A choose-your-own adventure book for grown-ups, about superheros -- this Kindle book could easily have coasted on its high concept to suck people in, then served up a half-assed sloppy experience and called it a day. Instead, Thrusts of Justice was genuinely funny and clever, and the branching plot paths are really well thought out. I'm not a super-hero fan, and even so this was really fun to play with!
We get our set up in the first segment -- we are a disgruntled unemployed journalist, commiserating with former colleagues in a bar, when super-villain mayhem breaks out right outside the door. From there we can choose three possible paths, each of which branches like crazy. Depending on our choices, we can die horribly, die horribly, die horribly, save the world, die horribly, and so on. I think I found only three or four outcomes that did NOT lead to a gruesome death -- but it's worth exploring them all, because they really are clever. Also, the universe and backstory remain the same no matter what you choose (unlike the actual Choose Your Own Adventure books, which if I remember correctly involved a lot of mutually exclusive events depending on your choices), and if you don't explore every branch you will miss information that helps to round out what is happening and why.
It's "for adults," but really there's no reason an older kid couldn't enjoy this. There's some swearing, and many of the deaths are cartoonishly gruesome and violent, but it's really fairly tame stuff. It also demonstrates important life lessons, such as the virtues of not vaporizing your annoying neighbor, and why getting falling-down drunk is not such a great idea (especially if you're wearing alien robo-armor you haven't quite mastered yet). I liked the fact that "you" are never identified by gender, so it's easy for any reader to step into the story and start his or her super misadventures.
Youngmark manages to juggle the complex plot over all his branching storylines, which is impressive enough; but even better, the writing is good and the humor is actually humorous. I was really pleasantly surprised by how accomplished and polished the whole thing is. I definitely plan to pick up the zombie apocalypse companion volume!
