Jonathan Green

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Jonathan Green is a part-time novelist, and gamebook author.

[edit] Biography

He is best known for having written three gamebooks in the original Fighting Fantasy series and the long-lost gamebook Bloodbones which has now been published as part of the new series. He also wrote Spellbreaker, Knights of Doom and Curse of the Mummy in the original series, and a number of other novels and gamebooks.

Green's books are reputed to be among the most difficult in Fighting Fantasy due to the frequent inclusion of high-level adversaries and because there is often little room for error. For instance, Bloodbones features a final battle against a Skill 12 Stamina 24 adversary while suffering a -1 Attack Strength penalty (a player starts with maximum scores of 12 and 24 respectively), Knights of Doom includes four Skill 12 adversaries, Curse of the Mummy features a Skill 13 Stamina 25 final adversary and Spellbreaker includes a Skill 12 bandit and another Skill 12 final adversary. Reviewers agree that Knights of Doom is one of the hardest of the original Fighting Fantasy series, while "Curse of the Mummy" is termed "ludicrous" in difficulty by one reviewer and "ridiculously difficult... as with Jonathan Green's two other gamebooks" by another, and Bloodbones is termed "insanely difficult" by one reader. Spellbreaker includes several passages where a certain dice roll (such as 1-3 out of 6) is necessary for survival and has been estimated as having only an 8% success chance prior to factoring in risks from combat, other statistics, item choice and so on. Although usually raised as a criticism, this aspect also pleases some readers. The books are also often credited with atmospheric writing and originality. Upon their 2007 rereleases "Spellbreaker" and "Curse of the Mummy" were edited to make them more playable.

All the books operate on the intersection between fantasy and horror; they are all set in the usual Fighting Fantasy world of Titan. Spellbreaker uses a religious rather than mythological setting including herblore, Curse of the Mummy imitates ancient Egyptian tropes, Bloodbones is pirate-themed with undertones of chaos-worship and undeath, and Knights of Doom borrows Warhammer Fantasy Battle's chaos imagery.

Green has also written a number of novels for the Games Workshop Black Library label, on similar themes. These include Necromancer, Magestorm, The Dead and the Damned, and Iron Hands (set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe). He co-authored several Sonic the Hedgehog gamebooks for Puffin Books with Marc Gascoigne.

In 2003 Green co-created the Pax Britannia science fiction Steampunk setting for Abaddon Books' new novel line. He wrote the first book in the series Unnatural History, which features a Victorian Bond-sytle dandy adventurer called Ulysses Quicksilver, and is now the sole writer on the Pax Britannia line.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebooks (Puffin Books):
    • Book 53 - Spellbreaker
    • Book 56 - Knights of Doom
    • Book 59 - Curse of the Mummy
    • Book 60 - Bloodbones (unpublished)
  • Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebooks (Wizard Books):
    • Book 26 - Bloodbones
    • Book 27 - Curse of the Mummy
    • Book 28 - Spellbreaker
    • Book 29 - Howl of the Werewolf

[edit] References


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