Item - Your Grandparents Are Zombies!

Where does your character in this book get a recipe for a zombie potion? Why does the potion affect your grandparents equally even though your Grandpa drank the murky mixture and your Grandma only pretended to? Have your parents temporarily left you, your brother, and sister with your grandparents, or do you live with them? A lot goes unanswered in Your Grandparents Are Zombies!, but you can have fun with the book if you're willing to overlook details. You aren't thrilled when your grandparents ask you to help clean the basement and mulch the garden today, so you brew up a potion to put them under your control. It works: Zombie Grandma and Zombie Grandpa are perfectly willing to take you on a fun outing. Where would you like to go?

The fair is an exciting place, people going on rides and playing carnival games. If you choose to ride the Ferris wheel, you'll learn that your zombie grandparents aren't easy to wrangle; their oblivious manner and spaced-out look gives others the creeps. Since you control them, they're your responsibility, and that's not as fun as you hoped. You can try your hand at carnival games or go inside a haunted house at the fair, but sooner or later the spell will be broken and you'll have to return home. Luckily, your grandparents don't remember that you zombified them.

If instead of the fair you go to a scary movie at the theater, other customers might be frightened by your grandparents. You'll be asked to vacate the theater if people complain, but there's still time for fun. You can participate in a Scary Monster Costume Parade; zombie grandparents will fit right in. Maybe you'd like to go fishing, and compete for a $100 prize for biggest fish of the day. Just don't leave Zombie Grandpa alone with the worms, or they'll end up as his lunch. Not much goes wrong in this book, and you're never found out for turning your grandparents into zombies. They're at your command for at least the afternoon.

Your Grandparents Are Zombies! isn't the most cohesive gamebook I've read. It's hard to gauge how much control you have over your grandparents, since it fluctuates from one page to the next. Keith Newton's artwork is the highlight of the book, especially his backgrounds. There's some fun to be had here, but if you're looking for a better Dragonlark Choose Your Own Adventure, try Always Picked Last.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

It certainly feels like they thought of the title to attract attention. Luckily, your grandparents are only turned into versions of themselves which you can control rather than the modern brain-eating variety. The text here is a bit denser than other books in the Dragonlarks reissues, but not by too much.

Your character cooks up a zombie potion to get out of some chores and you can choose different locations around town for your zombie grandparents to take you. Rather cutely, it's never really clear if the grandparents are really zombies or are only playing along to indulge their grandchild.

More reviews by Kveto