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.

You Are Microscopic by Edward Packard

Title: You Are Microscopic (Choose Your Own Adventure #130)
Author: Edward Packard
Publication Date: 1992
Length: 128 pages (but you don't read them all)

Choose Your Own Adventure books are hilarious because the main characters are always kids, but people always treat them like adults. This one, for instance, starts with some kids who are in the science club at school calling up an actual scientist about his research. He then invites them to his lab, and lets them be the first people to test his microsphere, which makes you shrink. The government doesn't need to know, he says. He thinks they're qualified because they learned about the microscopic world in their science club. Umm, right.

Anywho. I'm gonna start using the second person, because that's how Choose Your Own Adventure books work. So, you chicken out and let your friends shrink down to microscopic size, but then they get stuck that way! So your first choice is whether you shrink down to try to save them, risking getting stuck yourself, or you don't, and the scientist does it, even though the process is not safe for adults.

The science was definitely interesting in this book, and there were some pretty cool endings, some involving shrinking really really small and seeing some pretty neat things, and another involving growing uncontrollably and being sent out into space. I did not know sufficient science to help me make good decisions along the way, but I followed every path in the story, so I got to see endings both happy and sad.

3 stars.

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