Oh dear, I do so hate giving one star. I'm sorry, but I just didn't like this one.
I picked it up to use with my Chatterbooks group. I wanted something to balance the last choice which was deemed 'girly' by the boys in the group.
They may like this one, but I won't be using it for a session.
This one of those 'choose your own adventure' stories where the reader decides how the story progresses by making choices at intervals. I don't mind them, they can be fun. I like interactive.
Since quite a few choices end in 'your' early demise and the invitation to 'run again' going back to page 8, the reader needs to explore other routes to reach a satisfactory outcome. This is the idea - keep 'em reading. Again, I'm all in favour of something that gets kids reading. I can see that this might appeal to reluctant boy readers especially.
The trouble with this one for me was that there was a choice every couple of pages and they switched back and forth across the 160 pages in a totally random manner. This was fine at first, but I soon lost track of which outcomes I'd followed and which I hadn't. I can imagine that the above mentioned reluctant readers would get frustrated with the frequent 'dead' ends, and give up trying to keep straight the different option routes available. It was just too many splits to manage. And that was reading it in one sitting. I felt like I needed to make notes - page x option 1 taken, page y option 2 taken etc. I tried to be methodical, going through picking option one each time, but after that, should I try option 2 at the first split, or follow the option ones until the last split and then go to to option 2? Long before I'd covered them all I felt like I really didn't care anymore.
Of course, I'm a long way from the target demographic for this, so please, remember it's your choice. [See what I did there?] ( )