Item - Monsters of Doorna

Monsters of Doorna sends you to a planet in a very distant galaxy where all kinds of weird monsters are popping up. Who is behind it and why? Doorna itself is referred to in The Galactic Pirate, where you may wind up teleporting to it if you choose the wrong option on your hyperspace. It's a small part of how the books linked together, but it's kind of a neat one, if you remember it.

The mystery involves you wandering around Doorna for a day, but no more -- the atmosphere will kill you. This is slightly artificial (why is there no backup for such a dangerous mission?) but it works well enough to push you through. And the monsters, friend or foe, that you face wandering through tunnels and jungles are the high point of the book. There's a needle-nose that poisons you even more, a giant roaring slug, and a leafy carnivore that nab you if you fail to escape a pit. But you have friends, too: a flying tadpole actually called a Kayjay and later on there's an old winged beast called a Setali that you need to fly, but who doesn't have much left. The illustrations bring out the text very well and are the high point of the book.

But Monsters of Doorna doesn't quite have the identity that Robot World or The Galactic Pirate does. You're not introduced to the antagonist until the end, and while there's a decent amount of mystery, the plot still feels in service of drawing a bunch of monsters and exotic animals, even if there's a neat bit figuring which are synthetic. The puzzles aren't terribly tricky, either (mazes, shape recognition/counting,) and the one that stands out is being able to follow a sun and shadows. Unfortunately there are more than a few endings where you just wind up sitting in a corner and the book says nothing works, you give up.

I found the antagonist to be a bit of a reach. It implies some negligence on spy Center's part. But the final confrontation and denouement are a really nice payoff. I've kvetched about details here but MoD's strength is more in the atmosphere of Doorna than the plot, and it's in the middle of the series in terms of quality. It's fun but doesn't stand out.

More reviews by andrewschultz

I remember thinking at the time that this was probably my least favourite of the series. I thought the art-work (even as a child) was much more simplistic and less interesting. The only high point was a tower spread horizontally over several pages to show its immense height.

The puzzles were somewhat boring, including the idea of a poison that kills you in exactly 24 hours, while after 23 hours and 59 minutes you are still running around like everything is fine.

I did like one of the first examples of inter-book continuity, where a villain from another book makes his / her reappearance in this one.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

Monsters of Doorna provides typical fare for this series. This book is mostly a survival story as you navigate the dangers of a strange planet filled with alien flora and fauna. The mystery surrounding your allies, the Setali, was intriguing, and the reappearance of a classic villain was fun. This mission ranks 3 out of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

This is largely an average book -- I wasn't particularly impressed with it, but I also have no major complaints. As with the rest of the series, many of the puzzles are rather pointless, but there are a few clever ones -- my favorite involved using shadows to determine the direction of the movement of two suns. Too many choices relied on memorizing details of illustrations seen long ago, though. The illustrations, which are a vital part of these books considering the brevity of the text, largely failed to impress me, but I can at least appreciate the creativity of conveying the height of the story's mysterious tower by forcing the reader to turn the book sideways and look at two consecutive two-page pictures; too bad the actual art is less than awe-inspiring. The final thing worth mentioning about this book is the fact that it turns out to be a direct sequel to a previous title; while I like this sort of thing, it didn't really advance the story much here.

More reviews by Demian