So what if little comes of it? The form was still learning whether (and if so, to what extent) a unifying plot thread could run through it. You face off with Kurtis Malloy in a classic High Noon-style showdown. It’s spooky–a mysterious house, a surly, ugly groundskeeper, a creepy old woman in a rocking chair who pops up all over the place, an evil black cat, and other elements combine to make this a timeless CYOA horror-genre piece. I’m old school with my picks, which opens me up to legitimate critiques about unity, plot and otherwise, but I can’t help it, I like what I like. My favorite author of the series is easily Edward Packard. This was one of the better early entries in this series. The Mystery of Chimney Rock (original #5) Choose Your Own Adventure features every known literary genre. The books were set in locations around the globe, in outer space, under the sea and in a number of distinctly imagined fantasy worlds.

As an oddity though, it’s kind of neat the rapid speed you can get through this and crazy number of permutations you can take to an eventual ending.It’s a tough choice out of the original classic series of 184 titles authored by 30 different writers. If there’s a sweet spot for these books, where you get enough choices to keep it fun but enough story to keep you interested, this book is far on the extreme away from that. They also weren’t aware of what the Great Wall of China was, so maybe we’re failing as parents to our 5 and 3 year old. That was a shock to their little ears first that they had a bad ending and second that you could be forced into a life of wall building. My kids got to read about a UFO and ended up living a life of forced servitude building the Great Wall of China. Throughout the book if you go to the left you go back in time and go to the right you go forward. My kids decided to stay in the cave and immediately began time traveling.

Not surprisingly for a book The Cave of Time staying in the cave results in some time travel shenanigans. Basically, you’re at a cave, and the question is do you stay in the cave until it gets bright out or try to find your way home in the dark. Unlike later choose your own adventure books, this one throws you right in (so much so that my wife and I flipped back to page one multiple times to make sure we didn’t miss anything). We just read it yesterday, in one sitting, and there is a choice on every page. Most of these books I can recite the exact choices my kids picked.

The cave of time edward packard