Children of the Dragon; Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons, by Rose Estes

[rachelmanija]

Children of the Dragon is a small-scale but otherwise standard story about three siblings and their dragon eggs; ends just as it starts to get interesting, that is, with the hatching. I wonder if a sequel was intended but never written? It certainly read that way.

Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons is an adorable, lighthearted entry in the Endless Quest (same principle as Choose Your Own Adventure), with rainbow dragons, a castle in the clouds, and a bratty princess.

My favorite Rose Estes book, and also my favorite Endless Quest (D&D-based, which I preferred to Choose Your Own Adventure), is still Circus of Fear, which has three totally different and super-fun tracks in which you run away to a fantasy circus and apprentice with 1) fantasy animal trainers, 2) freaks, 3) acrobats. Obviously 1 is best because blink dogs, pegasi, etc., but the other two, with very sympathetic “freaks” and an arrogant acrobat, are fun as well.

Any of you read Endless Quest and/or Choose Your Own Adventure? Which was your favorite, or most memorably bonkers? Anyone else stick slips of paper at choice points to help you backtrack when you ran out of fingers?

Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons (An Endless Quest Book, 6) (Pick A Path to Adventure)



Circus of Fear (An Endless Quest Book, 10)

Comments

[helen_keeble]

My favourite CYOA was the utterly bonkers 'You Are A Shark!' in which you somehow soul-jumped into lots of animals in a quest to return to your original body. I vaguely recall something about a mystic artefact/temple in the Himalayas which caused this predicament.

My pre-teen self viewed the "failure" mode in which you failed to return to your original form but re-incarnated as a snow leopard as the true victory condition. Much preferable to the boring official "good" ending where you ended up back as yourself. :-)

In the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, my favourite was the also bonkers (and maddening) Creature of Havok, in which you start as a bestial instinct-driven mutant creature in a dungeon with no memory of your past. For the first few choices you have to roll a dice to determine where you go - you don't even get to pick! And all of the conversations were in cypher - you had to learn the rules to decode it before you could understand what anyone was saying to you. And you had to crack a different cypher in order to learn how to read.

There's an app version on iOS and Android which is a vast improvement over the physical book, since it takes care of all the decyphering stuff for you automatically.

(The book infamously had a misprint that resulted in an infinite loop at one point. And if you don't do ONE SPECIFIC THING in the first ten paragraphs - something which is in no way signposted or marked as significant - then the final fight is unwinnable)

[rachelmanija]

Hahahahaha. I mean of course being a snow leopard is best.

Creature of Havok sounds absolutely maddening. That's a hell of a misprint! (There was one CYOA that did this on purpose when you got sucked into a black hole or a time machine or something.)