As a child of the 80s and 90s, I read my fair share of choose your own adventure novels. As a
geeky child of the 80s and 90s, I used Hyperstudio to write, illustrate and program my own choose your own adventure. Wow. It's really a wonder anyone ever chose to marry me.
Anyway, when I heard there was a new novel out that was a choose your own adventure novel for adults AND it had to do with the zombie apocalypse? I had to order it. So Friday, during a very boring and long day of jury selection (I was sent home eventually...thank goodness), I chose my own zombie adventure...over and over and over again.
The novel has its positives and negatives (what book doesn't?), but I'd say my overall take was that it was definitely worth the $10.88 I paid for it. I spent virtually 7-8 hours reading it and I still didn't complete all of their paths. While it's no piece of prize-worthy literature, it is a lot of fun. It would be the perfect read for a vacation or a particularly boring professional development day.
At first, the character really irritated me. The novel claims to alleviate all of the "I would never have made that dumb mistake!" of traditional zombie literature, but it often doesn't because the character is still kind of an idiot. For example, when his cell phone rings and it's his mom, you can either chose to ignore it and sit in the house drinking beers or call her back (but then you end up having to follow her directions...who would do that?). Still, after four hours of reading, the protagonist grew on me a little bit more. They make him vague enough that you can see yourself in some parts of him, even if you think you'd do a better job. I guess I also get a little frustrated that women are never the narrators in choose your own adventure novels, but I guess that's not really the majority of the market. I'm used to it; I used to get the boy's happy meal as a kid.
When it comes to the choices you get to make, this novel is hot and cold. Sometimes the choices you get to make are the most important ones and the options are all logical, but sometimes the choices are relatively mundane when compared to the ones that the novel makes for you, but I accept that a writer can't write a path for every single decision. They'd never end up finishing that million page masterpiece.
Otherwise, the plot is engaging and fairly realistic. It's infused with "geek" at every turn, which is usually endearing, but it very occasionally gets to be too much. The description of a zombie battle at the New York Comic Con is funny. The author literally brings in every cosplay persona they could dream up, but the joke gets a little stale somewhere between Sonic the Hedgehog and Mr. T. Still, it's nice to know that it's a novel for geeks and by a geek, not just some failing writer hoping to capitalize on the zombie fad.
Lastly, the writing is about what you would expect from a choose your own adventure. It's publishable, but mostly concerned with action and plot rather than description. Don't come to it expecting a lot of visual detail or sophisticated description. The author writes like people talk, which I guess is good, but sometimes the poor usage of the English language and disregard for punctuation rules gnawed at me like a hungry walker. However, I will reiterate that that's clearly not the function of this novel. It's there to entertain, and entertain it does. If you're a resident of NYC (which I'm not), you'll be especially delighted by all the local references...which I had to look up.
Overall, I thank Max Brallier for giving me something to make a day at the courthouse more palatable. It was funny (especially the ending...you'll know which one I mean), and it did provide the reader with plenty of different paths and endings for hours of fun. So will you live or will you fall to the mercy of the flesh-eating ghouls? Check out
Max Brallier's Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse to find out!
The bad? Well, first of all it isn't free and I'm always skeptical of paid apps on the iPhone. This one is $1.99, which isn't bad, but it's also not a whole lot of game play for your dime. There is really only one main route for the storyline. Your decisions can either get you killed or take you on small detours, but for the most part this doesn't hold up to hours of replaying. I'd say this is an hour of entertainment at best. The story is also short, so you could probably play from beginning to a successful end in fifteen minutes. Also, and this is just the nerd in me, but they misspell "apocalypse" on the title screen. Uncool, guys.
