Choose Your Own Adventure: Journey Under the Sea

 "All systems GO. It's awesome down here."

The book that kicked off the initial gamebook craze, Journey Under the Sea puts readers in the role of a deep sea explorer who comes equipped with a special sub called the Seeker, and an experimental diving suit designed to withstand the crushing depths, should you actually leave your sub for some insane reason. Your mission? Locate the lost city of Atlantis.

Secondary mission: don't get eaten by creatures.

The series was originally titled The Adventures of You, in 1976. Bantam Books changed the series title and published half a dozen volumes to kick the series off a few years later, including this volume. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Choose Your Own Adventure series was aimed at young readers, and the narrative reflects this. Lots of short, basic sentences and light on immersion for an adult reader. For a young reader, though, the idea of piloting a mini-sub to the dark, uncharted realms of the deep is exciting and terrifying on its own.

Well, young readers and myself. You couldn't pay me enough to wade ankle-deep in the ocean, let alone swim in it. There's sharks and squids and jellyfish in there, man. And how do I know none of you are peeing in the ocean while I'm swimming nearby? I'm looking at you. Don't act like you didn't just do it.


Journey has a lot of branching paths, some more logical than others. The art is passable for a kid's book, and if you know a kid who is fascinated by deep sea stuff, they'd definitely get a kick out of this. Two chapters in and I managed to get my sub eaten by a kraken. Amusingly this was followed shortly thereafter by sharks being described as "the most feared of all sea creatures." After watching Cthulhu crush my sub like an empty soda can, I think I can handle a hammerhead.

This book has about 42 endings, most of them bad. Some of the bad ones boil down to, "you disappointed your team and got fired," but a few of them get pretty dark and further reinforce my fear and hatred of the ocean and everything to do with said ocean besides sushi and gumbo.

If you're not a child who is really into underwater stuff, CYOA #2 is worth a read if only to see where the gamebook genre got its feet wet. And if you're not big on undersea exploration, don't worry: CYOA covered every genre and setting you can think of, so there's something for everyone. If you want a complete list of all the books (or any other gamebook series), I can't recommend Demian's Gamebook Webpage highly enough.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.

 



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