If The Master of Mazes feels like a Lynchian bad dream (boy, does it!), The Forbidden Towers (1985) is a nightmare. Once again, Carol Gaskin and T. Alexander Price wow me.

OK, so, you’re an elf, out gathering berries, but when you go back home, you can’t get back in because of a sleeping plague that hit while you were out (!). You’re tasked with going to the titular towers to get the cure (a special plant) before all the elves fade from existence. The five towers are themed: spiders, hands, bones, eaters and beasts. Though you enter one of your choice at the start, there are ways to move between them later — for instance, you can jump from the roof of the Tower of Beasts to the roof of the Tower of Eaters (which turns out to be an open mouth, horrible).

The towers are packed with dangers that are not just deadly but often bizarrely off-kilter. The Tower of Hands is basically full of weaponized puns (plenty of puns elsewhere, too — one ending has you devoured by tiger-lilies). Nothing is ever quite what you expect. You do a lot of running away. And, true to the giant looming skull on the cover, I can only find one path to success. Everything else seems to end in death or imprisonment with no chance of escape.

On the plus side, there’s a true manticore to contend with!