Twistaplot #13: Midnight at Monster Mansion

You'd go great with syrup, if they can ever peel you off the wall.

So I was planning to review an especially cool GI Joe gamebook next, but then I happened upon another Twistaplot book, and after riffing the last one I couldn't resist grabbing it. I know, I'm ignoring my own advice by not just reading it in the bookstore, but remind me which of us is the one blogging about these in detail. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Unlike Crash Landing!, the lucky 13th entry in the Twistaplot series managed to entertain, in that it made me laugh. Had I gone in expecting something that was actually scary, I would have yeeted this book across the room after the first couple pages. Right from the cover you can tell this is not an outing that takes itself seriously. The background is genuinely creepy, with an especially frightening face superimposed over the castle, but then when you see the blatant Universal movie monster lineup in the foreground, you know this is going to be a lighthearted spooky romp.

Knowing from the start that this is a comedy, you can relax a bit and just take it for what it is. The silliness doesn't sneak up on you like in Crash Landing, and when the characters start acting stupid and childish, it fits the situation. I mean, the protagonist recognizes the monsters the moment he sees them, as if he's just taken a wrong turn into a Universal horror fanfic. You're even given a choice between whether the whole thing is even real, or if it's just a dream!

The art is pretty decent in this, too, for the most part. Many of the illustrations are bursting with personality, with lots of oozing black shadows on everything. I quite like the page shown below, with the POV shot on the operating table. If the book had tried to be scary for real, this image would have fit the tone as-is.

It's still impossible to really get 100% invested in this book, not unlike the other entries in the series. This is something you go to for a quick read when you're bored and also ten years old. However, this one kept me reading because it pulled a laugh out of me more than once. Easily the funniest part is (spoiler alert, so skip to the next paragraph if you want to see it for yourself) being bullied by the invisible man into drinking random potions in Dracula's lab until you find the one he wants, only to turn invisible yourself, at which point you then strip naked, flee the castle while no one can see you to catch you, and then race home in your dad's sports car, all the while praying to God that the potion doesn't wear off before you get to a crowded gas station and get arrested for indecent exposure. It's a happy ending! I think!

This series is definitely for younger readers, but I still don't think I would recommend Twistaplot over, say, Choose Your Own Adventure or  Time Machine. CYOA and TM take their material seriously and have more substance, so it's easier to get invested. Using candy as an analogy, if CYOA and TM were Sour Patch Kids and gummy sharks respectively, Twistaplot would be Circus Peanuts: cheap fluff that doesn't taste right to anybody. This series follows the R L Stine methodology of writing for young readers which can be summarized as, "Never make anything truly perilous or suspenseful, because we can't have children  getting scared or sitting on the edge of their seats! That's just not nice! Is baby weady for his widdle boddle again? Yes, he is!"

Still, if you must check out the Twistaplot series, Midnight at Monster Mansion is worth a laugh or two.