Item - Castle in the Clouds

This book marks a change in the cover design of the series and also a throwback to the style of the first book -- rather than being a character in a fantasy or science fiction world, you instead play a modern child drawn into fantasy by strange circumstances. The book doesn't work especially well. There's a fairly high challenge level in that only one ending is really successful, but at the same time, too many choices are of the meaningless "do you give up yet?" variety. While this is one of the comparatively rare books where the reader is explicitly cast as a female character (in this case a girl named Mary), the role you are forced to play is almost completely undefined, and a Choose Your Own Adventure-style gender-neutral protagonist would have worked just as well. Finally, although there are a few interesting encounters featured in the tale, they aren't handled in any especially interesting ways. It could certainly have been worse, but this is not a high point in the series.

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