Item - Volcano!

After enjoying the last book so much, I expected to find this one disappointing by comparison. Unfortunately, my expectations were correct; in fact, this book is fairly disappointing by any standards. It's very much the prototypical Choose Your Own Adventure, featuring the expected smugglers and volcanic eruptions. It does have some good moments (most notable is an atmospheric bamboo forest) and a few interesting (but clumsily inserted) facts about Hawaii, but its good points are outweighed by its failings. The book suffers from two of my biggest pet peeves. First of all, its plot has little consistency, since the silver sword moves around, and the seemingly inevitable volcanic eruption might or might not occur, depending on which choices the player makes. Even worse, many of the endings have little or no closure, either ending on a cliffhanger or failing to give the proper sense of victory and accomplishment. The book isn't an absolute failure, but it's nothing special either.

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