Edward Packard

Deadwood City is a very decent entry in the CYOA series, and makes some interesting choices with the second-person narrative. Books in the series tend to switch back and forth between portraying the reader in illustrations as an adult and as a child, and this one chooses to incorporate the latter in a (somewhat) realistic historical setting. Edward Packard has avoided time caves and space travel this time, with the reader simply riding a lone horse into the book's titular town.

It's also show more interesting that the illustrations chose to feature a young girl in the role instead of a boy, seeking out jobs as a cattle rancher, stagecoach guard, or outlaw. This isn't that unusual for the western genre, but it is always encouraging to find children's authors willing to step outside of traditional gender roles.

Finally, Packard does a commendable job at maintaining a good/bad ending balance with plenty of "dead" ends, but without having any of those reader demises involve being shot. While there is gunplay, and the occasional vague implication of a shooting death, the vast majority of endings involve the reader moving on with their lives and settling down. Acknowledging the existence and use of guns without playing into the exploitation of gun violence is a fine tightrope walk. show less

You'll find that most of the reviews for Cave of Time and other entries in the Choose Your Own Adventure series are written by adults. This is because Cave of Time was the beginning of a genre that had a deep and lasting impact on an entire generation of childhood readers. Before video games and computer text adventure games became commonplace, the Choose Your Own Adventure series introduced children to interactive fiction that converted them from passive viewer to active participant. show more Rereading Cave of Time, I found myself doing the same thing I used to do as a child when reading these books, using my fingers as temporary placeholders at each crossroad so when on branch of the story ended - sometimes to horrific consequences - I could skip back and find out where the other narrative path would lead.

Cave of Time is the perfect introduction to the format. Wandering through the twisting tunnels of a mysterious cave and popping out at random points in time is an ideal narrative to expose the reader to the unpredictable nature of cause and effect, and how decisions don't always lead where you expect them to. From prehistoric Earth to a futuristic Utopia, Cave of Time explores the realms of time travel for its intended age group with - as countless middle-age reviewers can attest - lasting results. show less

Definitely better than The Haunted House. I kind of wish there were some moral results to the choices though. There's good endings and bad endings in the book, but it seems like the choices you make in this one don't have a consistent moral compass. By helping a friend, you are just as likely to get eaten by crocodiles as find the treasure. Sure, that's the real world. But this is a kid's book.

Choose Your Own Adventure #5 was originally titled The Mystery of Chimney Rock but was retitled in later editions as The Curse of the Haunted Mansion. A brief search online did not reveal the reason for this, but I'm assuming that it had something to do with a conflict with Chimney Rock State Park.

After the depressing letdown that was Space and Beyond (Choose Your Own Adventure #4), this book was a joy to read. Not only was the story consistent throughout the different narrative branches and show more grounded in its own logic, but this is the first entry in the series in which the story branches overlap, creating a more complex story tree and offering more alternatives beyond the number of available pages. While some may see this as a 'cheat', I think that this restores some of the inventiveness and creativity that felt lacking in the previous book. show less