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Choose Your Own Adventure #61
Beyond Escape!
Beyond Escape! [CYOA 015 BEYOND ESCAPE] [Paperback]
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
4 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
R.A. Montgomery
156 books121 followersRaymond A. Montgomery (born 1936 in Connecticut) was an author and progenitor of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series, which ran from 1979 to 2003. Montgomery graduated from Williams College and went to graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He devoted his life to teaching and education.
In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics.
He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.
In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics.
He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 5, 2025
Six years have passed since you escaped Dorado, one of three territories the United States has split into. The year is 2041 and you are a leader of the resistance in Turtalia, the region most opposed to Dorado’s totalitarian regime. Mimla and Matt, your fellow agents from the previous book, Escape, are covertly gathering intelligence in Dorado when a transmission indicates they are in distress. At the same time you are informed that Haven, a Doradan spy, has escaped Turtalian custody. Should you personally track down Mimla and Matt, or recapture Haven before he reaches sanctuary in Dorado?
Flying a plane to California, where Mimla and Matt were stationed, is perilous. From the air you spot a network of campfires near San Francisco, but should you investigate, or continue into the city and rendezvous with your underground network? A criminal organization called the Corporation has seized control of San Francisco, but your contact, Jeremy, wants to break the Corporation's hold on the city. You could help negotiate a peace, or head up a scouting mission to probe the Corporation's weaknesses. Jeremy might assist you in searching for Mimla and Matt, by either plane or motorcycle. You'll join up with a guerrilla fighter named Sellers, but might not have the firepower to defeat both the Corporation and the Doradans. If you took your plane to investigate the campfires before ever landing in San Francisco, gunmen yank you from the plane. Sellers is in charge; he and his men are under constant enemy fire, but parting ways with them will make it more complicated to track down Mimla and Matt...if they're alive.
Chasing after Haven at the first decision in the book subjects you to a mysterious attack on your helicopter. If you parachute from the chopper, you soon locate Haven…in a form you'd never have guessed. Is he telling the truth about being an alien from a race called the Crystal People? Was he actually never a Doradan asset? Haven claims he knows where and when Dorado plans to attack, but even if he's being forthright, you must execute your sabotage ops skillfully or be destroyed. Question Haven deeply enough and he'll reveal his primary motive is securing a home for the refugee Crystal People. Should you pledge Earth's resources toward his goal? Respond with caution; the Crystal People pose a devastating threat.
Escape was a good if not great book, but Beyond Escape! is inferior. The action feels dull, and as a sequel the book serves no purpose; it does little to forward a resolution of the war between Dorado and Turtalia. Rebranding Haven as a pacifist alien is strange; it doesn't fit his behavior from the first book, and his violent reactions if you don't acquiesce to his plans leads me to conclude the Crystal People aren't so wonderful. I rate Beyond Escape! one and a half stars; I've read worse gamebooks, but there isn't any reason for this one to exist.
Flying a plane to California, where Mimla and Matt were stationed, is perilous. From the air you spot a network of campfires near San Francisco, but should you investigate, or continue into the city and rendezvous with your underground network? A criminal organization called the Corporation has seized control of San Francisco, but your contact, Jeremy, wants to break the Corporation's hold on the city. You could help negotiate a peace, or head up a scouting mission to probe the Corporation's weaknesses. Jeremy might assist you in searching for Mimla and Matt, by either plane or motorcycle. You'll join up with a guerrilla fighter named Sellers, but might not have the firepower to defeat both the Corporation and the Doradans. If you took your plane to investigate the campfires before ever landing in San Francisco, gunmen yank you from the plane. Sellers is in charge; he and his men are under constant enemy fire, but parting ways with them will make it more complicated to track down Mimla and Matt...if they're alive.
Chasing after Haven at the first decision in the book subjects you to a mysterious attack on your helicopter. If you parachute from the chopper, you soon locate Haven…in a form you'd never have guessed. Is he telling the truth about being an alien from a race called the Crystal People? Was he actually never a Doradan asset? Haven claims he knows where and when Dorado plans to attack, but even if he's being forthright, you must execute your sabotage ops skillfully or be destroyed. Question Haven deeply enough and he'll reveal his primary motive is securing a home for the refugee Crystal People. Should you pledge Earth's resources toward his goal? Respond with caution; the Crystal People pose a devastating threat.
Escape was a good if not great book, but Beyond Escape! is inferior. The action feels dull, and as a sequel the book serves no purpose; it does little to forward a resolution of the war between Dorado and Turtalia. Rebranding Haven as a pacifist alien is strange; it doesn't fit his behavior from the first book, and his violent reactions if you don't acquiesce to his plans leads me to conclude the Crystal People aren't so wonderful. I rate Beyond Escape! one and a half stars; I've read worse gamebooks, but there isn't any reason for this one to exist.
July 5, 2020
La serie de Elige tu propia aventura es, literalmente, un clásico de nuestra infancia. He releído algunos, años después, y me parecen un poco cortos de miras, limitados en las posibilidades, pero cuando tenía 10 años cada uno de ellos era una maravilla lista para ser explorada hasta que hubiera dado todo lo que tenía dentro.
Al final siempre sabías que ibas a recorrer todos y cada uno de los caminos posibles. La emoción estaba, por tanto, en ganar y pasarte la historia al primer intento. Si no podías, pues nada, seguro que en el intento 18 acababas encontrando el camino. A veces los autores iban "a pillar", poniéndote los resultados buenos detrás de decisiones que eran claramente anómalas.
Recuerdo haber aprendido tanto palabras como hechos y datos en estos libros. No nadar contra la corriente cuando quieres llegar a tierra, dónde colocarse cuando un avión va a despegar, un montón de cosas interesantes y un montón de historias vividas, decenas por cada libro, que convirtieron a las serie en una colección fractal, donde cada vez podías elegir un libro nuevo entre los que ya tenías.
Llegué hasta el tomo 54 y dejé de tener interés por la serie, pero la serie siguió hasta superar los 180 títulos. Tal vez mis hijos quieran seguir el camino que yo empecé. Si quieres que lo sigan, pasa a la página 7.
Al final siempre sabías que ibas a recorrer todos y cada uno de los caminos posibles. La emoción estaba, por tanto, en ganar y pasarte la historia al primer intento. Si no podías, pues nada, seguro que en el intento 18 acababas encontrando el camino. A veces los autores iban "a pillar", poniéndote los resultados buenos detrás de decisiones que eran claramente anómalas.
Recuerdo haber aprendido tanto palabras como hechos y datos en estos libros. No nadar contra la corriente cuando quieres llegar a tierra, dónde colocarse cuando un avión va a despegar, un montón de cosas interesantes y un montón de historias vividas, decenas por cada libro, que convirtieron a las serie en una colección fractal, donde cada vez podías elegir un libro nuevo entre los que ya tenías.
Llegué hasta el tomo 54 y dejé de tener interés por la serie, pero la serie siguió hasta superar los 180 títulos. Tal vez mis hijos quieran seguir el camino que yo empecé. Si quieres que lo sigan, pasa a la página 7.
January 31, 2021
I love these types of books you cant really give lots of detail because there's more then 1 ending some you die some you win I like this because I can read the book without seeing the same thing then I get board but in these books there's alot you can do you have choices I recommend this 7 and higher because there's alot of words.
June 28, 2017
It was okay. It took only 15 minutes for me to get through 3 plots. Some plots were more enticing than others. I can see how younger readers would love this! I definitely have bad instincts, make thinking solutions through more fun.
November 5, 2017
Somehow I managed not to get myself killed.
November 8, 2020
Just as fun and quick read(s) as they were when I was young.
January 30, 2021
super good, this is kind of like a part 2 of escape. this is really fun to read. i kept dying in this one but it was a great adventure
May 13, 2022
muy entretenido, lo podés leer muchas veces y siempre va a ser distinto, amé conseguir llegar a todos los finales posibles.
May 31, 2020
Nice! It only took me about half an hour to finish the book but it was really fun to read.
March 29, 2013
Took me less than the time of a medium-length Metallica song to get shot down by alien spacecraft. Again, I didn't even get far enough into the plot to really know what the plot was, or that there IS one.
I did learn some new terminology, saying you searched thoroughly by saying I searched "from turnip to washcloth." Is that a thing? Are people generally storing their turnips on one side of the kitchen and the washcloths on the other? I checked the turnip, I checked the washcloth, and I checked everything in between. I mean, I googled this and found nothing. Maybe the writer was trying to coin a new phrase? Maybe it shows up in every book? That would be a nice runner to have going.
Because the amount I got out of this book was perhaps my most pathetic run yet, I decided to see, after my death, what the 20 possible ending were and how many of them at least left me with most of my limbs. So here we go, in order that I flipped to and found them.
1. You are taken as a prisoner of war, of sorts. Although the ending mentions the possibility of reuniting with some buddies and cooking up an escape plan. Bad, but with the promise of future hijinks.
2. You somehow wheel and deal your way to your country's safety. Right on!
3. Holy shit! You are abuducted by someone and your mind is turned to that of a 3-week old baby! And someone named Haven had his revenge! I should say so. Some kind of babifying ray sounds like good revenge indeed.
4. Heat-seeking rocket blows up your plane after a near miss hitting a mountain.
5. You HIT the mountain.
6. "You, Haven, and the spacecraft merge with the universe" which is a fancy way of saying get done blowed up.
7. Hey, you find your captured buddies and have to get them back home. Good one!
8. "A blast of automatic fire ends your careers." Wow. That sounds like something a newly-appointed dictator would say to whatever form of government he was dissolving.
9. You capture not one, not two, but THREE fascist chiefs. Double-plus-good ending.
10. Taken hostage/prisoner. This is kind of a common thread in these books. A lot of endings where they don't blow your head off, but they DO tie you up and put you in the trunk of the car. Or do the spiritual equivalent, at least.
11. You get some kind of intel that will result in winning some kind of war. From Matt and Mimla, who, with that name, are two acoustics and one ampersand away from being an indie rock duo.
12. Wait, again you are a hostage. What the hell? This is the third hostage-taking ending. So when they say 20 possible endings, they mean 19 ways to be taken hostage and one option to crash a plane into a goddamn mountain.
13. You lose comrades, but start in on a long war alive. At least, alive on the outside. *sniff*
14. Shot down by UFO's. Again. I'm learning that any sort of aircraft travel is a bad choice here.
15. This Haven fellow is with you and you are not sure whether you're a prisoner or not. I mean, how long will that remain unclear? What kind of ending is that? How do you not ask, "So, am I in a prisoner thing here or what?"
16. Your plane is blown up (!) and you realize you'll soon be a prisoner or dead. Jesus. This POW thing is really quite pervasive.
17. Haven turns out to be a good guy. See, this is the problem with these books. So IS Haven a good guy, in which case you have never been a prisoner or turned into a mind-baby by his ray, or do your choices turn him bad in a matter of minutes or what? Because if he's a good guy, then I'm obviously not his prisoner in ending 15 above, and therefore that would be a good ending. But you would never know that without reading all the endings. It's sort of like...if one of these ended with "it's all a dream" would that mean that all endings just stopped one sentence too early and all the events before were dreams, or is it just this one instance?
18. You now have to convince everyone to help the "Crystal People." I don't know what that means, but I guess it has something to do with methamphetamine.
19. You plane leaves you and you'll have to survive on your own. This goddamn TREACHEROUS PLANE!
Okay, let's do some math. Out of a possible 20 endings, 12 are bad, 7 are okay-ish, and one either doesn't exist or I missed it. But I'm going to assume it involves your own aircraft turning on you.
So it appears that a good ending, though statistically somewhat unlikely, is at least possible to find. What I don't know is how many paths lead to the good versus the bad endings. For example, maybe each bad ending has 5 separate paths that could take you there whereas each good ending has only one path, so although it looks like a 60/30 split bad/good, there is potential for the odds to be far worse. Someone needs to make a flowchart for one of these. Hmmm.....
I did learn some new terminology, saying you searched thoroughly by saying I searched "from turnip to washcloth." Is that a thing? Are people generally storing their turnips on one side of the kitchen and the washcloths on the other? I checked the turnip, I checked the washcloth, and I checked everything in between. I mean, I googled this and found nothing. Maybe the writer was trying to coin a new phrase? Maybe it shows up in every book? That would be a nice runner to have going.
Because the amount I got out of this book was perhaps my most pathetic run yet, I decided to see, after my death, what the 20 possible ending were and how many of them at least left me with most of my limbs. So here we go, in order that I flipped to and found them.
1. You are taken as a prisoner of war, of sorts. Although the ending mentions the possibility of reuniting with some buddies and cooking up an escape plan. Bad, but with the promise of future hijinks.
2. You somehow wheel and deal your way to your country's safety. Right on!
3. Holy shit! You are abuducted by someone and your mind is turned to that of a 3-week old baby! And someone named Haven had his revenge! I should say so. Some kind of babifying ray sounds like good revenge indeed.
4. Heat-seeking rocket blows up your plane after a near miss hitting a mountain.
5. You HIT the mountain.
6. "You, Haven, and the spacecraft merge with the universe" which is a fancy way of saying get done blowed up.
7. Hey, you find your captured buddies and have to get them back home. Good one!
8. "A blast of automatic fire ends your careers." Wow. That sounds like something a newly-appointed dictator would say to whatever form of government he was dissolving.
9. You capture not one, not two, but THREE fascist chiefs. Double-plus-good ending.
10. Taken hostage/prisoner. This is kind of a common thread in these books. A lot of endings where they don't blow your head off, but they DO tie you up and put you in the trunk of the car. Or do the spiritual equivalent, at least.
11. You get some kind of intel that will result in winning some kind of war. From Matt and Mimla, who, with that name, are two acoustics and one ampersand away from being an indie rock duo.
12. Wait, again you are a hostage. What the hell? This is the third hostage-taking ending. So when they say 20 possible endings, they mean 19 ways to be taken hostage and one option to crash a plane into a goddamn mountain.
13. You lose comrades, but start in on a long war alive. At least, alive on the outside. *sniff*
14. Shot down by UFO's. Again. I'm learning that any sort of aircraft travel is a bad choice here.
15. This Haven fellow is with you and you are not sure whether you're a prisoner or not. I mean, how long will that remain unclear? What kind of ending is that? How do you not ask, "So, am I in a prisoner thing here or what?"
16. Your plane is blown up (!) and you realize you'll soon be a prisoner or dead. Jesus. This POW thing is really quite pervasive.
17. Haven turns out to be a good guy. See, this is the problem with these books. So IS Haven a good guy, in which case you have never been a prisoner or turned into a mind-baby by his ray, or do your choices turn him bad in a matter of minutes or what? Because if he's a good guy, then I'm obviously not his prisoner in ending 15 above, and therefore that would be a good ending. But you would never know that without reading all the endings. It's sort of like...if one of these ended with "it's all a dream" would that mean that all endings just stopped one sentence too early and all the events before were dreams, or is it just this one instance?
18. You now have to convince everyone to help the "Crystal People." I don't know what that means, but I guess it has something to do with methamphetamine.
19. You plane leaves you and you'll have to survive on your own. This goddamn TREACHEROUS PLANE!
Okay, let's do some math. Out of a possible 20 endings, 12 are bad, 7 are okay-ish, and one either doesn't exist or I missed it. But I'm going to assume it involves your own aircraft turning on you.
So it appears that a good ending, though statistically somewhat unlikely, is at least possible to find. What I don't know is how many paths lead to the good versus the bad endings. For example, maybe each bad ending has 5 separate paths that could take you there whereas each good ending has only one path, so although it looks like a 60/30 split bad/good, there is potential for the odds to be far worse. Someone needs to make a flowchart for one of these. Hmmm.....
July 29, 2014
I will never not give a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story less than 5 stars. It may be more than 20 years since I read them, but I remembered right away how fun they are. In my first two storylines, my choices lead me to death by airplane crash and then death by airplane explosion, aided by an enemy rocket. But that only made me more determined to finish my own spy mission successfully. Updated in 2005, Beyond Escape has twists and fun turns (aliens?! ah, what now?!) and the suspense of finding out the consequences of your own choices is hard to beat. If my public library display and the condition of the book I checked out is any indication, Choose Your Own Adventures stories are still wildly popular and great to display and encourage beginning readers with, since the story can be as long and as complicated as the reader dictates.
March 25, 2013
This is my first read of these books since I was a teen. Now getting my little one to read them. Man I forgot how fun these books make reading. This book was set in 2051 not that far in the future. Good read and makes you think how the world/US will be in only 39 more years, lol. Good luck to us all.
December 10, 2010
Adventure #61 of the 'Choose your own adventure' series, Beyond Escape by R.A. Montgomery... in these books the reader gets to be the central character by choosing what path the tale follows through a variety of endings...
August 8, 2008
i almost forgot how engaging these are... i read like, every scenario. i also found out i have terrible instincts :P
July 13, 2011
Old book smell mixed with a dangerous self-imposed futuristic journey... What more could a ten year old have asked for?
January 22, 2015
No sé si será porque lo leí siendo más grande o qué, pero este libro, a diferencia de los demás de esta serie que leí, no me transmitió nada.
January 23, 2015
I forgot how fun these books were to read. I loved them when I was a kid. I didn't last very long, though. I had to try a second time and only got a little bit further.
April 14, 2015
Read with a tutoring kid.
April 2, 2022
It had an interesting map at the beginning. I died once, and then succeeded. These are a lot of fun!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews