Love it for talking about making choices. ( )

Brings back memories ( )

A boy born on a spaceship is on a mission to another planet. Choose Your Own Adventure.

After the more reality grounded By Balloon to the Sahara, the fourth Choose Your Own Adventure book falls right back into the fantastical sci-fi settings with Space and Beyond. This time, the reader is tasked with piloting a ship to one of two chosen destinations, with plenty of obstacles and predicaments requiring the reader to make plenty of choices (of course).

After By Balloon to the Sahara, Space and Beyond turns out to be a bit of a letdown. Even without the slide back to sci-fi fantasy settings, the overall feel of this entry is, well, lazy. Take the opening: You're born on a spaceship traveling so fast that you turn 18 in three days (I'm pretty sure that's not how that works), and now must choose between the parental home planets of Phonon and Zermacroyd. A single page of backstory that sounds like a drunken Mad Lib, and suddenly you are flying alone in uncharted deep space. The setup is so inconsequential, the book could have easily started with, "You're flying alone in space. What do you do?"

The choices also feel less inspired than previous books. Some of the choices ask the reader what they think will be the outcome instead of what action they take, and all of the decision trees progress to the next available page instead of jumping back and forth in a random fashion. Following a majority of the story paths will have you reading the book front to back like a normal book, just skipping pages in the process. And way too many of the options include "Go back to page 2 and try the other one" instead of giving a legitimate ending.

And speaking of the endings... this is where Space and Beyond terribly disappoints. Many of the endings are so vague and uninspired that they sound like a weary parent giving up on a bedtime story halfway through. Take this one: "How do you try to convince people to stop polluting their planet when they have been doing it for so long? Maybe it's a hopeless task. The End." What the hell was that? Was the publisher deadline so close that they just wrote what the ending was supposed to convey? The "You are never heard from again" ending was more satisfying. Many of the endings aren't even really endings, just brief summaries amounting to 'things could have turned out different, but they didn't.' It just all feels lazy and half-hearted.

Perhaps I'm putting too much pressure on children's books I read forty years ago, but so far Space and Beyond is the weakest entry in the series. ( )

Lots of choices and endings. Great for kids (or adults!) who love sci-fi and space travel/exploration. ( )