Thursday, October 18, 2012

Killer Virus by R.A. Montgomery

Title: Killer Virus (Choose Your Own Adventure #177)
Author: R.A. Montgomery
Publication Date: 1997
Length: 112 pages

In Killer Virus, you are once again a teenager who is given a weird amount of responsibility. You and your uncle Steve are off to Africa to investigate an outbreak of Ebola, a deadly virus. Once there, your first choice is whether to work in the lab with Uncle Steve, examining blood samples to confirm if the virus is Ebola, go to the village to talk to the locals, or help capture animals and test their blood to try to find the source of the outbreak.

Whichever path you choose, a suspicious member of your group follows you. You suspect that he might be a terrorist, helping the dictator of a neighbouring country to get his hands on some infected blood to use as a biological weapon.

The main thing I didn't like about this book was that based on your choices, things changed that shouldn't have been dependant on your choices. It's not really fair that sometimes the suspicious guy turns out to be a terrorist, and sometimes he turns out to be working for the CIA! I think that choices in a gamebook should only affect things that would actually be affected by one person's choices.

This book seems pretty well researched, and so was an interesting read. Ebola is a real virus, and I learned a bit about it. As usual with these books, though, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief enough to believe that a teenager would be brought along on a dangerous trip to an area of Africa that currently has an outbreak of a deadly virus. And this teenager apparently knows enough about science to be working in a lab as an equal with the grown up scientists. I know it's a kids' book, but still.

2 stars.

This book counts for the 2012 A-Z Book Challenge and the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

1 comment:

  1. I love the idea of a story based on the reader's decisions. Too cool.

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