#27 "It's gonna be a L-O-N-G night!"
Sue and her brother Eddie are touring London and sightseeing in Terror Tower. But when they get separated from their tour guide group they end up getting locked in the tower overnight. Torture chambers in jail cells are abound in the tower. Something may be lurking in the darkness... but everyone in there is dead and gone right? ( )

Reading Goosebumps as an adult is a very surreal experience. So many of the books that I read as a kid I just soaked up. They were fun, exciting, cliff-hangers at the end of every chapter. Yes, some of them were incredibly cheap - the bulk of them actually - but you could get over it with a smirk and a laugh. You knew it wasn't a real scare, right? Then late at night, the real scares hit you. It's largely harmless fun. As an adult, well, you can get some of the references [a: R.L. Stine|13730|R.L. Stine|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1194380070p2/13730.jpg] was going for. Then it becomes even funnier.

[b: A Night in Terror Tower|690644|A Night in Terror Tower (Goosebumps, #27)|R.L. Stine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328868217s/690644.jpg|676989] is basically the story of Richard III murdering the princes in the Tower for children. With magic. And more ridiculous things. Think that historical truth mixed with [b: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|162898|A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court|Mark Twain|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348239402s/162898.jpg|2621763], then groan, and move on to something better to read. Get it?

This book is entertaining. It moves quickly, it's adequately silly. I think it would read great for kids, just not so much for an adult who can see through a lot of the twists and turns at what the author was getting at. It doesn't hold up terribly well, even moreso for how the cover Creature doesn't really exist in the book... ( )

always stick with your parent when you're in unfamiliar places

## It's gonna be a L-O-N-G night!

A Night in Terror Tower plays with some really classic horror elements, but experiments a bit too much outside of the comfort of pure horror. The set-up is excellent: Siblings Sue and Eddie are visiting London with their parents, and while their parents are attending conferences for work, Sue and Eddie are off on their own, exploring historical sites like the Terror Tower of the title.

[N.B. This review includes images, and was formatted for my site, dendrobibliography -- located here.]

'Terror Tower,' as it's known, lives up to its name in being a creepy, claustrophobic, grimy medieval tower, where enemies of the local leaders were once tortured and violently put to death. Sue and Eddie almost immediately get lost in the twisting remnants of this torture palace, and find themselves surrounded by hungry rats, and a cryptic lunatic desperate to capture them.

It's at this stage that I lost interest. The focus turns away from the wonderfully-drawn spooky tower to fantasy and sci-fi, with a completely nonsensical time travel plotline that just never works. Like with the lesser Goosebumps yarns, the twists and turns are made too apparent early on. There's little-to-no surprises here. (Even though I'm no longer the target audience, I still find most of R.L. Stine's twists delightfully clever and hard to predict.)

Sue and Eddie's adventures in medieval London are OK -- as is the surprisingly normal ending -- but they're a steep step away from the promises made in the first 40 pages. With so few pages to work with, juggling multiple genres and directions like this can be understandably difficult. A Night in Terror Tower consequently features some of my favorite and least-favorite material in Stine's Goosebumps series.

Its cover alone catapulted it to 'favorite' status as a kid, and I still find it darn menacing.

## Losing your memory is so terrifying. Much more frightening than being chased by someone.
## That's because the problem is inside you. Inside your own mind.
## You can't run away from it. You can't hide from it. And you can't solve it.

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps (1992–1997):
#26 My Hairiest Adventure | #28 The Cuckoo Clock of Doom ( )

Goosebumps. This is the series that kept me reading through my childhood. More than any other series, Goosebumps kept me interested in reading, and R.L. Stein is a wonderful children's writer. I applaud his efforts, and can't express enough my gratitude for the series. ( )