Item - Revenge of the Russian Ghost

I found myself feeling annoyed with this book, mostly because something seems wrong with the title. It's hard to say that the ghost is getting revenge. He's just angry, and you aren't the target of any revenge.

The book deals with Rasputin, and more specifically, his boot. This doesn't sound terribly exciting. It's hard to get excited about a boot, even a cursed one.

The writing is fairly good, and the focus is generally very good. There's one path early on where you don't really learn much of what else happens in the book, but usually your path doesn't depart much from your primary goal - to figure out what's going on with the boot, and to return to your own time.

Remarkably, Rasputin comes across mostly as a good person. All of the negative stuff is always from other people, and he usually behaves very well to you.

Despite the general quality of the book, I can't say that it's much fun. It seems a bit too dry, and too many of the endings result in you getting back to your own time and saying something about how no one will ever believe your story.

More reviews by Jordashebasics

A case can be made this is the type of gamebook Jay Leibold does best: historical but with a supernatural undercurrent. You are serving an internship in Russia with the Institute for Alternative Medicine, and have made friends with Ilya, a Soviet girl. As the story opens, Ilya presents a wild idea: attending a séance led by a spiritualist named Madame Kolodina. The goal is to coax Grigory Rasputin, the mad monk himself, from beyond the grave to find out if the legends about his healing powers are true. You reluctantly accompany Ilya to Madame Kolodina's place, but as you're about to enter, a man holding a shoebox clutches your arm and insists on speaking to you in private. This feels like a setup; should you ignore him and go inside for the séance, or bolt the scene with Ilya right now?

You are confused to find the same man upstairs in the house. He thrusts the shoebox on you, and this time you take it. As Madame Kolodina calls forth the ghost, the room tremors violently, furniture crashing all over. You and Ilya flee the house, but two groups of men follow, seemingly after the shoebox. You could leap into the River Neva, but that will spirit you back to this same region of Russia...in the year 1916. After arresting you for vagrancy, the police in 1916 discover the only thing in the shoebox is an old leather boot. What's going on here? In the holding cell you meet Paul—an affable gypsy—Fyodor—an anti-czar revolutionary—and an aloof monk named Iliodor. Which of them will you join up with? Iliodor is connected to Prince Yussupov, who you learn is planning to assassinate Rasputin, advisor to Czar Nicholas II. You sense the boot in your possession belongs to Rasputin and you need him alive to return to your own time, but can you change the course of history? Be careful meddling with Yussupov; he can be heartless. Go with Fyodor instead of Iliodor and you end up trying to gain an audience with Rasputin at the palace. Fyodor may try to use you as a weapon against Rasputin, which won't forward your goals. Leaving the jail with Paul the gypsy rather than Fyodor or Iliodor takes you into the gypsy camp, where you may meet Rasputin by coincidence. There's a powerful magnetism about him, but if you weather it, he might guide you home.

Maybe you ran with Ilya at first sight of the man with the shoebox, never entering Madame Kolodina's domain. That night a ghostlike figure bursts into your bedroom and demands you "Give me back my boot." Humoring him may seem best, but copping to the truth that you don't have the boot expands your options. The police arrive with suspicious speed and are more interested in ransacking Ilya's home than tracking down the ghost, or whatever it was. Things aren't adding up; should you go see Madame Kolodina after all? If not, the man with the shoebox contacts you for a meeting. What he has in the box is a boot Rasputin wore on the night of his murder in 1916, an object of lore that could make you and the man both wealthy if you sell it in America and split the cash. Is it wise to smuggle a Russian artifact out of the country? If you went and spoke with Madame Kolodina, you learn the real story of the ghost in your bedroom, and can end the mystery with minimal drama. You've had enough of ghosts, real and contrived.

Revenge of the Russian Ghost features good variety of vocabulary. There's also more depth of characterization than usual for Choose Your Own Adventure: Iliodor, Fyodor, and Paul each feel distinctive, so your choice who to go with has real meaning. The timeline in 1916 is absolutely fixed; you interact with historical personages, but are unable to perturb their fate. That lowers the stakes of the story, but it's really about getting you back to your own time, not altering history. I like several of Stephen Marchesi's illustrations, some of which do nice things with light; see the drawing opposite page one, for example. Revenge of the Russian Ghost isn't bad, but doesn't stand out. It's the quintessential average entry in the series.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

First off, this book has a pretty original plot and some excellent writing. You are an exchange student studying holistic medicine in the USSR. Your friend Ilya has invited you to a seance where a mystic will try to contact the spirit of Rasputin. Things quickly go wrong from there.

This book has too many good endings – there's no challenge involved in being successful. It also has lots of page flipping between choices. I also find it hard to believe that a character who can barely read menus in 1980s Leningrad could speak enough Russian to survive in 1916.

On the whole, the story starts off very well. But as one moves through the book, it becomes less and less like a story and more like a dreary, plodding ethnographic on 1916 Russia. Events, too, quickly become random. If there was ever a book with 'squandered potential' written all over it, this is the one.

More reviews by Stockton