Escape Book

This is a junior version of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook, and make no mistake. And it's a lot better than the other from this publisher I've recently played, the entirely unrelated 9781524855895. Here, unlike before, we get a very gentle 'in', and the young player is easily guided into knowing what to do. They're comfortably informed how the concept of not reading this in printed order works, and about the engine of the book, that relies on a chart of combinations and choices, that depends on where you've been and what you've picked up. That chart does kind of ruin some puzzles, when you see what they entail ahead of time, but never mind. For people who have yet to come across this kind of adventure book, it's a good, solid grounding.

It's also very child-friendly, in that you're never allowed to die. Even if you plummet to a sure and certain death, you're allowed to reboot at the previous 'save point', and have another go. And those save points are an element of how this book has an unusual structure, even for such gamebooks – instead of flicking through manically to randomly-numbered paragraphs, here we concentrate on one section at a time – those between 40 and 49, for example – and play them out before unlocking other areas of the story's map, or going back where we came from. Now, having mapped it I was surprised to find myself told I'd come to the end, when I knew I'd not done it all – but I'd completely forgotten the initial three-way junction. The exhortation to make sure I'd covered all the ground kind of went over my head, obviously. So it is a little unfortunate that I found the successful conclusion without having covered one branch of the book's tree, and it's even more unfortunate that that was nearly vital in solving one of the puzzles I'd encountered and met with bewilderment, but I dare say it is a little easy to have a book like this where the path from beginning to end is a little too fluid, and the reader's path through it is not easily guaranteed.

All told it's a small map – this after all contains half the content of the more mature 'Fighting Fantasy', if that. But it provides for a book that's quite distinctive (where it's helped by the pleasantly vivid illustrations), and while it kind of lost the drama of leaving you on the side of an erupting volcano for other concerns, it was an engaging plot for the target reader. It's not too boy's-own, and girls could play even if you're clearly a young male pirate lad, your parrot companion is not at all annoying, and all told it's not too difficult to succeed with. A success.