Twistaplot #4 Golden Sword of Dragonwalk

After another one of my patented lengthy hiatuses (Hey, those sovereign citizens getting owned videos aren't going to review themselves!) it's back at it with a return to the miserable blasted wasteland that is Twist-a-Plot. Last time, when there was still snow on the ground, I enjoyed an interactive and significantly shorter and less symbolic re-imagining of Moby Dick. Today it looks like a dream world of fantasy is on the menu. With R.L. Stine holding the pen instead of the usual Z-list it might even be fair to go into this with some moderately raised expectations. On the other hand, Twist-a-Plot.

What "The Hobbit" really needed was goofy apropos to nothing purple bubbles.

One can only marvel at the general competence and minimal levels of respect for the reader on display from the future Goosebumps creator. In just two short and largely painless pages we set up the secular Narnia analogue, introduce an annoying sidekick character that is described as such and get some pretty sweet prose game. Honestly, you can see why this guy went on to have such a long and successful career just from the opening. The upshot of all of this is the discovery of a "passageway" behind a bookcase that might possibly lead into a world of dragons and heroic sword swingers.

Still, it's Twist-a-Plot so I'm forced to drag along little sister analogue "Stacy" with me into whatever amazing secrets lie beyond the pleasing and practical furniture. with her complaining the entire way. Why include something that's intended to annoy? Was it so very necessary to have someone else present to exchange expository dialogue with? I mean, I hate writing descriptions too, but I don't try to come up with elaborate and odious end-arounds.

True dat.

Anyway I'm in what's basically the medieval portion of the Westworld amusement park. I meet the sorcerer "Merle" and before he can tell me how he turned 21 in magician prison because no one could stop him from doing evil magic but momma tried we've got a dragon issue. Basically "starving" myth-lizards are using the village as a free-range cafeteria and attempts to solve this issue with independent contractors have failed, devastating the local economy. Stacy is repeatedly asking to "go home" while this is being explained, because that always vastly improves a "these are dark days!" exposition dump.

I announce my candidacy to be the next doomed dragon fighter and the Gandalf wannabe helpfully provides the legendary "Golden Sword of Dragonwalk," expressing disappointment that I've never heard of it. He than concedes it doesn't really have any special powers other than, I guess, being relatively sharp, and instead the order one fights the three dragons is critical. An order I've have to guess. This whole set-up is causing some very unpleasant memories to come rushing back.

"Merle," as depicted on the aesthetically displeasing alternate cover.

Merle is no help in what the proper order is, instead running like a scalded hound at the approach of the scaly fantasy world cliches. I guess I'll have to figure it out on my own, presumably by staring at a wall and having that mistaken for narcotics intoxication. The "little" one will probably get there first, so that's a logical first target, than maybe go after the "big" monster, since it will presumably be more of a threat than the mediocre in all categories "middle" one. Sure, makes sense. Let's get this mother on.

Screaming a battle cry I enter the last good fight and, incredibly, eat the lunch of the small reptilian, leaving it in a defeated heap after chopping it down. The victory is short-lived as the super size American version of the fire lizard is right there to replace it. I show my mettle by dropping the sword while Merle praises my not dying abilities. You might be speaking a little prematurely, dudemar.

With heroic effort I pull the sword loose from a stone (ugh) and hack away at the dragon alpha male until it collapses and dies like the giant wuss that it is. The middle dragon is so demoralized by the death of its comrades that it just stands there and let's me run it through like this is the end of a bullfight or something. Victory! 

Another multi-level marketing scam, no doubt.

In return for saving the village and defeating three Satan metaphors the wizard offers to grant one wish, something he apparently has the power to do but for whatever reason decided not to use to wish away the monsters preying on the feudal property. Naturally good old Stacy wishes to go back home and this is granted even though the wish was clearly given to me. You know, the guy that saved everyone. If there was a fireplace in this room this book would be going into it right about now. Instead the story goes back to the other choice you were given at the beginning and we're done here.

No monkey paw, bro.

Overall the surprisingly high quality of the writing can't save this one from the unusually high level of fatal flaws the author decided we'd enjoy. Annoying child sidekick, annoying Greek chorus wizard, random luck battles, ruin a wish, massive internal logic flaws, etc. Honestly, just one of them would have ruined the experience, why did we have to pile on like this? Then I looked at the cover again, saw the Twist-a-Plot logo and answered my own question.

I kill dragons.

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

Twistaplot #14 Instant Millionaire

Last time we were promised fame and riches, but instead got bullied by puppies with flippers and survived quicksand thanks to the author actually researching that topic and understanding that basic swimming skills would save you easily. Today we're going to continue the theme of unearned McDuck money by examining the Twistaplot interpretation of this cultural touchstone. Truly I am a glutton for misery. At least this one promises to actually examine the impact of sudden material acquisition, as opposed to the Which Way book with three lame stories that had little, if anything, to do with making bank other than that providing the loosest of rationales to tie together tepid detective, explorer and kidnapping stories that weren't substantial enough to fill up 90-odd heavily truncated pages on their own.

Charlie Sheen's childhood.

While "Famous and Rich" had a fairly substantial, if goofy, set-up involving a mysterious old man with poorly defined magical powers this one simply kicks off with an invitation to choose a lottery number. Yes, just one. Presumably they'll be about 100 billion balls in the world's largest tumbler for this to actually work. I'm really feeling good about 25,594,120,001, my personal lucky number. One point for improving on "A wizard did it!" to drive the plot, minus several dozen for the abruptness of the opening and for encouraging underage gambling. Come on R.L. Stine, you're supposed to scare the kiddies, not turn them into low rollers.

I won this 43 times in 1996, but failed to send $800 through Western Union to claim my winnings.

There's four numbers to choose from and I decide to go with 50 because I've devised a system that can defeat random number generation. It turns out this number does not, in fact, win the millions promised in the title but instead nets the "jumbo" prize. An elephant. Get it? Haw. There's a reference to telling "Uncle Clyde" (always an Uncle in these) to stock up on peanuts, because it's always a good idea to introduce new characters literally two sentences away from "The End" and why not grind in a little extra indignity after having the equivalent of one of those loser doors from "Let's Make a Deal" open up rather than a highly satisfying Twistaplot Mammon fantasy. 

From start to finish I read less than one full paperback page worth of text. Great for little Timmy trying to pull a fast one on his 1987 fourth grade book report, maybe somewhat less ideal for an hilarious blog review in the waning days of 2015. 

The End.

I'm sure there's lots of amazing plot lines where you get one million American in a time where that was considered a fairly large sum of money, but not for me. I'm not even sure what else to say, other than to note the fact that I'm one book closer to being done with Twistaplot forever, which undoubtedly is a positive note we can end on, rather than being angry about a two page story-line that can be summed up by the false idea that there's something inherently funny about large land animals.

You're as trusting as an elephant, bro.

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.