Revolt of the Dwarves by Rose Estes
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I picked this book up last week at a book fair. Every few years I can't help myself and I become a slave to nostalgia and pick up either an Endless Quest or Choose Your Own Adventure book. And every time I do, there's not a single one in the rest of my library because I always get rid of them. They're usually just not very good. But this one... sadly, this is one of the worst.

I read every path of this book and there are roughly four major pathways, and while each has a little uniqueness to it, none of them are very exciting. Also, there are many times you are given two choices, but both end up leading to the same destination. (E.g. choose A or B. Doesn't matter, they both lead to C!) A few other times a pathway will simply tell you to go back and choose again. How exciting.

On a world building level, how is it that in a world with dwarves, dragons, and assorted other fantasy beings, our protagonist is stunned to meet a pixie and declares pixies to not be real.

Worst of all is the writing. Here's one quick example as we head toward a river: "Soon you hear the sound of rushing water..." and then: "Broad and brown, it flows sluggishly." (p.134) If it's slow moving, then where's the rushing water? There are other examples, but that was probably the worst case of contradiction.

Anyway, this will be thrown back into the wild and then, in another few years, I'm sure I'll grab another one of these things to drive myself crazy. Ah, nostalgia.

(Oh, I should add that I was a teen when these books first came out and I had the first two Endless Quest books, but realized quickly, even as a teen, not to buy the others. I guess I lost that wisdom over the years (failed wisdom roll).

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