Item - Beyond Escape!

I can't pinpoint exactly when I gave up on the Choose Your Own Adventure series, but it was before high school. And Beyond Escape! may have been the inflection point. By book 50 I wasn't buying them all, or nagging my parents to buy them, any more. I didn't even care to check for them at the library.

I enjoyed the wild twists and turns in your average CYOA, but perhaps the promise of a sequel to an entry I liked, coupled with revealing that one of your three companions was, actually, an alien was too much for me. One picture brought back a lot to me, where you try to knock them out with a wrench and fail. But more to the point -- their justifications for their previous actions make little or no sense! And no, aliens being on a higher level of consciousness, and maybe you humans will understand one day, doesn't cut it.

Beyond Escape! takes place in the same broken America that Escape! did, with Turtalia, Dorado and Rebellium. You have been promoted to Chief of Operations for actions outside Turtalia. Your first choice, a big one, is which of your companions to track down from Escape!: Haven, or Matt and Mimla?

Each path is separate and very very different. One involves UFOs and aliens insistent that you will, for humanity's good and peace, learn and comply. The other feels very rushed in sixty pages, as you meet a bunch of rebels who hate Dorado more than Turtalia and learn of a gang called the Corporation that has iron control of San Francisco. You can negotiate to bring them over to Turtalia's side -- money talks! But otherwise it's a procession of too-quick hellos and good-byes. I guess sneaking into and escaping a totalitarian state is like that. But it makes for bumpy reading, and after you say you'd been itching for the excitement of a solo mission, the writing doesn't really bear it out. Even catching up to Matt and Mimla didn't give me any warm feelings, and that was a hard branch for me to get to.

More reviews by andrewschultz

This sequel to the twentieth book in the series is probably an improvement. I say "probably" because, although I've read it several times, my memories of the original Escape are very dim. This book seems a little more likely to stick with me, and it's also written with more skill than earlier R. A. Montgomery works, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. My biggest complaint is actually with the artwork. It really doesn't match the text too well; it portray's the reader's character as a fairly young child. This makes sense considering the book's audience, but it doesn't fit with the text of the book, which takes place quite a few years after the original book and which gives the reader some very authoritative dialogue that I can't envision coming from the figure in the book's drawings. Actually, the entire book, not just the main character, is surprisingly mature, not in terms of potentially offensive content, but rather in tone. The descriptions of the post-apocalyptic landscape and the frequent examinations of the Turtalian-Doradan political situation seem more likely to resonate with an adult than with a child -- I think I would have found this book unspeakably dull when I was ten years old, though I can't recall if I actually read it at that age. Having read it now, I can't say that I found the book thrillingly creative, but despite being about as ridiculous as any book in this series, it does have a number of effective moments that balance the usual handful of meaningless choices and frustratingly abrupt endings. This was better than I expected it to be, and it's probably worth a read.

More reviews by Demian

Six years have passed since you escaped Dorado, one of three territories the United States has split into. The year is 2041 and you are a leader of the resistance in Turtalia, the region most opposed to Dorado’s totalitarian regime. Mimla and Matt, your fellow agents from the previous book, Escape, are covertly gathering intelligence in Dorado when a transmission indicates they are in distress. At the same time you are informed that Haven, a Doradan spy, has escaped Turtalian custody. Should you personally track down Mimla and Matt, or recapture Haven before he reaches sanctuary in Dorado?

Flying a plane to California, where Mimla and Matt were stationed, is perilous. From the air you spot a network of campfires near San Francisco, but should you investigate, or continue into the city and rendezvous with your underground network? A criminal organization called the Corporation has seized control of San Francisco, but your contact, Jeremy, wants to break the Corporation's hold on the city. You could help negotiate a peace, or head up a scouting mission to probe the Corporation's weaknesses. Jeremy might assist you in searching for Mimla and Matt, by either plane or motorcycle. You'll join up with a guerrilla fighter named Sellers, but might not have the firepower to defeat both the Corporation and the Doradans. If you took your plane to investigate the campfires before ever landing in San Francisco, gunmen yank you from the plane. Sellers is in charge; he and his men are under constant enemy fire, but parting ways with them will make it more complicated to track down Mimla and Matt...if they're alive.

Chasing after Haven at the first decision in the book subjects you to a mysterious attack on your helicopter. If you parachute from the chopper, you soon locate Haven…in a form you'd never have guessed. Is he telling the truth about being an alien from a race called the Crystal People? Was he actually never a Doradan asset? Haven claims he knows where and when Dorado plans to attack, but even if he's being forthright, you must execute your sabotage ops skillfully or be destroyed. Question Haven deeply enough and he'll reveal his primary motive is securing a home for the refugee Crystal People. Should you pledge Earth's resources toward his goal? Respond with caution; the Crystal People pose a devastating threat.

Escape was a good if not great book, but Beyond Escape! is inferior. The action feels dull, and as a sequel the book serves no purpose; it does little to forward a resolution of the war between Dorado and Turtalia. Rebranding Haven as a pacifist alien is strange; it doesn't fit his behavior from the first book, and his violent reactions if you don't acquiesce to his plans leads me to conclude the Crystal People aren't so wonderful. I've read worse gamebooks, but there isn't any reason for this one to exist.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

If the original Escape was about World War II, then its sequel is about what happened afterwards. The description of the setting here is certainly an improvement from before, but it can't carry this book. It's just not a good entry in this series.

This is not a coherent adventure. There are two independent plot strings you can follow, and both consist mostly of random events. Nearly all of the endings are stupid and abrupt.

This book contains what is perhaps the stupidest thing I've seen R. A. do yet – when Haven, clearly established as a human in the previous book, reveals he is an alien! What the heck is going on? I don't know, but can say that no matter what he tries, R. A. Montgomery writes like a fifth grader.

If the first book was merely below average, its sequel is much worse. All in all, this is a characteristically poor effort from R. A. Montgomery. Stay away from it.

More reviews by Stockton