Item - Lost Treasure of the Terrians

This book is a big improvement over the last one. For one thing, the subject matter is more interesting -- rather than simply restating the events of the series, it picks up from the cliffhanger of the final episode and proceeds to tell a story that far exceeds the limited geographical scope of the show while still retaining the basic tone. The writing isn't perfect, and there are more grammatical problems than you would find in most professional publications, but it's still an admirable and entertaining effort which gets most, if not all, of the characters right (yes, the kids are generally quite annoying) and provides a fun (if often rather silly) adventure story. The structure of the book is fairly interesting -- in almost any gamebook about collecting the parts of an artifact, it would fall upon the reader to get the whole thing. Here, though, the book stays true to the spirit of teamwork so important to the show and requires the reader to decide which of several teams to accompany during the search, ultimately acquiring only one of several chunks. This obviously makes replay value high since you can keep going back and trying to find different pieces each time. I found it a little annoying that the book has multiple, unrelated endings which explain the story's events in different ways, but that's mainly because I prefer to see consistency in gamebooks; others may not feel the same way. Whatever your opinion of this issue, though, the book generally ends on a less frustrating note than the TV show did while still leaving the door open for future adventures. I certainly hope more will come, though it's not looking too likely at this point.

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