#dave carson

“You don’t eat me, okay?”

Dave Carson, illustration to “Only Human” by Adrian Cole

And after solving our scanner issues, we’re back with the Fighting Fantasy Book #25, Peter Darvill-Evans’ Beneath Nightmare Castle. In this one, the medieval fantasy world of Titan is injected with some fairly heavy duty Lovecraftian horror, making this one of the more genuinely scary entries in the series. Dave Carson’s illustrations, however, don’t quite match the horror of the text, but that is no sleight against the artist. No doubt, some of the more disturbing imagery would have to be toned down for the illustrations for what is nominally a children’s book. As such, some creatures (such as the Vitriolic Essence on the frontis, or the amorphous mass of twitching limbs and mouths that forms the main antagonist Xakhaz) look slightly silly, By contrast, the unused (for obvious reasons) picture of the woman with tentacles in her mouth is perfectly grotesque.

Syth, The Old One: Syth is a lesser Old One, an ancient alien intelligence, who may not be as powerful as the famous Old Ones whose names have become words of power, but is still an incredible force equal of the most powerful gods.