Item - The Castle of No Return

There's not a whole lot of depth to this book; in fact, it almost feels like a summary of some longer book. Fortunately, the game aspect of the book is quite good, with two areas to explore, each with a distinct mission to complete.

More reviews by Demian

The Castle of No Return is a light but fairly fun gamebook. As Demian says there isn't much in the way of detail or depth, but that's not much of a detriment at all. To me it feels very much like an introduction, both to the series and the idea of the reader being in control of the story. Hence, it seems it was written so as not to overwhelm children who'd never gotten to decide what happened next in a story. It certainly goes down easier than a few of the books later in the series that seemed to throw whatever the writer thought it would cool to include at the reader to see what sticks. A decent choice to introduce a member of the next generation to interactive fiction. Certainly better than the bulk of reissued CYOA titles out there.

More reviews by Fireguard

Great read!

As others had pointed out, this and other Which Way Books do seem light in text, but they really pack a punch, and the illustrations help write more words as well, so to speak.

As an adult, I find myself enjoying more "reality" based stories. Ok, the wacky scientist and the ghost ray and nutcase guy in the shack go into fantasy land... but it was fun to visualize "what if" and what would I do.

...I know I would never swim in that moat!

The ghost story line was probably the weakest, but I did like the tinge of finding another ghost and if you want to stay that way forever...

The Boris story was intriguing. What would you do if some guy could read your mind and could see several actions ahead of you... and you want to figure a way to escape?

The scientist... wow... that is some super computer... and a reel-to-reel reading sequential data no-less! Glad they got rid of punch cards! They should have had an option to wait until the big failure of converting from Win 3.1 to Win 95... that would have surely caused a meltdown!!

But to get back to the plot... while it was absurd for a machine to be able to change people to plants or animals, the story was well done with the "cattle" of people being drugged while awaiting "selections" and the other ways the story could twist it.

All in all, one of my favorite Which Way Books.

More reviews by noonxnoon

The intro was very enticing, but the choice between a castle or a shack lent blandness. Progression involved analysis of Boris before the castle, or straight to the "laboratories." For some reason, I thought I'd be meeting a vampire at the castle. Indeed, you could save the people trapped, but did experiments really cause your TV to go out? If not, did I coincidentally find this castle? Could I believe Boris that the castle is the cause of the noise? So what caused the TV to go out? What I am trying to say is the book lacked ideological fluency and coherency. Like a video game with only 10 frames a second.

More reviews by ontcanada2005