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finlaaaay's review
5.0
I mentioned in another review (If) that I had gotten a sudden desire to try a game-book or Choose Your Own Adventure-type book again. This came up on a couple of searches.
It's quite a special little book - its pages are made from heavy plastic, and it's formatted as a comic, but where you have to follow little nodes to get to the next panel. Every time the node splits, you can choose which path to take, and then follow it onto little tabs to take you straight to the next page. There's a bit of puzzle-solving to do in order to get the good endings, or to find the secret panels. I probably spent a couple of hours going through each page to make sure I'd found everything. The story is a bit bonkers and definitely aimed at children, but has a few metaphysically difficult ideas too. What a sentence.
Anyway I really enjoyed it. It felt like a unique experience.
It's quite a special little book - its pages are made from heavy plastic, and it's formatted as a comic, but where you have to follow little nodes to get to the next panel. Every time the node splits, you can choose which path to take, and then follow it onto little tabs to take you straight to the next page. There's a bit of puzzle-solving to do in order to get the good endings, or to find the secret panels. I probably spent a couple of hours going through each page to make sure I'd found everything. The story is a bit bonkers and definitely aimed at children, but has a few metaphysically difficult ideas too. What a sentence.
Spoiler
there's also a secret page which can only be found by turning the pages like a normal book!Anyway I really enjoyed it. It felt like a unique experience.
hldillon's review
4.0
Interesting graphic novel that is also choose your own adventure. Look for codes as you read the book to answer the questions and follow the paths correctly. Very fascinating way of telling the story - follow the lines across the page to tabs, and so forth until you reach the end! Be careful not to loose your place!
masn's review
5.0
It's a choose-your-own-adventure comic book. How awesome is that? Took me about a night to solve, but it was well worth it. But why did I find this book in the children's section?
scottishben's review
3.0
I have a lot of nostalgic good will for "choose your own adventure" type of books and I am always drawn to books that try to do something a little bit different so I was understandably drawn to Meanwhile which is the only choose your own adventure style of graphic novel I am aware of.
Meanwhile is very clever. The way the choose your own adventure works within the story is very well thought out and is a visually appealing follow the string/paths which are utilized together with tabs at the ends of the pages so you never need to turn to page xx but rather just follow the string via the tab to whatever the next page is.
The story itself starts out with a simple choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream but quickly becomes stranger and sillier when you see an inventor with several creations such as a working time travel machine.
I occasionally lost the bit of string I was following and this meant i needed to either start again or retrace my steps but most people will probably have no problem following their path.
One problem with time travel in choose your own adventure type stories is that you can find yourself in loops where you have been somewhere before. You dont want to put a book down part way through a story but you do not want to keep relooping. Dying (in the game) would be better.
I never found my heart warming to this the way my head did. Whether this was the story, the characterization or the illustrations I am not sure. I was glad I got to read it and will enjoy showing it to some other people but it is not something that I think fully realized its potential. It may be in part that with choose your own adventure type stories normally they are written in a way in which you are the protagonist. As soon as your character is a child who you see then it does not work in the same way. Its not choose YOUR own adventure its choose THEIR adventure and that seems very different.
Meanwhile is very clever. The way the choose your own adventure works within the story is very well thought out and is a visually appealing follow the string/paths which are utilized together with tabs at the ends of the pages so you never need to turn to page xx but rather just follow the string via the tab to whatever the next page is.
The story itself starts out with a simple choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream but quickly becomes stranger and sillier when you see an inventor with several creations such as a working time travel machine.
I occasionally lost the bit of string I was following and this meant i needed to either start again or retrace my steps but most people will probably have no problem following their path.
One problem with time travel in choose your own adventure type stories is that you can find yourself in loops where you have been somewhere before. You dont want to put a book down part way through a story but you do not want to keep relooping. Dying (in the game) would be better.
I never found my heart warming to this the way my head did. Whether this was the story, the characterization or the illustrations I am not sure. I was glad I got to read it and will enjoy showing it to some other people but it is not something that I think fully realized its potential. It may be in part that with choose your own adventure type stories normally they are written in a way in which you are the protagonist. As soon as your character is a child who you see then it does not work in the same way. Its not choose YOUR own adventure its choose THEIR adventure and that seems very different.
kellylynnthomas's review
3.0
Meanwhile is a choose-your-own-adventure comic book. It's pretty cool. The cover states there are more than 3,000 possible paths to choose from. I didn't test out that claim, but I did try out quite a few. Some of them took me on radically different story lines, and some of them, not so much. Which is one reason this only gets 3 stars. And while the participatory nature of the book is cool, after awhile it got a little tiring, because you got to some dead ends pretty quickly and you had to root out answers and find secret codes. At times it felt almost more like a video game than a book. If the content/story had been fantastic, that would have been okay. But the story was only so-so. It was pretty standard mad scientist type stuff, so there was only so much work I was willing to do for it.
iffer's review
3.0
Meanwhile is creative and impressive when one thinks about all the planning that would have had to go into this choose-your-own-adventure comic book. It's definitely enjoyable, but, by necessity of being a choose-your-own-adventure, the story wasn't super original or in depth, nor was the art. It's a fun comic throwback to being a kid perusing a cheesy choose-your-own adventure, reading pulpy science fiction, or playing an old arcade game.
fongolia's review
4.0
If Shane Carruth's Primer had been adapted into a choose your own adventure book.
ignescentsky's review
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
bookwings's review
5.0
very excited about getting this in the spring. bought "knock knock" at APE 2008 and my boyfriend and i spent two days figuring it out. i hear this is going to be even more complex. bring it.
amandabock's review
4.0
When I got this book, my first thought was, "I am too old for this book." And I couldn't figure it out. But I spent more time with it, and I think it's way cool. I can see a lot of kids really loving it. My other reservations about graphic novels (for me as a reader) still stand, but this format is super creative- bringing the choose-your-own-adventure concept to a whole new place.