Item - The Lost Tribe

This was a favorite of mine growing up, and I checked it out of my library often. I recently reread it and found it almost as good as I remember. There's even a glossary at the front which helps clarify some of the Maori terms used here. Getting the good endings mostly involves being patient and waiting or not being greedy. The art is quite good and is one of the best things about the book.

More reviews by Auric

This is yet another adequate but unexceptional entry in the series.

More reviews by Demian

A little dull, but I'm keeping it because there ARE a few interesting adventures. The Lost Tribe is a good title, and I DO suggest this.
Rating: 4.5/10

More reviews by Good

Here was the Choose Your Own Adventure debut of Louise Munro Foley, who went on to write nine books in the series, including a few of the more interesting concepts. Your uncle Charlie invites you on a trip to New Zealand in search of artifacts from the Ngatimamoe, known to history as the Lost Tribe of Fiordland. Two hundred years ago the Ngatimamoe were pursued by a rival Maori tribe into the wilds of Fiordland and never heard from again. They're regarded as extinct, but you believe they may still linger in the Fiordland. You, Uncle Charlie, and his associate Murdoch arrive ready to set up camp, but by happenstance you are left by yourself for a while. While exploring, you spot a boy dressed in the old Maori style, a simple reed skirt. Is he a member of the Lost Tribe? Should you speak to him?

Staying mum as he and his white dog run past could put you on course to a wild adventure. When a primitive-looking Maori hunter catches you and demands you follow him, you soon find you aren't free to go back to camp. The hunter leads you through a secret tunnel to a village of people dressed like himself and the boy you saw. You have found the Lost Tribe, and they aren't pleased. The Tohunga, a tribal priest, believes you are the fulfillment of a prophecy that one day a person from outside the tribe will save them from encroachment by modern society. He might order you locked inside the House of Gold, a room decorated floor to ceiling with the precious metal. Even if you escape, locating the tunnel you took to get here is difficult, the pathway packed with threats to life and limb. If anyone from the Lost Tribe considers you a danger to their way of life, they'll kill you without hesitation. Remain in the House of Gold and you meet Wiremu, the boy you saw near the story's beginning. He says the elders plan to put you through three tests to judge whether you are the one spoken of in the prophecy of the falling star, but will you play along? The Lost Tribe has treated you with suspicion and occasionally violence, but you'll have chances to win them over. You may persuade them to open up as they have to no outsider in the past two centuries.

"He who runs from opportunity travels backward!"

—The Tohunga, The Lost Tribe, P. 110

Speaking to Wiremu and his dog when you first see them in the Fiordland shows clearly how panicked he is to be observed by an outsider. If you follow when he runs, a volcano eruption may end your life. Avoiding that trap, you meet a young woman in traditional Maori garb who tells you her father is gravely ill. You can ignore her and try returning to camp, but you'll run across Wiremu, tied up and being threatened by three Maori men. Be inventive enough and you'll scare the aggressors into releasing him, but Wiremu still isn't ready to talk. If you stay with the young woman you learn she has second sight, and seems to know much about your journey thus far. Her demeanor is mysterious, but if you make it back to camp, Uncle Charlie may have an explanation of who she is. Will you survive your encounter with the mystical side of the Ngatimamoe?

The Lost Tribe is a book that lacks focus. You came to New Zealand at Uncle Charlie's kind invitation, but interact with him almost like an adversary; when you learn vital things about the Lost Tribe, you often permanently conceal them from him, and in the story branches you do tell, he writes you off as delusional or a liar. The tribe itself seems prone to violence and intolerance for those unlike themselves, cocooned in a mixture of pagan spirituality and barbarism that leaves me doubting whether discovering them was worth the trouble. Still, this book offers pretty good internal continuity with a few notable exceptions. I can't quite call it fun, but it's a reading experience I would repeat now and then.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

The writing here was rather dull, as were the storylines. They were enough to carry me over a few pages, but none of them really made me want to continue after a tiresome bit.

More reviews by Waluigi Freak 99