Item - Fugitive

Fugitive by Edward Packard (Choose Your Own Adventure #182) was a big disappointment. Packard created the CYOA series and has written lots of entertaining stories, but this book has a very phoned-it-in feel to it. The basic plot finds you visiting your young uncle in New York City while your parents are on vacation. Except your uncle mixed up the dates and isn't in town when you arrive. And to make things worse, you then get kidnapped and coerced into participating in a jewel robbery. Pretty soon you're wanted by both the mobsters who abducted you and the police.

The problem is it's all very boring. You won't reach your first choice until the eighth page. And it's a 50/50 choice (meaning one option continues the story and the other option ends it). The next two choices you encounter are also of the 50/50 variety. There are only 103 pages in this book and yet many pages only have one or two (unneeded) sentences on them. There's little creativity to the different paths you can go on with most of them ending (both successfully and unsuccessfully) in nearly identical fashion. There are a few times when an ending is given that talks about you furthering your adventure, but the author couldn't be bothered to write it. Also, a lot of book is taken up with expository dialogue, which I found myself scanning over or skipping.

The art by Eric Cherry looks like it was done by a charcoal pencil leading it to be a little muddied and dark. It's alright but personally I would've preferred more detail.

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