Customer Reviews

Invaders of Hark

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best 'choose your own adventure' style book I've ever seen. While most books like this take me all of ten minutes to get through successfuly, this one is agravatingly tough. You will die many times, but most of these deaths have a funny spark. Even the wrong turns add to the atmosphere and landscape of Hark. [...]

The choices you have to make are often senseless and utterly illogical. Deaths crop up for no reason at all. Also, the book lacks internal consistency. If you manage to eventually triumph, you rescue the Princess of Hark from--what I'll call to avoid spoilers--Alien Race A. However, if you get one of the other endings, you're told the princess was being held captive by Alien Race B, which could lead you to singlemindedly pursue Alien Race B when you restart.

In addition, where most gamebooks have either one good ending with multiple paths to get there, or multiple good endings that can be achieved, INVADERS OF HARK has only *one* good ending that can only be achieved by *one* good path. If you make the wrong choice at the very beginning of the book, you're as good as dead; it may just take a while for you to die.

There's also a maze that throws you back and forth, looping you around. If you survive, you get the massive sum of 250 points (not even the Princess herself gets you that much), and then...you immediately get eaten. Lame.

The only reason this is not a 1-star review is because some of the black humor is mildly funny.

In this gamebook, the reader is on a mission to rescue Princess Elehna, by first finding out which of the two invading aliens--the Volons or the StarKlans--has kidnapped her, and then returning her safely to her father, the king of Hark. Like all gamebooks, "The Invaders of Hark" isn't meant to be read from beginning to end like a normal book, though you do start there for the rules and map, before you're forwarded on to another page and adventure.

I was never very good at these kind of books, so it took me numerous tries before I won (thankfully, it took me less than an hour to do so). But "The Invaders of Hark" is good for young sci-fi readers who like gamebooks, particularly more patient, intent readers, because it's easy to become aggravated by some of the--at times--senseless actions/reactions of the main character and his enemies.

Hint: Mark the choices you make with pencil, X-ing out dead ends, so it'll be easier to get to the end. This helped me out a little bit; however, I noticed that when I did do this, I stopped paying attention to the story--not that there's much of one--because I was more interested in winning than reading. I'm not sure if that's the point of the book or not. I didn't learn very much from it.