2020 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of The Crown of Kings, the fourth and concluding adventure of Steve Jackson's seminal Sorcery! series.

 

Jackson conceived the epic adventure after holidaying in the mountains of Nepal.  Several of the settlements that appear in The Shamutanti Hills, the first book in the quartet (first published in 1983), are named after actual villages Jackson came across on a five-day trek he undertook from the city of Pokhara.

 

The Crown of Kings itself is an astonishing gamebook, 800 sections in length - a record yet to be broken by any other entry in the Fighting Fantasy series. It is a suitably epic finale to the Sorcery! epic, and features one of the most memorable (and clever) denouements of any adventure ever published.

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In recent years, the Sorcery! series has been turned into a series of apps by inkle studios, as well as a multi-player role-playing campaign published by Arion Games, while the first two parts of the Analander's momentous quest are now in print again, courtesy of Scholastic Books.