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Choose Your Own Adventure #85
Inca Gold
Straight lines in the middle of the Peruvian jungle mean one thing: nature altered by the man. Could it be the remnants of the fabled Lost City of Gold? Or will your search be just another wild goose chase?
144 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 2, 2021
This was one of the CYOAs I don't think I encountered as a kid. It was good overall. I liked that it had a seemingly more intelligent story behind it. But what I didn't like was how many "Go to page..." there were at the start without giving the reader a choice. I think I counted eight of them where I read a page and then told to skip back and forth. I would have liked a choice earlier than that. It has 16 different endings. I think I got through five of them yesterday. Didn't get to the lost Incan city of gold, but that's cool. I did like one that was a totally unexpected outcome, so that was also really cool.
Overall, an interesting addition to this classic YA series that had some execution issues, but made me happy to read.
Overall, an interesting addition to this classic YA series that had some execution issues, but made me happy to read.
October 15, 2014
Not the best I've read. Mostly this is due to problematic formatting -- I believe a few pages were missing. Several times I was referred to a page that either was an illustration or was obviously not the right continuation of the story. Mistakes like these make choose your own adventure novels extremely frustrating.
August 27, 2016
Read with my daughter Emilie. Lots of good endings but only one happily wins the gold.
August 9, 2024
Little information is available about Jim Becket. He seems to have written only one gamebook besides this one, but he graduated from Williams College, same as Choose Your Own Adventure franchise architect R.A. Montgomery. Is that how Becket came to author this book? You and your friend Sally love antiquity's mysteries, and one day NASA photographs you have special access to appear to show an area in the jungles of Soledad, Peru that could be the fabled Incan Lost City of Gold. You and Sally travel to Peru to check out the site, but at the airport you spot Paul Leduc—a reclusive billionaire—and a Professor Maloder, who was previously convicted on smuggling charges. These two may be spying on your research and want the Lost City of Gold for themselves. Should you head to Soledad without delay, or behave as tourists wandering Machu Picchu to throw these men off the scent?
Before you can leave for Soledad, you notice a pair of flunkies monitoring your hotel. You and Sally split up to confuse them, but they turn aggressive, trying to run your taxi off the road. If you elude them and make it back to Sally, you learn her friend Mario is a licensed pilot willing to parachute you into Soledad, but maybe it's safer by land. It's a multi-day bus ride to the river-town of Tres Cruces. Do you want to interrogate the twin brothers who live there about the Lost City of Gold? One of them always tells the truth and the other only lies, but discern the truth teller and you'll find the lost Incan city. If you accepted Mario's offer to parachute you in, you and Sally get separated midair. Kalotaxidi, a totally silent Incan man, tries to divert you away from a crew of bulldozer workers. He may lead you not only to Sally, but something else valuable. You have the option to continue your search, but Peruvian jungles are hazardous. There's a reason no one has found the Lost City of Gold. Go to the men with bulldozers instead of Kalotaxidi, and you're soon ensnared in a bloodsport that proves Paul Leduc is more sadistic than you thought. Step lightly and there remains a chance to fulfill your quest.
Did you try to shake Leduc and Professor Maloder by going first to Machu Picchu? You marvel at the soaring heights of the ancient site, but crisis arrives in the form of Maloder and two thugs. You and Sally could swipe a couple hang gliders, soar down the mountainside, and escape on a train, but luck isn't with you: a pack of guerrilla freedom fighters storms the train and capture its passengers. The men negotiate with authorities for their own release and demand a passenger as hostage; will you volunteer? Going with the men could see you put on show trial for crimes you never committed, but if you don't go, the terrorists accelerate the train directly toward a concrete wall. Will you make it out alive, and can you save the terrified passengers? Maybe you stayed on the mountain rather than take the hang gliders, in which case you hide among a group of spiritualist hikers from California. Maloder may not think to look for you here, but unless your choices eventually lead to Soledad, you'll never enter the Lost City of Gold.
Foremost among this book's problems? It's dull. There's no zip to the narrative, no feeling of high stakes or larger-than-life adventure. Over the course of one hundred fifteen pages, that becomes a joyless slog. The scenario where one brother always lies and the other tells the truth can work when used as an abstract logic puzzle, but just made this book feel unserious and contrived. A single storyline leads to full discovery of the Lost City of Gold, and while that level of difficulty can be done in appealing ways, here it makes the reading experience feel tedious. One neutral point worth making is that this is the rare Choose Your Own Adventure which explicitly defines your gender; in this case, you're male. I rate Inca Gold one and a half stars, and won't reach for it again soon when revisiting the series.
Before you can leave for Soledad, you notice a pair of flunkies monitoring your hotel. You and Sally split up to confuse them, but they turn aggressive, trying to run your taxi off the road. If you elude them and make it back to Sally, you learn her friend Mario is a licensed pilot willing to parachute you into Soledad, but maybe it's safer by land. It's a multi-day bus ride to the river-town of Tres Cruces. Do you want to interrogate the twin brothers who live there about the Lost City of Gold? One of them always tells the truth and the other only lies, but discern the truth teller and you'll find the lost Incan city. If you accepted Mario's offer to parachute you in, you and Sally get separated midair. Kalotaxidi, a totally silent Incan man, tries to divert you away from a crew of bulldozer workers. He may lead you not only to Sally, but something else valuable. You have the option to continue your search, but Peruvian jungles are hazardous. There's a reason no one has found the Lost City of Gold. Go to the men with bulldozers instead of Kalotaxidi, and you're soon ensnared in a bloodsport that proves Paul Leduc is more sadistic than you thought. Step lightly and there remains a chance to fulfill your quest.
Did you try to shake Leduc and Professor Maloder by going first to Machu Picchu? You marvel at the soaring heights of the ancient site, but crisis arrives in the form of Maloder and two thugs. You and Sally could swipe a couple hang gliders, soar down the mountainside, and escape on a train, but luck isn't with you: a pack of guerrilla freedom fighters storms the train and capture its passengers. The men negotiate with authorities for their own release and demand a passenger as hostage; will you volunteer? Going with the men could see you put on show trial for crimes you never committed, but if you don't go, the terrorists accelerate the train directly toward a concrete wall. Will you make it out alive, and can you save the terrified passengers? Maybe you stayed on the mountain rather than take the hang gliders, in which case you hide among a group of spiritualist hikers from California. Maloder may not think to look for you here, but unless your choices eventually lead to Soledad, you'll never enter the Lost City of Gold.
Foremost among this book's problems? It's dull. There's no zip to the narrative, no feeling of high stakes or larger-than-life adventure. Over the course of one hundred fifteen pages, that becomes a joyless slog. The scenario where one brother always lies and the other tells the truth can work when used as an abstract logic puzzle, but just made this book feel unserious and contrived. A single storyline leads to full discovery of the Lost City of Gold, and while that level of difficulty can be done in appealing ways, here it makes the reading experience feel tedious. One neutral point worth making is that this is the rare Choose Your Own Adventure which explicitly defines your gender; in this case, you're male. I rate Inca Gold one and a half stars, and won't reach for it again soon when revisiting the series.
October 9, 2018
First Choose Your Own Adventure my 6-year-old son has experienced. Were they this awesomely weird when we were kids? One of the endings: we're searching for the lost Incan city of gold. We find a native guide. We follow him to his village, then into a tent filled with smoke and chanting villagers. We hallucinate that we grow wings and are flying over the river, with the golden faces of the villagers looking up at us from the river. And we feel very happy and at peace. And when we come out of it, our fellow adventurer had the same type of experience and agrees that we no longer need to search for the lost city, for "we found the treasure of peace and happiness on the trip we took within ourselves."
Awesome.
Awesome.
May 7, 2019
You are an archeology prodigy who wants to spend grant money exploring the perils of Peru to uncover a lost city of gold. If you make a bad choice you will fall of a cliff and you will die. But then you get to backtrack and you follow a different choice.
Not sure if I'm sold on this as a good addition to a young reader's library. I was born a long time ago, and I still favor Dr. Seuss. Back in the day, you went from Dr. Seuss right into Dickens. There was no protracted adolescence of easy fiction to coax you along as your brain slowly developed.
Even for 21st Century readers, I prefer the tree-house series where the author of the book decides what happens in the story.
Not sure if I'm sold on this as a good addition to a young reader's library. I was born a long time ago, and I still favor Dr. Seuss. Back in the day, you went from Dr. Seuss right into Dickens. There was no protracted adolescence of easy fiction to coax you along as your brain slowly developed.
Even for 21st Century readers, I prefer the tree-house series where the author of the book decides what happens in the story.
March 17, 2020
Simple. Me quedo un gusto semi amargo. Hace mucho tiempo inicié mi lectura de "elige tu propia aventura" con un misterio en las pirámides. Era mucho mas atrapante, y podias tomar más decisiones al respecto ante cualquier acción. En este libro, hay cosas muy ilogicas. Somos el protagonista masculino, y vamos a descubrir el tesoro inca junto con nuestra colega, quien de hecho, no aporta mucha ayuda. Todas las decisiones casi siempre terminan en el mismo camino. No mueres, pero en la mayoría de los finales nunca ves el tesoro inca y lo único que quieres es tomarte un baño caliente y volver a tu casa. Le falta aventura, emoción, adrenalina.
Lamentablemente, no fue gustoso para mi.
Lamentablemente, no fue gustoso para mi.
January 4, 2022
Inca Gold suffers from a number of problems that the CYOA series tends to possess, but those aren't important. The only thing that matters about this entry is that multiple page referrals are broken, rendering certain paths incoherent or unfinishable. Among these are: Turning to a page that doesn't make any sense based on the prior page, a branch page where the two choices are mixed up, and a path that leads you to an illustration instead of an actual text page.
I can't fathom how this book got published in its current form, these are errors that would've been caught by a simple proofreading.
I can't fathom how this book got published in its current form, these are errors that would've been caught by a simple proofreading.
February 24, 2021
My first Choose Your Own Adventure book! I understand the appeal, but unfortunately this one was a bit of a dud. There were several formatting issues which made the book difficult to navigate. Additionally, the story just wasn’t my favorite. Would try a different Adventure someday but wouldn’t recommend this one.
October 28, 2017
Read all of these books as a kid, so glad I did.
October 15, 2019
Ending #1 being a sucky explorer scared shit of a future life vision, scared enough to go home 🤣
July 15, 2022
Interesante y rápida lectura...
September 23, 2022
Just as much fun as I remember.
February 13, 2024
Some of these endings made us LOL
May 2, 2025
Hace años que no leía algo de Elige tu propia aventura. Simplemente es espectacular!! cómo cuesta tomar decisiones jajaja
October 19, 2012
6ominute
7words explorer/civilization/Inca/pain/leg/broken/hospital
Questuions
1,Have you ever broken bone?
Yes,I have. When I was a high suhool students, broken my leg.
2,Have you ever seen the any world cultural heritage?
Yes,I have. When I was a high school students, I went to china for school trip. I have seen the great of wall china.
comment
I like history,so this book is connect to history. I'm interested in this book. Actually, I enjoyed to reading this book. Moreover, there are a lot of ending in this book.
7words explorer/civilization/Inca/pain/leg/broken/hospital
Questuions
1,Have you ever broken bone?
Yes,I have. When I was a high suhool students, broken my leg.
2,Have you ever seen the any world cultural heritage?
Yes,I have. When I was a high school students, I went to china for school trip. I have seen the great of wall china.
comment
I like history,so this book is connect to history. I'm interested in this book. Actually, I enjoyed to reading this book. Moreover, there are a lot of ending in this book.
November 17, 2012
-CHOOSECO,Mc Graw Hill,RL?
-Time:November 12=70min.
-7words
researcher,Inca,terolist,escape,find,Gold,choose
-Question
1.Have you ever used a paraglider? (Yes)Where did you do? (No)Would you like to do?
A:No, I haven't. I'd like to do it,because I want to fly!!
2.Can you become a hostage to save other peoples? Why?/Why not?
A:I can't answer now. I might be scary, but I will also think to save other people. It is very difficult question!!
I read 6 ending. This type of book(chosing story) is very very fun!!
-Time:November 12=70min.
-7words
researcher,Inca,terolist,escape,find,Gold,choose
-Question
1.Have you ever used a paraglider? (Yes)Where did you do? (No)Would you like to do?
A:No, I haven't. I'd like to do it,because I want to fly!!
2.Can you become a hostage to save other peoples? Why?/Why not?
A:I can't answer now. I might be scary, but I will also think to save other people. It is very difficult question!!
I read 6 ending. This type of book(chosing story) is very very fun!!
August 15, 2010
I got this book because we went to Peru and learned about the Incas, so I thought I should read this book. The book is very cool because the main characters go to some of the places I have been. The cool thing about the book is that you choose how the story goes. And you can read it over and over again, and the story will change. There are 16 possible endings in the book. I highly recommend this book.
July 29, 2008
Number 20 of the 'Choose your own adventure' series, Inca Gold by Jim Becket... in these books the reader gets to be the central character by choosing what path the tale follows through a variety of endings...
March 7, 2011
loved this book and the whole series - read them all in my younger days
September 8, 2014
nice and cool i love it!!
September 29, 2015
I loved the choose your-own-adventure books during my early years, and believe these are a great set of books for those who are new to reading their own books.
Read
January 14, 2016This book's narratives produced such strong lifelong memories that after 20 years it was a decisive factor to do a PhD on Interactive Storytelling.
August 27, 2016
i liked it
April 17, 2015
UOI: Ancient Civilizations
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews