Item - Monsters of Doorna

I remember thinking at the time that this was probably my least favourite of the series. I thought the art-work (even as a child) was much more simplistic and less interesting. The only high point was a tower spread horizontally over several pages to show its immense height.

The puzzles were somewhat boring, including the idea of a poison that kills you in exactly 24 hours, while after 23 hours and 59 minutes you are still running around like everything is fine.

I did like one of the first examples of inter-book continuity, where a villain from another book makes his / her reappearance in this one.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

Monsters of Doorna provides typical fare for this series. This book is mostly a survival story as you navigate the dangers of a strange planet filled with alien flora and fauna. The mystery surrounding your allies, the Setali, was intriguing, and the reappearance of a classic villain was fun. This mission ranks 3 out of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

This is largely an average book -- I wasn't particularly impressed with it, but I also have no major complaints. As with the rest of the series, many of the puzzles are rather pointless, but there are a few clever ones -- my favorite involved using shadows to determine the direction of the movement of two suns. Too many choices relied on memorizing details of illustrations seen long ago, though. The illustrations, which are a vital part of these books considering the brevity of the text, largely failed to impress me, but I can at least appreciate the creativity of conveying the height of the story's mysterious tower by forcing the reader to turn the book sideways and look at two consecutive two-page pictures; too bad the actual art is less than awe-inspiring. The final thing worth mentioning about this book is the fact that it turns out to be a direct sequel to a previous title; while I like this sort of thing, it didn't really advance the story much here.

More reviews by Demian