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jbrooxd 's review for:
[I received an electronic review copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
This is a clever premise! It's a choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel that plays a little like an RPG (Role Playing Game). Choose from three characters (all male - a disappointment) with different abilities and liabilities and complete a five day quest. Tracking pages at the back of the book help readers track their game items and progress toward their goal. Readers could probably compete with one another.
I was frustrated by a LOT of flipping to get the layout of the quest. My first page choice was a dud and sent me back to where I needed to go to even get the rules for the quest - I'm not sure why there was a choice there at all. Then it sent me to 25, 88 and back to 7 before I could make another choice. That's a lot of flipping just to get the set up of the story. Several pages in my read through served no purpose but to send me 100 pages in the other direction to another page with just a picture and a page number. I feel like this jumped around a lot, needlessly. The Choose books I remember still worked progressively from front to back with an occasional "go back to [beginning] and try again" rather than a lot of back and forth like in this one.
In a physical book, this flipping might not be so bad, but the electronic review copy had no links, so it was just a lot of scrolling up and down to find the right page. I don't know if the final version will contain links (handy!) or scrolling (miserable).
My recommendation - try this in physical form. The idea is brilliant, which is why I rated this 4 stars. Kids will decide if the flipping is fun or if they are also frustrated by a lot of no-action pages. I've seen mixed reviews from kids. Some loved it, and some were frustrated. I would hold off on trying an e-book version unless you can try it from the library to see how the page flips are handled.
This is a clever premise! It's a choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel that plays a little like an RPG (Role Playing Game). Choose from three characters (all male - a disappointment) with different abilities and liabilities and complete a five day quest. Tracking pages at the back of the book help readers track their game items and progress toward their goal. Readers could probably compete with one another.
I was frustrated by a LOT of flipping to get the layout of the quest. My first page choice was a dud and sent me back to where I needed to go to even get the rules for the quest - I'm not sure why there was a choice there at all. Then it sent me to 25, 88 and back to 7 before I could make another choice. That's a lot of flipping just to get the set up of the story. Several pages in my read through served no purpose but to send me 100 pages in the other direction to another page with just a picture and a page number. I feel like this jumped around a lot, needlessly. The Choose books I remember still worked progressively from front to back with an occasional "go back to [beginning] and try again" rather than a lot of back and forth like in this one.
In a physical book, this flipping might not be so bad, but the electronic review copy had no links, so it was just a lot of scrolling up and down to find the right page. I don't know if the final version will contain links (handy!) or scrolling (miserable).
My recommendation - try this in physical form. The idea is brilliant, which is why I rated this 4 stars. Kids will decide if the flipping is fun or if they are also frustrated by a lot of no-action pages. I've seen mixed reviews from kids. Some loved it, and some were frustrated. I would hold off on trying an e-book version unless you can try it from the library to see how the page flips are handled.