Book Review: SUPERPOWERED by James Schannep
Disclaimer: I received a Kindle download of this book through a Goodreads giveaway to facilitate this review. No other renumeration was offered or requested.
Many readers of this blog will be familiar with “gamebooks” which have multiple paths through the story based on the decisions you make. The most famous of these are the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series from the 1980s, but there have been multiple variations over the years. This is a modern version designed to work with the e-book hypertext format, and part of the “Click Your Poison” series.
In this case, “you” are the subject of a mad scientist’s experiment in granting humans awesome superpowers. The story is told in second person; after one brief dead-end path, the plot can follow one of three major lines depending on which power you got, labeled after the Rock-Paper-Scissors game. There are six “golden” endings, two for each power depending on whether you use it for good or evil, multiple lethal endings, and a handful of “well, that was a thing that happened” endings.
Hypertext works well for a gamebook, allowing you to click directly to the consequences of your choice without having to check the page numbers. However, the entries don’t have a way to instantly flip back if you’ve made a bad choice, and fat fingers or a nervous twitch can get you lost on the wrong page. I recommend writing down the titles of the entries as you go.
Those titles range from quite clever wordplay and references through utilitarian to dreadful puns. They’re conveniently listed in alphabetical order at the end of the book.
The author tries to avoid specifying the gender/race/age of “you” but some of the passages clearly make more sense if the character is an adult white man. This means that “romance” is off the table except for one very odd mini-chapter, and some male-gazish description of a female reporter. Your (and several other characters’) morality is also quite variable, often switching instantly between good and evil according to the option you just picked.
This is not a book for children; there’s some harsh language, and even the “good guy” routes involve some murder. High schoolers on up shouldn’t have much trouble dealing with the issues presented.
I derived several hours’ enjoyment from methodically mapping out the various routes and finding hidden surprises (one is a bonus for folks who have read previous volumes in the series.) Looking at other reviews now, I see that this book is not a good choice for people who are easily frustrated–so many people gave up after their first two or three bad endings!
If you enjoyed gamebooks as a kid, this is a decent enough entry in the field, but not as good as Romeo and/or Juliet by Ryan North.
