Book of Books: Slot Overview

If you’ve ever stood between two facing mirrors and watched your image echo endlessly, you’ll understand the kind of loop the title brings to mind: Book of Books. Book of Books of books of books… is an online slot from Armenian outfit Peter & Sons, and as the name plainly suggests, it sits firmly in the long-running ‘book of’ tradition that kicked off in the early days of online gambling with Book of Ra. That means expanding pay-anywhere symbols during free spins, plus a handful of extra ideas Peter & Sons have added to give the game a character all its own.

For starters, Book of Books doesn’t take place in or around Egypt, which is where these games often (though not always) tend to be set. Rather than Pharaohs and Pyramids, you’re dropped into a forested, medieval-feeling realm, with spiky trees swaying and three folk characters clattering away on what look like DIY instruments. After looking at several recent Peter & Sons releases that didn’t strongly resemble the studio’s usual vibe, Book of Books is the opposite: a clear-cut showcase of their visual identity. It also recalls some of their earlier titles, including Johnan Legendarian (another ‘book of’ style slot) and Robin Sherwood Marauders.

As is typical for the genre, Book of Books runs on a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 10 paylines used to calculate wins. The twist is that the layout can expand to 5×4 with 20 paylines, or even 5×5 with 40 paylines. Exactly how that works is explained a little further down. Book of Books is available on any device and accepts stakes from 10 p/c to $/€50 per spin, and if you switch on the Golden Bet, your stake increases by 50%, which increases the chance of triggering the bonus game. On the math side it’s highly volatile, and whichever way you play, the top RTP shown is 96.1%, with lower configurations also out there.

Wins are made with at least three of the low symbols or two of the premium ones. The low pays are a club, diamond, spade, heart, and axe, paying 5 to 10 times the bet for 5 OAK, while five hammers, swords, or any of the three character symbols return 20 to 150 times the bet. The wilds match the top symbol’s value and can also substitute for any regular non-expanded paying symbol.

Book of Books: Slot Features

To avoid any confusion, Book of Books includes both a dedicated wild symbol and a dedicated book scatter symbol. In the base game, hitting 2 scatter symbols grants a power up that gets carried into the free spins round. Power ups may be 1 or 2 extra free spins, an extra expanding symbol, or an x1 or x2 expanding multiplier, which boosts wins created by expanded symbols. When you collect expanding multipliers, they stack by adding together.

Free Spins

Hitting 3 or more scatter symbols in the base game launches the free spins feature. The setup is awarded as follows:

• When 3 scatters trigger the feature, it is played on a 5×3 grid with 10 paylines.
• When 4 scatters trigger the feature, it is played on a 5×4 grid with 20 paylines.
• When 5 scatters trigger the feature, it is played on a 5×5 grid with 40 paylines.

The standard award is 7 free spins, although this can be increased through collected power ups. Free spins run with all power ups activated, and once the feature ends, the power ups are cleared. In a less conventional approach, Book of Books doesn’t select one random expanding symbol at the beginning. Instead, on each free spin, the active expanding symbols are randomly chosen and shown on a meter beside the reels. If the expanding symbols can create a win, they cover all positions on their reels and pay 10 lines (independent of grid size), even when they aren’t adjacent. The feature can be retriggered by landing at least 2 scatter symbols:

• 2 scatters award 1 extra free spin plus a random power up.
• 3 scatters award 3 extra free spins plus a random power up.
• 4 scatters award 5 extra free spins plus a random power up. The grid is resized to 5×4 if possible.
• 5 scatters award 7 extra free spins plus a random power up. The grid is resized to 5×5 if possible.

Buy Free Spins

Book of Books offers three bonus buy choices, and each one starts free spins. For 120x the bet you get a 5×3 grid with 10 paylines, 250x the bet purchases a 5×4 grid with 20 paylines, and 500x the bet unlocks a 5×5 grid with 40 paylines.

Book of Books: Slot Verdict

The Beatles left such a huge mark on modern culture that their music has been stored in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the North Pole to protect it for future generations. Perhaps one day the ‘book of’ slot blueprint will be preserved in a similar way, so that a thousand years from now, future online gamblers (or whatever form wagering takes by then, if it exists at all) can still enjoy the famous expanding-symbol spectacle. If humanity couldn’t save every ‘book of’ slot ever made, which ones would be essential? Book of Dead, Book of Ra maybe… what else?

Whether Book of Books would earn a spot on that preservation list is debatable, but it’s still a noteworthy take on the format. Not only does it ditch the Egyptian setting, it also shifts away from the usual playbook in several other ways. Enough, in fact, that it deserves a closer look at the paytable than most ‘book of’ games typically require. From the power up mechanics, which can make an early free spins trigger feel less appealing, to the per-spin random expanding symbols, to the head-scratching decision to separate wild and scatter symbols. While some studios cling tightly to the ‘book of’ template, Peter & Sons treats it more like a framework and lets the design team roam.

And where that roaming leads is something you don’t often encounter in this subgenre. Straying this far from the standard approach may put off some ‘book of’ purists who find Book of Books a bit too different, but players who enjoy experimentation may well be drawn to the specific appeal on offer here.