Deadwood City

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 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 show more 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

Too many possible endings -- 37 in all-- weaken the story. Before you get going it seems like the adventure is over. Still, it was a fun read about this historically famous South Dakota town. Famous for the Gold Rush of 1876 when prospectors stumbled across a creek full of gold.

The Choose Your Own Adventure series offered an option every few pages to choose how the story would continue. According to your preference, you would follow its instructions by turning to the appropriate page of the book as indicated by your choice. This was a popular and revolutionary idea when the series was first launched in the early 1980s, driving it to incredible sales levels for many years until it was overshadowed by variants on the idea that took the concept to more elaborate lengths (e.g. Fighting Fantasy) and especially by other interactive media.

The plot: You're new in town; maybe you'll be the sheriff, or you can find other work. It's one of those generic entries where anything might happen within the context.

Observations: show more Once glance at the cover and you knew, the ultimate story is whichever one allows you to face off with the dude who has the bad teeth. It turns out there's more than one of those. I think this is the first story in the series where the illustrations depict you as female. I'm not sure how they decided for which volumes to make that happen, it seems to be at random (but definitely for fewer than 50% of them).

Personal memories: I've never been caught up by the Wild West as a theme, but I suspect I read every page of this one. show less