Tag: choose your own adventure

REVIEW: Star Trek Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way by Ryan North

REVIEW: Star Trek Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way by Ryan North

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and IDW Publishing in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

A choose-your-own-adventure comic starring Beckett Mariner and the crew of the Cerritos was a must see for me. I have fallen in love with Star Trek Lower Decks over the last couple of years, and it is my go to comfort watch these days.

In this book, Mariner discovers the Cerritos crew is either acting strangely or completely missing, and she tries to save the day. Sounds just like an everyday episode of Star Trek!

Sadly, the ARC was NOT formatted to make the choose-your-own-adventure work. I couldn’t jump pages depending on my choice, so I could only scroll back and forth trying to find the right page. I ended up just flipping page by page and trying to put the story together that way. I determined that there are a lot of ways to die in this story!

I will definitely be looking for a print version of this since it contains the characters I already love. I’d be wary of an e-book version just based on my ARC experience. I’d give the overall concept here 4 stars, but only 2 for execution. Until I can verify a print version, I’m giving this 3.5 stars.

Rating: ♥♥♥½*

*♥♥♥½ = Good+

REVIEW: Knight's Club: The Bands of Bravery by Shuky

REVIEW: Knight’s Club: The Bands of Bravery by Shuky

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy from Netgalley and Quirk Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

Three young men decide to leave their life of farming and manure and instead try to become knights. Each has different skills and deficits. Readers choose the path through this graphic novel for their knight-in-training. The character has five nights to find the most “bravery bracelets” to win.

Review

POSITIVES: This is a clever idea! It’s like a role playing game (RPG) in book mode. Solving puzzles can lead to rewards like weapons or bracelets. There are blank pages at the back of the book to track your character’s progress through the quest.  Readers could compete against themselves or against a friend.

NEGATIVES:

  • It’s disappointing that the author and publisher chose to make all of the characters male. I hope this gets fixed in the sequels. Girls are just as likely to want to try this and may be frustrated that there are no female characters.
  • Many page jumps in my trial run served no purpose except to send me to the opposite end of the book. For example, the first place where I could make a choice sent me to a page that sent me right back to the check in point. Then I went from 4 to 25 to 88 to 7 to find out how things worked in the game/book. THEN I was able to make another choice. That choice took me to three pages that were essentially blank except for the next page number – 299, 311 and 178 – before I had another choice. Usually in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story there’s content on each page even if there isn’t a choice to make. And they usually move mostly forward through the book until you hit a dead end. This jumped me all around, back and forth for no purpose.
  • This jumping was especially frustrating because the electronic review copy didn’t have any page links. Every large page jump required a scroll to find just the right image number. In a paper book, that won’t be as frustrating, but I hope any e-books will have page links instead of all the scrolling.

VERDICT: I would try this in physical form and would feel comfortable giving it to a kid. As I said, it’s a really clever idea, which is why I rated it as highly as I did despite the issues in execution. In all the scrolling I saw several sections where I wanted to know more about a different path. I’m curious to talk with kids who use the book to see if they find the pages with only another page number and no other purpose frustrating or not. I’d hold off on getting an electronic version until you know if there are page links or if scrolling is required.

Rating: ♥♥♥♥