baklands are great, lacking in character compared to Khare.  Rating: 5 out of 7.

Toughness: This book isn't particularly difficult to get through: you really just need to encounter Fenestra without getting her angry and you'll have all the tools you need to win.  The challenge here isn't so much surviving as it is finding and defeating all of the Seven Serpents, but that gives the book some optional difficulty that takes advantage of the serial nature of the series.  Rating: 6 out of 7.

Aesthetics: John Blanche is once again in good form here, although I feel as though the Baklands don't give him quite the scope to show off that the weirdness of Khare did.  And once again I'm not all that fond of the original cover to this one.  Fenestra is all well and good, but the depiction of the Seven Serpents on the Wizard reprint is much more appropriate even if I'm not keen on the actual rendition.  I rate this category on the Penguin covers though, so it gets marked down a little.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

Mechanics: Steve Jackson keeps things rolling here, using the Fighting Fantasy system to great effect.  There are one or two odd bits where the rules don't quite make sense, but the magic system is still one of the best things that the FF series ever did.  Rating: 6 out of 7.

Innovation & Influence: The spell system remains great, but once again this book isn't really adding anything beyond what was in The Shamutanti Hills.  Rating: 4 out of 7.

NPCs & Monsters: The Seven Serpents is full of memorable encounters, and has some of the best antagonists gamebooks have to offer.  The Serpents admittedly don't have a lot of personality, but they make up for it by giving some of the best boss battles of the series.  Even outside of the Serpents there are plenty of cool encounters, all of which offer something interesting to try.  Rating: 7 out of 7.

Amusement: There's a lot of fun to be had in this book, which leaves the path to victory wide open and has intriguing, entertaining encounters along every single branch.  Rating 6 out of 7.

The above scores total 38, which doubled gives a STAMINA Rating of 76.  I'm not giving it the discretionary Bonus Point, because that would put it equal with Deathtrap Dungeon, and I don't think it quite deserves that.  Even so, it reaches fifth place, a pretty damn good showing.

NEXT: I'll do an Exploring Titan for The Seven Serpents, and then it's on to the wrap-up posts for The Crown of Kings.