Item - The Wicked Wizard of Oz

Jonathan Green's second adventure in his ACE Gamebooks series imaginatively reinvents L. Frank Baum's Oz as a dieselpunk world where bizarre-looking humanoids, automatons and cybernetically-enhanced creatures populate the many different pathways on offer. Once again you'll be travelling along the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City, where Oz, the Great and Terrible – a tyrannical AI with an enormous metallic skull – is intent on destruction. The central feature of The Wicked Wizard of Oz is that it can be replayed multiple times as different characters, with new content written for each individual's journey. You'll find four playable characters inside the book: Dorothy Gale, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion – each with different strengths and weaknesses, and a variety of Special Abilities.

Green's writing is dramatically lively and quirky, taking the best of Baum's creations and then artistically warping their nature and appearance to match his desired aesthetic. Encounters are highly memorable and intelligently designed, with plenty of unexpected surprises and neat reconstructions of favourite scenes and adversaries. You'll also find quite a few humorous passages, plus there's a decent amount of amusing pop culture references sprinkled throughout the book. Your adventure never loses interest or momentum, even with all of its multiple complexities, and there's an enormous amount of replay value due to its multi-path structure.

Also, Kev Crossley's intricate illustrations bring many of the bizarre creations to life, depicting all of their appendages, enhancements and general ghastliness with many fine details and excellent draughtsmanship.

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