Adventure in the Lost World
Author: R. W. Stroh
Illustrator: Kim Mulkey
First Published: 1985
ISBN: 0-8167-0535-6 (hardback), 0-8167-0536-4 (paperback)
Length: 92 pages
Number of Endings: 28
Library of Congress Summary: In the role of a sailor gone three years
from home, the reader is asked by a mysterious stranger to return to help
his/her parents, then chooses the turns in a plot full of monstrous
adventures.
My Thoughts: It's amazing just how bad this book is. For starters,
the writing is just awful -- the whole thing reads like a summary, having no
detailed setting, no distinctive character traits and no flavor of any sort.
At one point, for example, you battle a monster. The book never describes
the monster, or even tells you what it is! It just keeps saying "the
monster this" and "the monster that" until the monster is
dead! As if this weren't bad enough, the story doesn't even go where it's
supposed to. The entire point of the book is to discover what happened to
your parents, but every path simply leads you into a random adventure which
in turn leads to an ending that never resolves the plot of the book! It's
hard to believe, but not a single path through the book has anything to do
with the alleged plot! All in all, this makes for a frustrating (though
fascinatingly inept) read. The book also happens to be an exercise in wasted
space; lots of pages have just three or four sentences on them, and the vast
majority are only about half full. If the sections were numbered separately
from the pages, in Fighting Fantasy style, the book would probably
only be about two thirds of its present thickness. About the only good thing
I can say about this book is that my primary copy is a good quality hardcover
printed on nice paper; too bad the content doesn't really deserve such good
treatment. I also have a paperback copy, pictured above at the right. The
artwork on its cover seems to be cropped a little differently than that on
the hardback.
Mystery at Loch Ness
Author: Roy Wandelmaier
Illustrator: Kim Mulkey
First Published: 1985
ISBN: 0-8167-0530-5
Length: 99 pages
Number of Endings: 19
Library of Congress Summary: While vacationing in Scotland, the reader
becomes involved in searching for a missing professor who has been
investigating the Loch Ness monster and is provided with some fantastic
choices to make.
My Thoughts: There's nothing to make this gamebook particularly special,
but it's not too bad. It's as good as your average
Choose Your Own Adventure.
Secret of the Old Museum
Author: Roy Wandelmaier
Illustrator: Dick Smolinski
First Published: 1985
ISBN: 0-8167-0531-3 (hardback), 0-8167-0532-1 (paperback)
Length: 99 pages
Number of Endings: 30
Library of Congress Summary: The reader's decisions control a series of
adventures inside a museum, including time travel to ancient Egypt and an
encounter with aliens from the Alpha Centauri system.
My Thoughts: As the summary suggests, this book covers a lot of different
territory. It's not terribly well-written (or historically accurate) but
it's fairly entertaining.
Shipwrecked on Mystery Island
Author: Roy Wandelmaier
Illustrator: J. Brian Pinkney
First Published: 1985
ISBN: 0-8167-0534-8
Length: 101 pages
Number of Endings: 25
Library of Congress Summary: You are shipwrecked on a beautiful Pacific
island in 1869 and must choose a course of events that will get you off,
keep you there, or, indeed, ensure that you survive at all.
My Thoughts: This is a good, fast-paced gamebook. Unfortunately it
relies on a lot of cliches which have already been used repeatedly in
other gamebooks, so there's very little here that doesn't sound familiar.