Beyond Escape!

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 the foreign operations chief for Turtalia, the democratic remnant of the now totalitarian United States. What a difficult-to-imagine concept, you might say. Two of show more your key operatives are lost in neutral territory, i.e. California, with important information, so you have to locate them. For portions of this you'll get to command military forces, which is pretty cool, but just about inevitably you're going to get separated from them and then you're on your own.

Observations: This is the long overdue sequel to Escape #19 (the title must have been confusing to anyone who didn't realize that). Haven, Matt and Mimla are all back again. I get a kick out of entries in the series like this one that give you a seriously senior government position but still illustrate you as a kid in a t-shirt.

Personal memories: Like my copy of #60, this one says it is a "Special Book Fair Edition" but I can't detect anything special about it. Somehow it never grabbed me like #19 did, but it seems interesting as I scan through it now. show less

Fast paced. Choices are varied.