Review: Lesson learned: don't trust demons
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 23, 2014
SUMMARYThe concept of the book is a choose-your-own-adventure. The reader has the option of making the decisions for the main character, and as a result, the story can change depending on the reader's choices.We follow a woman, Bebe McFerrin, who works at a law firm but is terrible pushover. When a colleague steals her case (and her promotion), Bebe wishes aloud that she could take revenge without any consequences. She is then surprised to discover that a demon has overheard her wish, and is willing to give her all that she desires, in exchange for some small favors...From there, the reader takes over the main character's choices, allowing the story to unfold. Sometimes menacing, sometimes hilarious, this story is wonderful; however, while concept-wise it is intriguing, it is somewhat problematic in its execution, as we will detail below.THE GOOD...1) Childhood is callingRemember those old "pick your own adventure" stories? The ones during childhood, when you could pick up a book and flip through it, making the character's decisions and seeing what resulted? Well, be prepared to have nostalgic flashbacks, because this book is a choose-your-own-adventure story. Only this time it's updated into .mobi format, so that rather than having to flip through the pages manually you can click the choices inside the document, making for a much smoother transition. It's like an old-fashioned form of video game, except with reading involved.2) You can lose at the endAt the end of the book, if the choices are made in a certain way, it's entirely possible for the demon involved to steal the main character's soul. This means that, like a video game, there is a way for the reader to "lose." Because there are several endings, it is also possible for the reader to think that he's "won," only to discover the opposite. We thought this was awesome, because many authors are too timid to "go there." For a book like this, however, not going all the way could end up being a disaster, because the reader wants options. By giving us the option to fail, and condemn Our Heroine to destruction, it makes the reading more worthwhile for us.3) CharacterizationThese characters are all excellently done, from the villain to the protagonist to the extras. There is howling hilarity and deadly earnestness in them all. Even though the demon is the equivalent of a used car salesman, he still is likeable in the "I love to hate you" sort of way. As for the protagonist, we also liked how she was a pushover. No joke! This is rather meta, but it makes sense: the reader is making decisions for someone who can't decide for herself. We're not sure if this irony was intentional or not, but it makes sense so we're going to just go with it. And yes, even though she wasn't able to stick up for herself, we still found ourself just liking her. Bebe McFerrin may be a bit of a twit, but she also has a kind heart to her. Perhaps a little too kind, but that's part of her charm.4) WritingAs the above demonstrates, this book is has excellent writing. There are little to no spelling, grammar, or even formatting errors. It reads easily and concisely, while still providing ample amounts of information and description for our imaginations to crunch on. The humor in particular is wonderful. There are times when this book can be sad, but it almost always has some kind of witty comeback that will make things all right again.THE BAD...1) Problematic execution: "All roads lead to Rome"Instead of having many potential narratives, this book follows just one narrative: there is really only one concrete plot. Although there might be small differences in that plot based on the reader's choices, ultimately it is an "all roads lead to Rome" situation, where no matter what the choices made, the character is going to end up in the same destination. What this essentially means is, this book is more like an actual novel than a choose-your-own-adventure story. Going through the book for the first time, it is every bit as engaging as you'd expect a choose-your-own-adventure to be. The writing, the characterization, the pacing, and the humor all make it a very fun ride. Personally, if this were an ordinary novel, we'd rate it highly based on the fun we had just reading it. But the problem is that when it comes to the options, there is no real way to escape the main narrative of the story, which means that after the first read-through it becomes less entertaining.It is definitely worth noting, however, that there is differentiation during the end of the story. Depending on the reader's choices throughout the story, Our Heroine can secure her freedom or suffer the consequences of her evil actions. Because of this, there is some importance attached to the character's actions throughout the story; all our choices ultimately aren't for naught, because they will have an effect at the end. But those actions just happen to be ones that won't affect the plot, because the plot is unchangeable. For this reason, we don't think that one could read this book more than two or three times, which is a shame, given that theoretically a choose-your-own-adventure could be read many times over with different results each time.THE BIZARRE...1) Reluctance to swearWhen a woman is being nasty, she's a "birch." As in the tree. There are other cases of swearing and cursing being replaced with inventive sound-a-like words.Hey, we can identify! On this blog, we've called characters "bass turds." As in, fish poop.We found these attempts to allude to swearing to be humorous. We can see that they might work to make this book a little more kid-friendly, which given its style (again, it's choose-your-own-adventure) is probably beneficial for its audience.2) Real-life prizesThere are occasions in here where the author will give people who have made certain choices real-life prizes, usually in the case of free samples from other books. We thought this was a really interesting way to bring the "real world" into the book, and give extra kudos for it. We think it's really interesting how this book can be interacted with on a number of levels, with the characters interacting together, the reader choosing for the protagonist, and the author interacting with the reader....AND THE VERDICT:This book is BIZARRE.Novel-wise, it's excellent. Choose-your-own-adventure-wise, it could be better. Given the abilities that this author has shown-both in this book's writing, and in his ability to market the book-we actually expect VERY big things from him in the future. In reading through the book for the first time, we were happy with it; however, each subsequent re-read was less enjoyable because we discovered that there was a lack in plot variation. Now, don't get us wrong-for what it is, the book is actually quite fun. But compared to what it could be, to what this author could obviously make it be, it doesn't measure up. We can only imagine what this author could do if he worked on a similar project and threw even more effort into it. For that reason we are going to watch him very closely in the future, and greatly look forward to his next project.