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.

Twistaplot #1 The Time Raider

After a reasonably competent submarine simulator that ended with renouncing society for the simple pleasure of island life and trying to ignore the other two people on said island doing the wild thing I figured I might as well stick with Twist-a-Plot for a little longer, especially because every time I review one of those books I'm significantly closer to the point where I never have to think about this series again. The good news is that today's offering is from R.L. Stine who, unlike other luminaries like D. Terman, would go on to have sustained success with the "Goosebumps" series, putting his embarrassing slumming in Choose Your Own Adventure's unlikable little brother completely behind him, instead of letting it define his career like The Siegels and so many others.

This is not to imply that writing for Twist-a-Plot wasn't the Big Time. It totally was. Take a moment to wrap your head around that one. There was a time when the appetite for branching dead tree narratives was so ravenous that it wasn't the path to fame and fortune, it was the destination.

The book version of "Let me tell you about the sixties, kid."

We kick off with an exciting time at Uncle Edgar's, noted inventor and general ball of incarnated goofiness. I've noticed we get a lot of Uncles in these books. I guess it makes sense when you think of it logically. A secondary relation distances the reader from dwelling on the possibility of inheriting hereditary wackiness syndrome in a way "Your crazy laws of thermodynamics defying Father!" wouldn't and it allows for surprises like "I built a time machine" to occur in a more organic fashion simply because you don't share the same house, an arrangement that would make secretly tampering in God's domain largely untenable. 

And yes, he made a time machine. Man, can't wait to see some metaphors for society's stratification with that bad boy! I should also point out that the first Choose Your Own Adventure book also featured a similar theme but I'm sure that's just a crazy coincidence. Anyway, there's the oddly named "Time Raider." Pack up your own weapons and get ready to go pillage the jazz age, I guess.

  The book version of "Let me tell you about Operation Paperclip, kid."

Unlike past inventions like the underwater toaster, this one promises to work. He also gives me a pendant that will somehow return me to the machine if I get into trouble. Yeah, he also developed some sort of teleportation technology, but it's dismissed as the most banal thing ever for some reason. This thing will break about ten different laws of physics, don't worry about it. Let's focus on this other thing over here that breaks about fifty of those laws.

We crank it up and it seems to be working, or at least shaking and humming not unlike a car with massive tweeters in the trunk because I'm all about that treble. Of course Uncle Dopey forgot his glasses and runs off, leaving me in charge of tearing up space and time. I can go "forward" or "backward." Since we're already going forward, if you want to get super technical, I opt to throw it in reverse.

 That feel when no glasses.

After a blink of an eye, I'm in some forest that gets a bare bones description and is even dismissed as lacking in excitement. The hidden extreme anti-environmental messages in R.L. Stine stories, friends. Let's pave this sucker and build something more stimulating, like a big box store or medium income housing. I just don't get this bizarre sylvan-hate, I really don't. Let's get out and explore.

My reward is arguably the most bleak and horrific ending I've ever gotten in one of these. I stumble out of the wooded area and there's Uncle Edgar's house. I'm not sure why I didn't immediately recognize my surroundings earlier, but we've got existential nightmare fuel to get to, so let's not dwell on it. The same conversation we had minutes ago is repeated, we get in the Time Raider, no glasses, hit the button, back in the forest. Then this repeated. Over and over. Forever. Trapped in a living hell of auto-pilot failure with no hope of ever escaping it, denied even the release of death. At some point I'd imagine my sanity will completely collapse and it will probably seem like a blessing when it does, but there will be no escape from this eternal time-loop, this non-funny version of Groundhog Day where all free will is stripped away, the futility of life is laid bare and there truly is no exit.

The end, but there is no end. Wow.

Get ready to get your despair on!

This run was too short to really fairly give a review, but even from the few pages I read it's clear R.L. Stine is a cut above your usual Twist-a-Plot author. Other plot-lines offer things like future slavery and meeting Daniel Boone of all people, so make of that what you will. I'll just take my totally wrecked by a paradox and the illusion of choice ending and move along, thanks.

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 #9: Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?

Last time I tried an eighties gamebook I ended up dead at the hands of a living stereotype. Other highlights included nearly being killed by a gully, thinking ordinary table salt was some sort of dangerous chemical and being oblivious enough to get lassoed. Suffice it to say, this failure was so complete that I've decided to try something a lot easier for my next foray into the world of thirty-year-old books intended for children.

Note I said "easier" and not "less messed up." Here we have a cover that promises killing and features illustrations of booze, smoking, a corpse, Pete Rose hair and some sort of ghoul/vampire hybrid. Again, this series was aimed at ten year-olds. We're a long way from "Johnny and His Two Fathers Go to the Diversity Picnic" or whatever b.s. is produced for today's kids. The incredible thing is the series got even more extreme and insane as it went. By the time it reached triple digits there were probably titles like "Escape From the Catholic Confessional" and "You Participate in a Gang Rape." I exaggerate, but only just.

Anyway, all we have to do is make choices. No rolling dice, no putting points into skills that fail when faced with a tube full of salt, just make a choice and turn a page. Let's do this thing.

We start with some straightforward exposition introducing the "you" that the reader will portray in this story. Specifically, you've got mad mystery solving skillz. When "Aunt Marinda" was the victim of a home invasion (!) in furtherance of burglary (!!) (in a rare show of restraint for these books she isn't murdered or worse) your sharp eyes notice a "beer bottle." (!!!) Said bottle contains the prints of the criminal and leads to his capture. Man, this is like C.S.I. Miami. It is fun to imagine some guy drinking a beer, dropping it right in front of a window and then deciding to try some of the old B&E immediately afterward.

...and that's the end of that chapter.

After solving the case of the Pre-Gaming Sleep Bandit you're feeling your oats and decide to become a detective, full-time. Forget school, it means nothing to the mystery solving community. The result is a transformation into a pint-size Sherlock Holmes, presumably minus the pit-fighting and cocaine addiction. You've got "quite a reputation" and it attracts the attention of a One Percenter named Harlowe Thrombey. The massive spoiler in the book's title takes a lot of the drama out of our interaction with this "plastics" magnate. He says his "life is in danger." Well, duh. Clearly the only one you can trust in such a situation is a child who found a beer bottle, once. 

Consider the options and it gets even more laughable. You are wealthy and in fear of your life. Do you use your massive fortune to flee the country? Hire bodyguards? No. Instead ask a pre-teen trouble shooter to do some pro bono work on your behalf. He wants you to come by at 5 pm to, I guess, get his back. "I hear you have sharp eyes," as Thrombey puts it. If the murder weapon is a partially concealed Night Train bottle, you're in good hands.

Amusingly enough you get the choice to blow off this Captain of Industry and instead "call back in a day or so." This is great. "Yeah, life in danger. Whatever, Uncle Pennybags. How about I stop by in a few days, if I'm in the neighborhood and I feel like it. Oh, and never call here again, all right?" *Click*

Predictably my heartless refusal to aid a desperate man leads to his "poisoning," a fact I learn from his lawyer who calls the next day. Man, Kiddie Detective Agency should hire a secretary or something to handle all this nonsense. Anyway, the facts include a Greenhouse break-in, a bottle of Arsenic and a bottle of Brandy. You have to admit this sort of case is right in your wheelhouse, what with the bottles and unlawful entry. Your trust in an eleven year-old was well-placed, sir.

We meet some suspects and get some additional information on times and so on, but all this is getting in the way of solving a case the way they do on the moron box: beating up suspects, acting like a Big Man, swearing, putting on military body armor and waving around huge, impractical guns, dropping your pants, that sort of thing. You're offered a chance to compare notes with a police inspector, but you think he's a "bumbling idiot." Man, this sort of intolerance is what happens when you make books that actually entertain kids instead of being packed with marxist drivel. 

Al Presidente??? Que???

Passing on a chance to hang out with someone my character considers to be less than competent I head over to the Thrombey estate. I ask some questions to the maid, who takes being interrogated by someone half a decade away from a driver's license in stride. Her alibi seems to check out, so you talk with a girl named Jenny whose pet theory is that Harlowe committed suicide (!) because he was "tired of living" (!!) and that this would show up his wife (!!!) who didn't take his morbid fear of death seriously. 

Yes, this is a children's book with the stones to address murder, suicide, loveless marriages and death paranoia. Is it any wonder people still remember these books fondly?

I'm given a choice to take her "false or possibly real suicide to show up wife and screw over heirs" theory seriously and decide to do so. "As a detective you must consider all possibilities" counsels the book. We must carefully consider the possibility of self-negation as a final middle-finger to the meaninglessness of live and the lie of love. So I go see his doctor, who I'm guessing was also the "candy man" for this guy, if you know what I'm saying.

Translation: Bruce Lee Battles the Venal Ghoul Monsters.

Dr. Bloom is dismissive of your "suicide" theory and even admits the victim's delusional fear of being murdered was actually fully justified, in light of recent events. Hard to argue with that one. It might seem like time wasted, but I have a feeling I just made a connection for some of those prescription pleasure pills when my character hits his teenage years, realizes there's no future in amateur sleuthing and becomes a pathetic junkie and human derelict.

Back at Thrombey manner the police are on the scene. Inspector Prufrock announces he's "solved the murder!" Well, that is his job and all. We get a "the butler did it" solution that's so lame we don't even consider it, unlike the more plausible "existential surrender in the face of nothingness" theory that proved so fruitless. Either way, the butler has already escaped. Maybe next time cuff him first, then declare victory. 

This inspired you to invent "roof hits."

An indeterminate amount of time passes and it's back to the house. It looks empty, but someone is waiting to get the drop on the underage fixer. Here you get a gun to the back (!!!) and  a towel wrapped around your head (!!!!) before being tied to a chair.  The unseen attacker is going through the desk in the room while you're tied to a chair. The book lets you remove the blindfold, i.e. the towel, and the reward is being pistol-whipped. You wake up in the hospital. Better tell that doctor from earlier to start filling that "prescription" right away. 

In a funny bit the E.R. doctor hands you a threatening letter that was found on your unconscious body. Drop the case or die is the gist of it. Maybe not the best thing to show someone who is recovering from a serious concussion. You're not about to be dissuaded by something as feckless as a death threat delivered after a head-busting. "In this business you have to take chances." Chances like running around right after getting a serious head injury.

 I'll be fine, it's really nothing.

Time to investigate the sketchy niece's "dentist" alibi. False pretenses are used over the phone to obtain the information, and compared to suicide, pistol-whippings, poison and being wrapped in a towel this bit of deviance barely registers. 

We then reach the crowning glory of the book, a page with nothing but "What should I do next?" followed by several conditional choices. This is awesome, and I say that in all sincerity. In total there's 13 possible choices here and depending on what you've done so far some of them are probably very logical solutions. In my case I wasted time facing the horrific nothingness of life's absurdity, talking to a quack doctor and getting beat down. Still, there is hope. The last choice is "If you're absolutely sure you have the case wrapped up." 

Yeah, I'm sure of that. Neat little package.

You turn to that page and are declared the winner, without even saying who you turn in, or why, or on what evidence. Just an arbitrary "instant win" button. We'll say that I turned in Jenny, who obviously was trying to derail my case by introducing massive existential despair and/or getting me hooked on pills and Inspector Prufrock who probably did the pistol-whipping and whose apparent ineptitude was just a cover for an insane criminal genius.  

In another ending the ghoul/vampire "lets you have it."

Overall this book is great stuff for what it is. There's a lot of depth and character I largely ignored and if you play the ending straight you probably have to really use your head and put clues together. On the other hand, murder, suicide, confrontation with existential oblivion, alcoholism, break-ins, drug abuse, head injuries, smoking, ghouls, shootings...enjoy your nightmares, kids!

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.