Item - Moonrunner

This book is full of patchwork zombies, tentacled horrors, demons, gothic insane asylums, secret cults and cursed artifacts. There's even an unkillable masked maniac right out of a sleazy 80's slasher flick. There are so many grisly goings-on I'm a little surprised there isn't a faith or sanity score like in other Fighting Fantasy books shooting for the same kind of atmosphere. The horror is pretty effective nonetheless.

Unfortunately, effective horror isn't the same as an interesting story, as anyone who's seen their share of dime-a-dozen 80's horror movies can tell you. For one thing, we never find out what a Moonrunner is. Never. You never meet one, you never fight one. All I'll say is it has something to do with the hero's past but that's long behind him, and it's still never explained.

The writing is bland on the whole, and the attempts to portray the reader's character as a world-class bounty hunter with a variety of special skills really don't work that well. If anything, having such a formidable character works against the book, as I only rarely felt I was up against something I might be able to handle, horrific imagery or no. Really the most interesting thing Moonrunner has going for it is an element that makes it a minor sequel to the somewhat less perfunctory Legend of the Shadow Warriors. If you liked that book, you might like Moonrunner.

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