Item - Terror on the Titanic

It took the RMS Titanic less than three hours to sink. In Jim Wallace's gamebook, you'll make a maximum of seven decisions before you end up drowned in the hull of the ship, or in the icy waves of the Atlantic ... or safe in a lifeboat. As may be expected, most of the 19 endings promised on the cover page turn out unhappy. More than 1500 out of 2200 passengers on the Titanic died, and in this book, you're one of them.

Despite the statistics and the use of the word terror in the title, the prevalent feeling of the protagonist seems to be that of surprise rather than fear: surprise at passengers ignoring the catastrophe, adults still dancing and drinking while the ship is sinking, children playing snowballs with chunks of the iceberg. The crew are presented as mostly careless, and ill-equipped on the side. The outlook, for example, uses no binoculars - unlike the hero of the book.

Turns out the Ancient Mariner-like figure encountered on the third page was right: "The ocean is mightier still" - mightier than technology. At least if folks don't do their job properly, the best ship ever constructed will sink.

Even if this moral shows some wear after 107 years, I'll readily admit that Terror On the Titanic isn't a bad book. It is competently written and plotted. There's an important sideplot, however, which seems a little clichéd, showing a little too much routine on the side of the author. In case you want to give this book a try, I'll not spoil it for you.

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