Customer Reviews

Trouble on Planet Earth

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Trouble on Planet Earth (Choose Your Own Adventure #29) by R.A. Montgomery is the worst CYOA book that I've read. The plot follows you and your brother as you try to figure out why all the world's oil has disappeared. I'm just going to bullet point my thoughts on this book. It's a mess.

-Your brother Ned apparently has ESP. Here's the dialogue explaining said powers: "It's a look you know only too well, the look he gets when the special knowledge hits him- knowledge from some secret source. Even Ned can't explain it. It just happens to him. 'I feel the knowledge,' he announces." The whole book's written like this.

-There are lots of non-endings. Sometimes no matter which path you choose it ends in either "We'll start over again. THE END" or "Give me time. We'll think of something. THE END"

-There's little cause and effect at work here. If you don't choose to follow someone then a boulder falls on your head the next page. If you follow your brother's advice, who's usually right, then on the next page it turns out he's been wrong a lot lately. I like random surprises in these books because that's how life works and it keeps things interesting. But that's all this book is, much to it's detriment. Sometimes it looks like the book's about to take a fun twist only to see you dead on the next page.

-The CIA Director in this book was a woman, which is pretty unique to any of the books I've ever read.

-For some reason in a couple of pictures depicting some aliens (as described in the text) the artist, Ralph Reese, has included a middle-aged man with a crew cut and business suit.

-On page 71 it says to go to page 96. It should read go to page 94 instead.

-The culprit responsible for the oil disappearing changes depending on what path you pick. There is no consistency or continuity. It's stupid and as a kid I would've been confused and/or irritated. The culprit can be anything from a terrorist group siphoning the oil to the same terrorist group simply making it seem like there's no oil to Zermacroyd aliens. Or evil orbs. Or the oil just dried up. Or a nuclear power plant melt down on a volcanic island (which sometimes erupts and sometimes doesn't based on whether you chased somebody or some other completely unrelated event). And so on. No effort seems to have been made for a cohesive narration. It all comes across as very lazy.

-There's more odd (stupid) moments like guards finding you via their "sensory devices" (no explanation on what that means) but they apparently don't have enough sensory detection to know not to be wandering around in a maximum radiation area without suits. And at one point you may find yourself inside of a painting, which leads to a plot where our heroes replenish our oil reserves by taking oil from the past. Think about that one for a second. The book is full of junk that makes little sense and it was a very irritating read. Don't waste your time. Ironically I followed it up reading one of my favorite CYOA books so far, Sabotage by Jay Leibold.

A very far-fetched and silly tale about two smart kids who try to solve a world wide oil crisis. At it's best, it can be a very fun read with a couple of imaginative endings. At it's worst, there are alot of cheesy sci-fi characters and environments such as jumping into an Arabian chant painting or being held trial at an intergalactic court. With the whole oil crisis, there comes a moral to the story which R.A. Montgomery likes incorporating within his stories. Also, some of the different paths are 'go' or 'don't go' type decisions which makes for a bland flow of things. Other than these shortcomings, it's silly fun. There are even a couple of violent endings if you are not careful.

Growing up, I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. Naturally, I was thrilled when I found them and I wanted to share them with my son. I was shocked when I found out that some of the endings include the characters being murdered in a variety of ways. I don't know if these books are updated versions or if I read the ones for younger readers when I was little. Please proceed with caution.