“Just what the zark do you think you’re up to, Mr Zero?”

We are returning to the much beloved Fighting Fantasy series today, and it may surprise you to know that it is not, in fact, a fantasy setting this time around… despite the title sounding very much like a Tolkien-esque yarn (or a Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic?) about collecting rings from a place called Kether.

Indeed the Double-F enjoyed an occasional foray into science fiction, so The Rings of Kether puts us neck deep in a seedy space noir universe full of hardboiled aliens and blazing lasers!

We are a space DEA agent going undercover in the Alpha Cygni star system, specifically to a city called Kether, to uncover and shut down a narcotics smuggling operation that has permeated the galaxy. Everyone else who has gone sniffing for drug rings in Kether has either turned up nothing, or turned up dead. Kether is the Mos Eisley of this galaxy: the people are untrusting or untrustworthy, the authorities are all corrupt, and from the moment we arrive we’re in somebody’s crosshairs. All we need is a steamy alien babe and we’ve got the recipe for a noir hero’s typical Monday.

Spoiler: no alien babes.

As with other Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, we are expected to keep track of our stats and inventory in the course of our investigation. These books are more like solo RPGs than Choose Your Own Adventure novels, so our avatar gets Stamina, Skill, and Luck ratings to track his health, ability checks, and dumb luck respectively.

We brawl with guys by rolling 2 dice, adding our Skill, and hoping our number is higher than the other dude’s number, because there’s a knuckle sandwich being served and somebody’s got to eat it. The loser has 2 points shaved off his Stamina. If Stamina reaches 0, we die, and the story abruptly ends–one thing I especially dislike about Fighting Fantasy. At least in Cretan Chronicles you get an epilogue for each death in combat.

If a situation calls for using Luck (trying to enhance our skill or combat roll, for example) we can “try our luck” and two dice: if we roll less than our Luck, whatever we were trying to do succeeds. Each time we use Luck, it decreases by 1, whether our luck was good or bad, to simulate our luck running out. This feature I do like.

That’s all pretty bog-standard for Fighting Fantasy, but every volume in the series has a unique mechanic or three to set it apart from the others. In The Rings of Kether, we get “blaster combat,” pep pills, and a space ship with its very own set of stats!

Blaster combat is basically where we trade shots with the bad guys and do twice the damage of our fists. It’s pretty great, because while combat typically slows the adventure to a crawl, the shootouts in Kether go by very swiftly. I even managed to get my hands on a Space Uzi that one-shot killed half the threats I came across!

Pep pills are an item that we start the adventure with, but we can collect more if we’re lucky. These handy little meds can heal 6 Stamina a pop, and we can use them whenever we want. Very handy for when our dumb carcass inevitably gets shot full of holes.

But it’s neat that we get our own ship as well, with stats revolving around Weapons Strength, Shields, and Smart Missiles. Weapons Strength is basically how good our phasers are at punching divots in the hulls of enemy spacecraft. Shields denote how many hits your ship can take before it blows up. Smart Missiles are the best part of all: each time you launch one, it automatically homes in on an enemy ship and destroys it, which can really make or break a ship-to-ship encounter.

My first ship had WS 11, so I pretty much destroyed anything I came across…but it had Shields 3 and went down in a blaze of glory near the end of the story. I just roleplayed that I crash-landed in the bad guy’s hangar, and continued reading. There was a perfectly good ship in the hangar already. No reason why I couldn’t borrow that one to fly home, right?

The Rings of Kether plays out as a sci-fi detective story: lots of sci-fi jargon like vidi and kopecks gets tossed around, and we spend most of our time stalking suspects, gathering intel from unsuspecting people, staking out shady locations, and trying not to get our head shot off. When we begin our investigation, we can be as bold or as subtle as we want. Barge into the local police precinct and ask about drug arrests? Or go to the local watering hole and ply information from the winos with free drinks?

You run the gammut of hardboiled crime scenarios and space scenarios in this book. It’s a real treat when one minute I’m sneaking around investigating Blade Runner locales, or mingling/brawling with gangland toughs; and the next, I’m suddenly in a dogfight in an asteroid belt, or taking a treacherous spacewalk to a satellite where one misstep can send me hurtling through space forever.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Rings of Kether follows the “one true path” formula that seems to be common to this series, but unlike other entries I’ve read, this one never got annoying beyond the occasional fake choice, where one choice advances the story, and the other leads to a dead end that detours to the first choice. Beyond that, this book is a solid neo noir adventure that really feels like you’re digging deep into the world of intergalactic crime, and has plenty of shootouts besides. I was pleased to see that the shootout combat went by so quickly–the typical hand-to-hand system for Fighting Fantasy is pretty tedious in general, especially when you’re losing. If you’re losing a blaster fight or a space ship battle, you’re already dead.

I should mention the illustrations by Nik Spender while I’m at it. They really capture the vibe of a neo noir story set in a broken down spaceport city: lots of gritty, grimy detail, expressive faces, and space tech straight out of an old DC Comics sci-fi anthology. The weirdo alien with the three eyes, arms, and legs is best in show without a doubt.

For anyone who has never read a Fighting Fantasy book before, there are a number of volumes that can easily turn you off of the series due to mean spirited design and tedious combat. The Rings of Kether definitely isn’t one of them. It’s a moody little interactive neo noir that’s worth reading at least once.

But due to the lack of steamy alien babes, I can only rate this book 4 wookies out of 10.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.