Item - Vampire Express

I clearly remember the day I bought Vampire Express at the grade school book fair. I was fascinated by all things vampire at the time and would buy any book that featured them. There were also quite a few quality, classic vampire films from the 80s, such as Fright Night and The Lost Boys. And who could resist a classic Hammer Films epic with Christopher Lee?

Vampire Express has a good mix of traditional vampire lore and original concepts. Zoltan and Carmilla are worthy villains, and the Bloodstone and portrait are the the powerful objects needed to defeat them.

The train setting is marvelous, just like any good James Bond film, or Agatha Christie murder mystery. There are many great characters to meet throughout your adventure: a flamboyant magician, a skeptical professor, vampire hunter Uncle Andrew, and Nina’s aunt Mrs. West. Gruesome settings and deaths abound. I was particularly traumatized by the spiders.

At one point the Blue pill / Red pill choice of the matrix is foreshadowed when the Romani wise woman offers you a crimson stone or emerald stone depending on whether you want to take a safe path or a dangerous path.

The artwork is delightfully creepy throughout the book. One of my favorites, this book gets 5 of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

While this book isn't spectacularly original, it has decent writing and well-designed paths. Some things to watch out for are the magical painting (which is quite bizarre) and the various character names lifted from classic vampire fiction.

More reviews by Demian

Sorry. Not interested.

More reviews by Good

Apparently Tony Koltz only wrote two gamebooks, but Vampire Express is one of the most memorable Choose Your Own Adventures of all, a moody, atmospheric romp through the Carpathian Mountains that may be the most immersive experience of the entire series. You are on a train in snowy Romania to help your uncle Andrew prove vampires exist, but he isn't with you on this leg of the trip. You are accompanied by a girl named Nina and her aunt, Mrs. West. They possess two talismans—a jewel called the Bloodstone, and a painting—said to protect against vampires, but if the talismans fall into evil hands, it will be disastrous. Your train ride is uneventful until Mrs. West excuses herself to check on the painting in the baggage hold. When she doesn't return, Nina is frantic. Should you escort her to the baggage car, or ask other passengers if they've seen Mrs. West?

The painting remains where Nina left it, in its hypnotic ornate box in the baggage hold. It depicts a pale, gothic man and woman, and seeing it fills you with unreasoning panic. A Gypsy named Nanosh approaches and says your uncle Andrew has done great things for the Gypsies, so Nanosh pledges his support to your cause. Mrs. West is still missing, but contact Andrew and you'll disembark the train in a village to meet him with the painting. On horseback to the castle of Count Zoltan and Countess Carmilla, suspected vampires, you are pursued by wolves. Nina falls from her horse in the dense fog; is there any point in stopping to search for her? Continue on and you reach the castle at night. In the morning, you come face to face with Zoltan and Carmilla, who conspicuously wears Mrs. West's Bloodstone. Andrew clutches the painting, but can it overpower the Bloodstone and wither the vampires to ash? If you stayed behind in the fog to save Nina from the wolves, you discover she survived. Upon sneaking into the castle you find Zoltan and Carmilla in their coffins; can you kill them? If you opted earlier to contact Nanosh's Gypsy friends, one named Lyuba informs you she can throw one of two stones into her mystic fire. The crimson stone guarantees an acceptable outcome to your quest, while the green one allows either a horrifying fate or triumph beyond your wildest imagination. Slaying the vampires won't be easy if they possess the Bloodstone.

Had you avoided the baggage car at first to interrogate other train passengers, you might meet a magician named Phaino, who has invented a laser system he claims can capture vampires in a mirror. After cornering Zoltan and Carmilla on the train, Phaino's device doesn't seem to work, but maybe you can retrieve the painting as a weapon. You may have to infiltrate Zoltan and Carmilla's private train car, but will their malformed assistant, Bela, use his magic to spirit you to safety? Investigate elsewhere in the private car and you locate Mrs. West, but Zoltan and Carmilla take you captive. Is there any hope of stealing the Bloodstone from Carmilla so the painting can destroy the vampires? An alternative route sees Zoltan steal the painting, and you chase him across the snowy top of the speeding train. Can you ever get it back if he retreats to the safety of his private car? Don't delay in destroying the vampires should opportunity come. Zoltan and Carmilla have the power to kill you now or preserve you as an unwilling soldier in the army of the undead.

What's the main appeal of Choose Your Own Adventure? It's taking risks for high stakes that will never be in play for most people. Your pursuit may be fame and fortune, justice for the oppressed, exploration of life's great mysteries, or eliminating threats to mankind, but the best books in the series let you feel the weight of that pursuit and the potential reward if you grab your brass ring. Vampire Express sets you on the trail of undead monsters who drain the life out of innocent people to satisfy their own hubris. Zoltan and Carmilla have lived hundreds of years drinking blood, and you can end their menace. Do you have the courage, luck, and intelligence to make this their day of reckoning? You may be the only one with the resources to ever try.

Vampire Express has its flaws. When Zoltan and Carmilla are on the train they should feel scarier than they do, and be harder to kill in their castle than they end up being. Many story paths are enticingly creepy, though, and Doug Jamieson's drawings create an atmosphere of dread. This is arguably the finest illustration work in any Choose Your Own Adventure, and it's a shame that Jamieson contributed nothing more to the series. What he adds in these pages is on par with children's horror literature icons Arnold Lobel, Stephen Gammell, Chris Van Allsburg, Tim Jacobus, and Choose Your Own Adventure's own Paul Granger. At this point in the original series, Vampire Express was the best book since The Forbidden Castle, and is one of the top Choose Your Own Adventures overall.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

I was really looking forward to this one. I went looking for this at half price books and found Crypt of the Vampire instead, I really enjoyed that one so I ordered this in February, 2011. I prefer when they have numbered paragraphs over the ones that say turn to this page. This one goes by page. I also wasn't too happy with the many dialogs included between the characters. "Don't be so certain my dear," says Mrs. West. This kind of thing is all over the book. Other than that I thought it was really well written, but a bit too kiddy for me. Crypt of the Vampire feels a bit more for an older audience and I liked that aspect. Being on a spooky train going through the Carpathian mountains with bad vampires lurking in the corner is interesting to me. If you like lots of characters to team up with, this book has it. I really liked the magical necklace, but the magical painting was a disappointment. If they took it out of the frame and slapped it on a special shield that would have been much better. There's a few creative wild endings that you don't want to miss, such as: Your room and the beach. I liked that there are two vampires, Count Zoltan and Countess Carmilla.

More reviews by knifebat

The first printing of the book has the following errors:

page 34 - should go to page 17
page 61 - should go to page 87
page 63 - should go to page 80
page 82 - choice one should go to page 16
page 91 - choice page numbers are reversed: choice one should go to page 6, choice two should go to page 50
page 103 - choice two should go to page 81

These errors were not all fixed at once -- some later printings still contain some errors while fixing others. Eventually, all problems were solved, and there are copies of the book out there with no problems.