Item - Tick Tock, You're Dead

A very odd entry to series, as the book doesn't even try to be scary. Setting are both varied and interesting, and I can't think of any real complaints with this one. If you like time travel or medieval knights or futuristic cities, this might be worth picking up for a couple bucks.

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This is a fairly well-designed book; the various story threads fit together pretty well and some are creatively reused. There aren't as many games and non-typical choices as the previous book, but it is something of a challenge to get through successfully.

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This book to me felt a little more like a Choose Your Own Adventure title than it did a Give Yourself Goosebumps book. That's not to say that it's a bad thing; it just has a bit of a different feel from the first book in this series. Maybe it's the style of choices or the setting of the book. Again, as in the first book, some of the choices depend on random outside luck that I do not particularly care for. It's also worth noting that many of the choices link with one another, making the overall adventure a little longer or shorter depending on the reader's initial choice(s). I also feel that the style of writing in this book is different than that of the first, making me think that perhaps R. L. Stine started using ghost-writers as early as this book, although that is pure speculation. Ultimately, this is a fun little book that is worth checking out.

More reviews by Enigmatic Synergy

One of the tougher books in the series, there's no way to win if you go to the past, which is a bit unfair. But then what did I expect from this series? It makes me laugh what a short attention span you have in the story. While listening to Dr. Peebles he changes from "Dr. Peebles" to "white-haired man" to "the scientist". I know the author wanted some variety but it is rather amusing.

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Credible claims are made that Give Yourself Goosebumps is mostly the product of ghostwriters, but which books specifically? I've never heard an authoritative answer. Tick Tock, You're Dead! takes you, your parents, and your redheaded younger brother Denny to New York City for Christmas. Denny, misbehaving at the Museum of Natural History, runs off on his own and it's your job to track him down. When you peek into a room marked DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT INSIDE, a scientist named Dr. Peebles mistakes you for his new assistant. Is he actually going to let you test his...time machine? Denny darts into the room and vanishes inside the machine before Dr. Peebles finalizes its settings, and now you must chase Denny through time and bring him home within two hours or he disappears forever. Clinging to the chronometer stopwatch that will get you back here after retrieving Denny, you have to guess: did he go into the future or past?

You see two visions of the future: a super high-tech city, or New York as it appears today. This turns out to be New York a single day in the future; in fact, look there! It's you and your family crossing the street. When a truck loses control and appears destined to kill the four of you, you'll have to use the chronometer to go back in time a little ways and save the day. Should you directly warn your future parents, or create a commotion to keep your family from entering harm's way? If you'd rather track down the truck ahead of time, you find it at a dispatch garage. You can ask the driver to let you ride along, but preventing the accident is nearly impossible. What if you end up killing yourself to save your family? Perhaps you sought Denny in the high-tech city instead of contemporary New York. A robot policeman nabs you for the crime of being human in public; do you request the judge sentence you to the zoo, or school? In your classroom, the robot teacher poses difficult questions and sends all kids who answer incorrectly to be disintegrated. The teacher asks you something you might know if you read A Night in Terror Tower from Goosebumps. Get it right and you buy yourself time to escape to another part of the city. You could be captured by a human woman who accuses you of espionage, or you may meet Jarmal, human leader of the anti-robot resistance. He wants you to sneak into a power plant and blow it up. Complete the mission and you might live to continue chasing Denny in hopes of an improbable happy outcome.

If you elected to search for Denny in the past, there are two scenes to choose between. If you think Denny went toward the dinosaurs, a tyrannosaur soon stalks you as prey, and you spot Denny mired in quicksand. Can you stay ahead of the dinosaur, yank Denny out, and activate the chronometer? Maybe Denny gravitated to the knights in armor, not the dinosaurs. A knight challenges you to a death duel on behalf of King Ruthbert. You don't stand a chance in armed combat, but will the knight agree to a contest that favors your own skills? Inside the castle a wizard may quiz you regarding a time travel device familiar to readers of the Goosebumps book The Cuckoo Clock of Doom. Answer correctly and the wizard directs you to Denny, but what if he refuses to go home? You could get trapped by a carnivorous spider or lion. If you meet King Ruthbert, Denny has beaten you there and been adopted as his son. Knights prepare to boil you in oil for presuming to directly address the king's son, but you may be able to trick Denny into releasing you. Otherwise, soldiers of King Henry, Ruthbert's enemy, lay siege to the castle. They move to heave Denny off the castle top to his death; is there any way to stop them and force Denny to cooperate so you both make it home to your parents?

Tick Tock, You're Dead! improves on Escape from the Carnival of Horrors. I enjoy the sheer variety of narrative options, and the storyline in which you try to rescue your family from the runaway truck features high enough stakes to get readers invested. On the surface this book seems internally inconsistent, since you find Denny just about anywhere you go, but I'm not convinced that's the case. The rules of time travel using Dr. Peebles's method leave open the possibility that Denny hops from past to future and back again without time elapsing for you; you catch up to Denny in different locations because of temporal physics, not laziness on the author's part. Tick Tock, You're Dead! is a good gamebook, one I have fun with.

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