Item - Trapped in the Circus of Fear

The series keeps getting more simplistic -- the last volume featured inventory management, but this one just asks you to pick three items from a list of options before starting play, much like the gimmick in some of the Time Machine books. Once your initial items are chosen, they never change, and you can't pick up any others. There are also enough hints in the text about item selection which make the whole book remarkably easy to complete successfully (though lots of deaths are nonetheless inevitable). There are only two other things that are special about this Special Edition other than the item selection. First of all, there's an interesting word search where you have to count the number of times you find a word, multiply this by another number and then turn to that page; this is slightly reminiscent of (admittedly more complicated) math puzzles found in some of the better British gamebooks. The other unusual thing is the fact that the entire book is devoted to one storyline rather than being broken up into two or more unrelated adventures like most of the regular Give Yourself Goosebumps books are. Despite this, though, the adventure seems kind of short. Regardless of its disappointing elements, though, the book isn't awful. Somehow, it wasn't as cringe-inducing as I've come to expect from this series, and I actually almost (though not quite) chuckled at its humor here and there. This isn't as good as the first Special Edition, but it definitely beats the second one.

More reviews by Demian