2. Journey Under the Sea
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrators: Don Hedin (credited as Paul Granger) (interior and original cover), Catherine Huerta (reissue cover)
First Published: 1979 (earlier edition published in 1977)
ISBN: 0-553-14003-5 (early printings), 0-553-20979-5 (later printings), 0-553-23229-0 (even later printings), 0-553-27393-0 (much later printings)
Length: 117 pages
Number of Endings: 42
Plot Summary: You are an undersea explorer in search of Atlantis.
Translations: Catalan, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), Urdu
My Thoughts: Although the writing is a little weak, this is a good gamebook.
The mission to find Atlantis gives the reader a goal and sense of purpose,
which generally makes these things a lot more fun. This book was first
published as part of the Adventures of You series.
4. Space and Beyond
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrators: Don Hedin (credited as Paul Granger) (interior and original cover), David Mattingly (reissue cover)
First Published: January, 1980
ISBN: 0-553-14000-0 (early printings), 0-553-20891-8 (later printings), 0-553-23180-4 (even later printings), 0-553-27453-8 (much later printings)
Length: 117 pages
Number of Endings: 44 (listed as 40 on some early editions)
Plot Summary: You are born on a spaceship to parents from two different
planets and must choose one of two possible homeworlds. Various adventures
occur on the way to (or on) the homeworld you decide to visit.
Translations: Catalan, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), Urdu
My Thoughts: This is a very strange book. It contains a lot of bizarre
abstraction and pseudo-philosophical gibberish. It's definitely not one of
the stronger books in the series.
10. The Lost Jewels of Nabooti
Reissue Title: The Lost Jewels
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Don Hedin (credited as Paul Granger)
First Published: March, 1981
ISBN: 0-553-14358-1 (early printings), 0-553-23231-2 (later printings), 0-553-25912-1 (even later printings)
Length: 121 pages
Number of Endings: 36
Plot Summary: Your cousins Peter and Lucy ask for your help in finding
the magical jewels of Nabooti.
Collected In: Choose Your Own Adventure Box #2
Translations: Catalan, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: Sadly, this is a rather weak entry in the series. The writing
is pretty awful and the story's not really too interesting (though it had the
potential to be a lot better).
11. Mystery of the Maya
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Richard Anderson
First Published: May, 1981
ISBN: 0-553-14600-9 (early printings), 0-553-22620-7 (later printings), 0-553-23186-3 (even later printings)
Length: 134 pages
Number of Endings: 44
Plot Summary: You are assigned to discover the reason for the end of the
ancient Mayan civilization.
Translations: Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina)
My Thoughts: This book is slightly below average in quality. For the most
part it's not too bad, but it occasionally becomes a bit incoherent.
13. The Abominable Snowman
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Don Hedin (credited as Paul Granger)
First Published: May, 1982
ISBN: 0-553-20529-3
Length: 116 pages
Number of Endings: 28
Plot Summary: You are a mountain climber. With your friend Carlos you
travel to Nepal in search of the Yeti.
Translations: Catalan, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: This is one of R. A. Montgomery's better books. While it has
some of the weird gibberish he likes to write in it, it's still a pretty good
story and an entertaining read.
15. House of Danger
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Ralph Reese
First Published: September, 1982
ISBN: 0-553-22541-3
Length: 115 pages
Number of Endings: 20
Plot Summary: You are an amateur detective and psychic investigator. After
receiving a mysterious phone call, you end up investigating a modern house
built on the site of an old prison.
Translations: Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish
My Thoughts: This isn't a very good gamebook; it lacks internal consistency
and doesn't cover much new ground for the series. It's notable only because
it introduces the recurring characters of Ricardo and Lisa.
17. The Race Forever
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Ralph Reese
First Published: February, 1983
ISBN: 0-553-23290-8
Length: 116 pages
Number of Endings: 32
Plot Summary: You have been chosen to compete in two races in Africa, a
speed race and a rough road race.
Translations: Catalan, Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), Swedish
My Thoughts: This is a fun gamebook to play... It has two goals for the
reader to aim for, and it allows both of them to be reached in one reading.
Definitely a well-designed book.
20. Escape
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Ralph Reese
First Published: May, 1983
ISBN: 0-553-23294-0
Length: 118 pages
Number of Endings: 27
Plot Summary: By the year 2035, the United States has been split into three
hostile provinces - Dorado, Rebellium, and Turtalia. You are a spy working
for the Turtalian democracy and you must escape from the hostile Dorado.
Translations: Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: This is another average book. It's not bad, but it's
also not particularly exceptional. The futuristic setting is a good idea,
but it's rather uncreatively developed. Like The Cave of Time, this
book was adapted into a computer game for the Commodore 64 and Apple II in
the mid 1980s.
24. Lost on the Amazon
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Leslie Morrill
First Published: September, 1983
ISBN: 0-553-23733-0 (early printings), 0-553-25795-1 (later printings)
Length: 114 pages
Number of Endings: 28
Plot Summary: You are a doctor trying to help various tribes living near
the Amazon battle tropical diseases. Unfortunately, your expedition
disappears before you can do anything, and you have to find and rescue them.
Translations: Bulgarian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: This is a fairly good book. It's not very interesting in terms
of gameplay, but the writing isn't too bad and the artwork is more detailed
than usual.
25. Prisoner of the Ant People
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Ralph Reese
First Published: October, 1983
ISBN: 0-553-23661-X
Length: 115 pages
Number of Endings: 28
Plot Summary: You are a member of the Zondo Quest Group II, a research
organization dedicated to battling a mysterious and destructive entity called
the Evil Power Master.
Translations: Catalan, Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: Perhaps I just like this because it's one of the first
gamebooks I ever read, but it's a pretty entertaining adventure. The title
doesn't really seem very appropriate to most of the story, though.
29. Trouble on Planet Earth
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Ralph Reese
First Published: February, 1984
ISBN: 0-553-23865-5
Length: 116 pages
Number of Endings: 22
Plot Summary: You and your psychic brother Ned investigate the
disappearance of all of Earth's oil.
Translations: Catalan, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain), Turkish
My Thoughts: This book is exceedingly silly and incoherent; there's
little internal consistency, many events make no sense whatsoever, and the
characters are mostly annoying stereotypes. The main redeeming feature of
this book is that at times it's so insanely bad that it's quite amusing.
37. War with the Evil Power Master
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrators: Ralph Reese (cover), Paul Abrams (interior)
First Published: October, 1984
ISBN: 0-553-24523-6
Length: 118 pages
Number of Endings: 29
Plot Summary: In this sequel to Prisoner of the Ant People,
you and Flppto the Martian are working with the Lacoonian System Rapid
Force and must defeat the Evil Power Master before he destroys three entire
planets.
Translations: Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: I didn't particularly enjoy this book... The sci-fi
fails to work very well; too much time is spent on exposition that fails to
really explain anything, and the author wanders off into weird abstractions a
few times too many. The book also suffers from choices that really don't
matter because you just get blown up before your decision has time to yield
any results. It could be argued that this is done to add a touch of realism,
but it's kind of frustrating in a reader-driven story. There are some
interesting moments, though, such as a point in the story where you get
injured and must choose who will become the new commander. Still, these few
moments of creativity don't save the book from mediocrity.
61. Beyond Escape!
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Frank Bolle
First Published: October, 1986
ISBN: 0-553-26169-X
Length: 113 pages
Number of Endings: 20
Plot Summary: The year is 2041. As the Chief of Operations for
Turtalia, you face two immediate problems: the disappearance of two valuable
agents and the escape of a dangerous Doradan spy.
Translations: Catalan, Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: This sequel to the twentieth book in the series is
probably an improvement. I say "probably" because, although I've
read it several times, my memories of the original Escape are very
dim. This book seems a little more likely to stick with me, and it's also
written with more skill than earlier R. A. Montgomery works, so I'll give it
the benefit of the doubt. My biggest complaint is actually with the artwork.
It really doesn't match the text too well; it portray's the reader's
character as a fairly young child. This makes sense considering the book's
audience, but it doesn't fit with the text of the book, which takes place
quite a few years after the original book and which gives the reader some
very authoritative dialogue that I can't envision coming from the figure in
the book's drawings. Actually, the entire book, not just the main character,
is surprisingly mature, not in terms of potentially offensive content, but
rather in tone. The descriptions of the post-apocalyptic landscape and the
frequent examinations of the Turtalian-Doradan political situation seem more
likely to resonate with an adult than with a child -- I think I would have
found this book unspeakably dull when I was ten years old, though I can't
recall if I actually read it at that age. Having read it now, I can't say
that I found the book thrillingly creative, but despite being about as
ridiculous as any book in this series, it does have a number of
effective moments that balance the usual handful of meaningless choices and
frustratingly abrupt endings. This was better than I expected it to be, and
it's probably worth a read.
72. The Brilliant Dr. Wogan
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrator: Leslie Morrill
First Published: August, 1987
ISBN: 0-553-26724-8
Length: 113 pages
Number of Endings: 20
Plot Summary: Dr. Wogan, a scientist working on an anti-radiation
device to protect the world from nuclear war, has disappeared, and you, as
his assistant, must somehow find him.
My Thoughts: The "More than x endings!" thing is getting
really silly now -- the back claims the book has more than 21 endings, but by
my count there are only 20 in here. Yeesh! Anyway, I was disappointed by
this book. It seems promising enough, displaying better-than-average writing
by Montgomery and having a plot that, while hardly original, is at least
mostly coherent. The problem is that it lacks satisfying endings; most are
abrupt or vague or otherwise frustrating. It's no good to have a decent
story if you're not going to end it with finality, and the general lack of
closure brings down what might otherwise have been at least a marginally
interesting adventure.
78. Return to Atlantis
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrators: Catherine Huerta (cover), George Tsui
First Published: April, 1988
ISBN: 0-553-27123-7
Length: 113 pages
Number of Endings: 18
Plot Summary: Three years after discovering Atlantis, you decide to
go back and learn more about the lost city.
Translations: Catalan, Spanish (Spain)
My Thoughts: After more than ten years, R. A. Montgomery wrote this
sequel to what was probably his first gamebook, Journey Under the Sea.
The book suffers from the fact that it has no particular objective or plot,
and not all of its branches and endings are entirely satisfying, but it is
still a respectable adventure full of the implausible but fun science-fantasy
concepts that readers have come to expect of the series. In and of itself,
the book isn't anything too special, but for fans of this series, and R. A.
Montgomery's work in particular, it provides plenty of new and unusual
territory to explore and is well worth a read.
83. Track of the Bear
Author: R. A. Montgomery
Illustrators: Catherine Huerta (cover), Frank Bolle (interior)
First Published: September, 1988
ISBN: 0-553-27533-X
Length: 113 pages
Number of Endings: 15
Plot Summary: You are the descendent of a long-lost Arctic explorer,
and when you hear that a movie is going to be made about his more famous and
successful rival, you decide that it's time to find out what really happened
all those years ago....
Translation: German
My Thoughts: This was something of a surprise. After two books that
consisted almost entirely of disjointed random events, I was shocked to run
across a book with a consistent and fully-developed plot. I was even more
startled to find such a book coming from R. A. Montgomery, an author not
generally known for being satisfied with just one storyline at a time. While
I found the book to be rather seriously flawed by its sometimes less than
likeable characters and its over-the-top good-guy/bad-guy rivalry, it really
is refreshing once in a while to read through a book which actually makes an
effort to answer most of the questions that it raises. Although it's not as
impressive an accomplishment as Danger at Anchor Mine (another solidly
plot-oriented Choose Your Own Adventure), it's still a mostly
satisfying work and an interesting departure for its author.
