Which Way Books #3: The Spell of the Black Raven

I really hadn't intended to take a two month break from these reviews, but with my whirlwind romance with the sovereign citizen movement combined with a general work-shy attitude toward reading, here we are. The last one was a classic vampire tale, but it's definitely time to get back to Which Way Books and what, at least superficially, suggests a theme possibly more interesting than their usual stripped down and thoroughly tepid offerings. Ravens and spells, it's like the peanut butter jar and candy bar combination that, for whatever reason, never captured our collective attention. Magic birds, dude. This is going to be something.

Nightmare clown is all "Nevermore, y'all!"

In fairness the high concept set-ups are one of the few strengths of the Which Way series and this one certainly continues in this proud tradition. Like every epic tale of magic and monsters it begins with nothing to do on a Saturday night. "Even television seems boring," we are informed. Now that I find hard to believe, but there it is. What about the scripted comedies and commercial-friendly sporting events? Come on, television always delivers. This is also the second time in the first three books that "television let me down" was a major plot element, while the other involved the time movies failed. Say what you want about this author, he/she/it clearly anticipated the common "Reading sucks!" objections from the grammar school crowd and was prepared to counter them.

Let me photoshop in some booty to really hammer home my intellectual credentials.

No time to dwell on the failure of my one true friend in the living room, there's more cliches to check off. It's my birthday and my wacky Uncle George the anthropologist sent a letter. Yes, another secondary relation with an unusual background. If I made a drinking game out of this I wouldn't get drunk or anything because it would be one drink every four months or so, but still. Can't it ever be wacky grandpa or scholarly in-laws? It's just lazy. Anyway, the letter is to announce a package that will be arriving later from the "Indians" this guy has been studying, because trained anthropologists use that word to describe native peoples and sending a separate letter instead of just taping a card to the package is an efficient use of the postal service.

Anyway, the mystery box arrives later that day. Good thing UPS or whoever coordinated with the snail mailers to make sure it arrived after the explanatory letter. Honestly, just mail it all as one piece, it would work out fine. Academics, they just can't work this "real world" thing at all. Naturally, the mystery box also has a note on it, because logic, declaring it contains a raven named "George." Well, that's a bit banal. I guess the poor miserable guy with the dead wife will ask if he'll ever be happy again and get "George" for a response from the dark devil perched on the bust of Pallas and have to try to make some sense out of that. In any case, there's a raven.

I decide to release the bird because wild animals shouldn't be pets. You're free now "George," fly as high as you can! Of course, the midnight flier promptly returns to my shoulder and continues to resist my efforts to grant him horrible, horrible freedom. Understandable.  

Fly away old friend, with all your might!

I'm not about to be dissuaded and decide to go in the house until it's very clear to Heckle or Jeckle that I'm just not into this. Naturally, this also fails and when I go back outside (see, there's your problem, right there) good old George the Raven is back and he's got the penknife I lost two months ago, presumably during my raid on the castle that wrecked the television reception. Yes, there was a time when child knife ownership was considered normal, healthy and not just cause to bring in the full power of the federal government.

This gift of wussy cutting technology apparently convinces me to allow the raven to stick around and good thing because a sudden intuition allows me to save some guy from blundering into traffic. Must be that ESP. Man, it's like this thing was written by putting a few Choose Your Own Adventure books in a blender and topping off the result with trademark Which Way Books brevity and incoherence. The man's name is "Rocco" and he's offering a job that pays well. The Reagen presidency, friends. I'm so in.

You'll be moving suspicious packages and disposing of human-shaped bundles.

The only catch is I can't bring "the pigeon." You know what, that's fine. I go inside to put George in a box or whatever, but then have second thoughts about the whole thing and the plot line simply ends right there with the book looping back to a "You go to the carnival" choice I would have gotten if I'd taken the other branch from the first choice. Yeah, that's the satisfying pay-off to the "Your ESP helps you become a Made Man" plot. You're pushing me book, you're really pushing me.

With a chance to make sweet bag man money already forgotten I hit the midway and decide to check out the "House of Horrors." Skeletons, witches, blah, blah, I wanted to join the Black Hand not read short, bland prose about various uninspired "scary" elements. I guess the raven is still with me because that's such a well-crafted and organic theme for this bullshit. 

I try to run from a witch that's apparently "real," we get some bloodless "Final Destination" rollercoaster b.s. and I use my magic raven to reunite a mother with a lost child. The End, thank goodness.

I'm totally fine, don't worry.

I'm used to Which Way Books taking a relatively promising and original set-up and completely ruining it, but this one is the worst offender so far. If I can't become the Littlest Don why even offer the choice and worse, why send me back to the start of the book as if this experience meant nothing and can be quickly pushed aside to visit some lame carny attractions. Really, everything I tried to do was over-ruled by the book, always a sign of poor construction. Why even offer choices if they're meaningless? Yeah, this was so disappointing I'm now reduced to existential misery and No Exit navel-gazing, wonderful.

 Just do it right sucker, it really isn't that hard. Be HAPPY!!!! Ugh.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #29: Trouble on Planet Earth

After becoming an undead horror but failing to parley that into factory ownership or whip kink I'm back for another R.A. Montgomery masterwork. This one promises some undefined trouble on our little blue dot. I guess it could have been more vague, like "Some Difficulty or Unpleasantness Somewhere in the Universe" but close enough. We're going to get conflict and we've got this amazing Third Planet backdrop for it. What more could you want? Stir in some gray ponytail "We got bombs but can't FEED people, man!" philosophizing, wussy vehicles and dwarf bashing and the result has a chance to be pleasingly tepid.

UPS shorts and high socks...in danger!!!

I'm maxing and relaxing in front of the moron box, enjoying all the societal collapse dispatches. It turns out all the world's oil has abruptly vanished. Time for the doomsday clock to strike midnight, in other words, but I'm cynically detached from this bizarre disaster. I tell my brother "Ned" that this means the "Earth has given up!" All because we had to have non-sissy means of travel, presumably. Also, our planet is still rotating and going around the sun, dude. It's not over.  

I'm told Ned is well known for his wild ideas. Considering I just assigned human characteristics to a giant ball of dirt and magma I'm hardly one to talk. He's also a problem solver with some of that "ESP" that we used to all believe in until it was ruined by 900 number hucksters. Right now he's going into his psychic aura or whatever and the upshot is he wants us to go to Saudi Arabia, which I guess is on the table is a viable option for some reason. I want to go to the CIA. The Middle East or trying to get help from the government. These are not good choices.

Perhaps realizing this R.A.M. tells me to flip a coin instead. Lucky Maryland quarter comes up Maryland.

Another reason to mourn the death of "ESP" as a meaningful shared myth.

Well, it's off to Saudi Arabia. I'm told I have "plenty of cash" from earlier, unspecified adventures and plane travel into a world terrorism hot spot was still easy when this was written so before the next page can even finish Ned and I are in Riyadh, a city described as "crowded" and "hot." I'll cut Montgomery a break, it wasn't easy to research things before the internet and those extremely general facts are probably true. 

The goodwill is immediately ruined by typically R.A. manlet bashing, this time a "small man" inviting us into one of those unlicensed cabs that you've probably heard a lot of good things about. Even if you weren't aware of the author's short = evil prejudice this whole situation screams trap. We'll just shoe ride it, thanks. 

Maybe one day a real rain will come and wash away all the pirate taxis.

I guess I'm feeling homesick because I decide to go get an English language newspaper. Naturally, while I'm doing this Ned gets taken and my particular set of skills acquired over an extremely short life will have to be deployed. Skills like distrusting the short, wandering off for no adequately explored reason in a foreign land and making darkly humorous remarks when the television news announces the coming global crash into Mad Max chaos. Yeah, those.

I wander around yelling Ned's name and blaming him for his abduction and likely torture porn victimization. I can be a jerk. Out of nowhere an old man taps my shoulder, name-drops Allah and assures me that my brother is actually safe. Nice to see all that paragraph-long drama resolved so neatly.

I ask him how he knows my brother and get a weird, evasive answer that's apparently good enough. It's off to his cool shop, chuck full of mandalas, geometric paintings used by Sufi mystics to induce their trances. I know I rag on Montgomery a lot, but he does seem to have a very sincere appreciation for other cultures. Of  course being a dirty drug-addled hippie "Global Citizen" I suppose that would be expected. Ned's peeping the art and I decide to join him. 

Perfect for the side of your love van or motor glider.

Time for some mind expansion, as all this starts to get very significant. Ned produces a bronze box that he claims was under some prayer rugs and offers some of the salve inside. Come on, you're not afraid to get high, are you? My brother rubs some on his hand and walks right into one of the pictures. Far out. 

I'm not some wimp who follows rules or worries about permanent hallucinogenic compounds in my spine, so I follow after, entering a world of shapes and colors. Yes, this children's book contains LSD imagery. Ned tells me he's solved the problem of the world's oil. Man, tripping fixes everything. He promptly vanishes. Whoa. A moment later we're back in the store.

Ned declares victory, while I innocently compare my acid test to a "trip to Disneyland" and wonder what he could possibly have done to set things right. Then everything completely falls apart, I mean even more so, as we take a taxi (licensed and driven by someone of average height or taller, I would assume) into the desert, set down one of the pictures from the store, perform a chant, and out comes the oil. "It's a time pipeline!" is the non-explanation. What. The. Fudge. 

Solving problems like "sanity" and "not eating your own fingers."

I really don't know what else to say. I get that the author is probably no stranger to "mystical trances" but I don't think that really makes it all right to put this nonsense in a book intended for a pre-teen audience. Even setting that aside, this one was a bizarre mess. Say no to drugs, friends. And unlicensed cabs, of course.

  Oh no, drugs destroyed my artistic ability. Look at this garbage, seriously.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #26: The Phantom Submarine

Previously, my Mayan adventure ended rather ingloriously when my love of wells, drilling for water and allied concepts let to kidnapping and, presumably, torture porn. After that disaster it's time to finally try to chase a lame literary trend and look at a book that's all about submission. And by that I mean, of course, submarine missions. Top off this already can't miss concept with bizarre eighties ideas about ESP and it's time to get hype.

Before we go any further I have to address the sad state of Extra Sensory Perception as a cultural belief. Seriously, why isn't that a thing anymore? Instead we get "I control 100% of my brain!" which sounds awesome until you realize every waking moment would have to be spent manually commanding your heart to beat and so on. There's a good reason we don't control that stuff, and it has nothing to do with sexy rebellion against whatever warmed-over 1984-for-babies dystopia that refuses to recognize how special and wonderful being different truly makes me.

Anyway, the point is kids today don't know 'bout the ESP and it's sad.

There's some underwater stuff too, I guess.

I'm just sitting around maxing and relaxing when I basically have an epileptic aura and/or psychotic break that involves buzzing, swirling visions and objects colliding. Apparently, this is my lame super powers kicking in to predict the future and not the beginning of a life of being shuffled from one institution to another, being prescribed the latest fashionable "meds," and finally being abandoned by the system and becoming a hopeless derelict. Instead, there is indeed a minor fender-bender and this is proof I'm the chosen one and definitely not clinically insane.

I have a similar incident at school. In today's best of all possible worlds this would probably mean a 'script for kiddie crack, but this is 1983 and the imagination hasn't been outlawed yet. I tell my parents and Dad sends me to meet with a professor, because meeting a professor is the kind of thing that makes for entertaining reading. He's all "You've got Extra Sensory Perception!" and I'm all "I know, right!"

 "Your cool super power will keep you from skidding!"

The upshot of this meeting is that I'm contacted by a government agency that is collecting people like me to stare at goats or whatever. Incredibly, they actually ask me if I want to participate, instead of being all "Phony scandal" this and "It's the right thing to do" that. Man, thank goodness L.A. based punk rock was there to keep Dictator Reagan in check. 

Because they asked politely, I agree.

"Mr. MDC, tear down this poster."

I tell my mother that I deserve "to know what's going on in my head" which is something every parent must dream of hearing. Dad shows great restraint by quietly assenting, instead of recommending a methadone clinic as a more cost-effective alternative.

I'm taken to Washington D.C. and a doctor asks me to guess the numbers on cards, perhaps in hopes of getting me into the super-secret government "Repay the Debt Via Blackjack" program. Unfortunately, I don't do very well, so my powers are only good for predicting disaster and won't be able to defeat Vegas. Speaking of disaster, I sense one coming on right now.

From the makers of "Child Bagman."

Sure enough, a truck slams into the building. Are we going to get "Terminator" style carnage? Well, no. Instead it's some guy who blames "bad brakes" for his almost unbelievable negligence. The doctor decided that I've got some abilities after all, even if they're not exactly what you'd call practical unless you're hanging around people who are super accident prone or simply have cursed luck. 

As you might expect, this leads to an assignment as an "ESP Specialist" on a submarine.

Continue this very logical and predictable plot, it turns out this dive boat will use my mind powers as a "special backup warning!" It turns out that ships, and especially submarines, are being lost at a alarming rate both by the West and our Red "friends." Clearly my head issues will be the difference maker.

Double-secret salvage of the Queen's wayward sons.

The submarine is, naturally, no ordinary model. It's basically a giant metal manta ray, complete with non-nuclear missiles and an undersea scout craft that would have R.A. Montgomery nodding his head and saying "Yeah. That's how you do it." The "Manta" has never sailed, but obviously the darkest hour of an international crisis is a good time to try out this massively impractical prototype. 

Also the ships are generally disappearing right after they are first launched from port, but the law of averages suggests we'll survive so no worries.

I'm pretty much in charge of everything, another excellent idea, and am assigned an isolation booth where I'll use my sixth sense to guide the ship. I decide we should go to the Arctic. We head toward the Bering Strait, passing Sarah Palin's house and noting the presence of Russia.

This new house in Yalta is awesome!

We sail under an ice floe, but the amount of space for the submarine is rapidly shrinking. Still, my powers insist this is the right way and I haven't been wrong yet. Except all those cards, but forget that. As it gets narrower, we come to a full stop trapped by a "solid wall of underwater ice." Yes, a classic era Metallica song was almost certainly inspired by this book. Please update Wikipedia accordingly. 

I decide we should blast our way out with torpedoes. We manage to create a nice hole in the ice, but for some reason I'm given the option to go out in the wussy scout ship. How about "no."

We enter the hole, I try to ignore the massive Freudian subtext, and then get "stuck." Then we get crushed to pieces. For some reason my danger sense had nothing to say about any of this. 

I'll be fine.

I liked the general concept of this one, but it suffered from not enough choices and way too much exposition, a problem that will become more common as we get deeper into this series. Richard Brightfield has his moments, but when my overall impression is "a less good R.A. Montgomery" it isn't exactly high praise. The ESP gimmick was pure eighties, but if you're gonna give me the spider sense it can't just turn off at critical moments. Also "Phantom?" Did the author actually want the title "Manta Submarine" but slurred it and was misheard? Seems likely.

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read free excerpts here and here.

His first novel "The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.