Perdido en el Amazonas

Choose Your Own Adventure #24

by R.A. Montgomery

Has llegado a la selva amazónica para unirte a una expedición médica, pero nadie acude a darte la bienvenida. El fuerte hechizo de una flauta misteriosa ha atraído a tus colegas al interior de la selva. Estás solo, únicamente cuentas con la ayuda de las legendarias mujeres del Amazonas. ¡De repente el sonido de la flauta te llama! ¿Te conducirá hasta donde están tus amigos?

Si decides seguir el sonido de la flauta, pasa a la página 27. Si decides quedarte con las amazonas, pasa a la página 21. Ten cuidado. Te podrían devorar las mortíferas pirañas, o cabe que te abatiera una flecha envenenada o que te perdieras para siempre en la selva amazónica.

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks, Fiction, Childrens, Adventure, Young Adult, Science Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1983

About the author

Raymond 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.

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the best in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Some of the endings are anticlimactic, and there are a lot of stereotypes of the natives in the Amazon. Still, the opportunity to make choices makes this a bearable read.

[Peter Derk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to mock this book. But you know what's crazy, a sure sign of how stupid I am? Can I ask in the form of a question?

Why, on the eve of my 30th birthday, did I think the Amazon river was in Africa? How am I that dumb?

I mean, sure, in the book I'm a doctor who specializes in leprosy and has spent many a day in weird canoes going up and down horrifying rivers in order to cure diseases, but if I don't know which CONTINENT I'm on, what are the odds that I'm going to get out of this alive?

If I don't even have that one piece of information in my brain, what are the odds that I'm going to finish any of these without being devoured by piranhas Jesus Christ.

Oh shit, can you imagine how embarrassing that would have been if I'd tried hitting on an Amazonian woman? Bad enough that they pretty much ousted men from their society and cut off a breast and almost always seem to be carrying weapons, but then I have to go in and say, "So, Amazonian, huh? I've been to Africa once. It was kind of cool. Can I buy you another one of those...what appears to be beer tinged red with the blood of a vanquished foe?"

This volume does get an extra star due to the fact that I died by piranha. Not that I'm excited about that, but it was a way in which, as a youth, I thought I may very likely pass. There were a few things on the list, and piranhas was one of them, possibly in third place after airline disaster and, at the top, Bermuda Triangle. Seriously. I read every book my school library had related to the Bermuda Triangle. We flew from Colorado to Chicago a few times when I was a kid, and I always asked my mom if the flight plan was going to pass through the Bermuda Triangle. Then I would ask ARE YOU SURE? This is probably an early sign and a piece of information that, if you'd already had it ,would have made my Amazonian experience less shocking.

I have to stop typing because I'm afraid my degrees (MULTIPLE! WHAT THE FUCK!?) are going to be revoked if anyone finds out about this.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Now I know there are multiple endings provided in these books. My guess is the complexity offered in this series reveals itself after multiple readings, trying out all the various twist and turns. However, I am just reading these once through. And with that in mind, I actually got quite invested in this one. For once I seemed to be be making some reasonable decisions. Then suddenly, without any justification, my adventure ended with me marching off into the jungle. Just as things were about to get more interesting, the story didn't so much as end as just stop. Very unfair.

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mysticism was a favorite topic for R.A. Montgomery, and he engages with it to the nth degree in Lost on the Amazon. As a doctor with knowledge and experience in tropical disease, you are asked to go on an Amazon River expedition to offer medical assistance to tribes of the rain forest. As you wait for your expedition team in the city of Manaus, Brazil, an Indian guide named Owaduga claims they arrived ahead of you and were drawn away by the tones of a magical flute in the jungle. You must go after them, but should you accompany Owaduga in his dugout canoe, rent a small airplane, or go with the official River Patrol?

Owaduga isn't talkative, but seems versed in Amazonian lore. You may meet an Amazon woman on the river, but can you communicate? Let Owaduga speak on your behalf, and you learn the rival Michawa tribe is probably guilty of abducting your expedition team. Can a witch doctor put a spell on the Michawas and save your team? Dismiss the witch doctor, and you'll be on your own in the jungle, having increasingly paranormal experiences. If you stayed with the Amazon woman, named Zagoona, she leads you to where she thinks your friends are captive. The forest people and their magic flute are not an easy foe, but Zagoona has dealt with them before. Be careful who you trust; you have little idea who abducted your team or why.

Hiring a plane instead of relying on Owaduga, you're surprised that Owaduga asks to go along on the trip. Pursue the services of Simón Portilho, a vaunted pilot in Manaus, and you might go to the Black Kat Bar which he's known to frequent. Portilho isn’t at the bar, but a pilot named Vasco Mendoza offers his services. He gives you a strange feeling; refuse to hire Mendoza and he pulls a knife. One wrong move now means immediate death. Hire Mendoza willingly from the start, and he takes you up in his plane...just don't expect a satisfying end to your rescue mission. If you avoided Mendoza and hire Portilho, as soon as your plane lands in the jungle, Owaduga runs off. Can Portilho guide you to him? You might meet a tribe of Amazon women who inform you the Cuwatieri tribe is responsible for your team's disappearance. Will you wear a headdress with live snakes, if it's the only way to rescue your team? It's your last hope for infiltrating the Cuwatieri without succumbing to the spellbinding flute music. If you never meet those Amazon women you might find Owaduga praying at a stone temple. His behavior thus far is suspect, but if he tells you with certainty how to save your team, will you follow his directions? Perhaps you originally elected to go with the River Patrol search party. The captain takes you with his men, but there might be trouble when they exhibit symptoms of consuming drugged food. What are your survival odds if you venture into the jungle alone for help? You never know whose intentions are pure, and who is luring you to death.

Lost on the Amazon isn't boring, but lacks any real exploration of the region or immersive writing to pull the reader in. We don't truly care about our missing team because we the reader have never met them. Internal continuity is practically nonexistent; almost every decision you make fundamentally alters reality, so your choices don't mean anything because there's no central reality to measure them against. There are also too many endings where the story simply stops, though no resolution has been reached. I blame poor planning by the author for that. R.A. Montgomery had worse entries in the first twenty-four original Choose Your Own Adventures, but Lost on the Amazon is a lowlight to that point in the series. I rate it one and a half stars, and have minimal interest in a reread.

[Remo · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[kyla · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a very interesting book, that is for sure. I liked that it was a choose your own adventure book. It was interesting because they got lost over by a swamp and they were running away. Then I forgot what happened.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

¡He logrado morir de nuevo!

[Daniel Acosta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this book thinking that I was going to end up dead in the Amazon because that’s pretty much what happens in all of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. You wind up dead for some reason in most of the books on the Choose Your Own Adventure series. This time guess what, yes, I’m pretty sure you figured. I make very good decisions and I wind up dead. I wish the endings weren’t always the same. This book could’ve been more interesting because I did not enjoy the way my book ended but yeah. Amen. Happy.

[Vic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew from the title and setup that this wouldn't go into the kind of wild territory I'm used to with other gamebook series. It delivered on that expectation with familiar jaunts through the jungle and run-ins with characters of ambiguous intent and shady dispositions. But the endings were especially lackluster and I couldn't make peace with that. It seems to be a trend with the CYOA books to lead many story paths to unsatisfying conclusions.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grew up loving the Choose Your Own Adventure series and still do. There is something about having your choices affect the story that I enjoy. I found myself being safe in my choices with this one. For some reason, I really wanted my character to get out alive with no problems. For the record, that didn't happen.

Author: R.A. Montgomery
Publisher: Chooseco
Publication Date: Sept 1983

[Clong · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightful blast from the past. As a grade school kid our library in Casa De Oro had a little spinning tabletop shelf full of these choose your own adventure books and I couldn’t get enough of them. This one was my favorite and I hold it responsible for my life long love of reading about the Amazon.

[ETHAN KING · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd book... the main point was a hypnotizing flute song played by a group of Indians... in some of the endings people are used as sacrifices by the Indian tribes... and it wasn't even well written, so I found nothing redeemable about this book.

[Benedict Randhawa · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book. Some of the friends get lost have now they need help to find. Amazon is very deep jungle lot of different creature live there. Very interesting!

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Amazon jungle is quiet a mysterious place to live But when you want to find friends who are lost in the Amazon jungle. It can be hard and challenging. Interesting story!

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

great for problem solving!

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a very good book. Personally I love these books and their awesome. I would definitely recommend it to a friend.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the endings don’t end right and should have more choices, but otherwise very fun to read.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

While suuuuper racist, this book does contain some of the best art in the series thus far.

[bere · Rating 2 out of 5]

No me gustó ninguno de los finales😪

[Arhaan Shaikh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad and horrible plot.

[Luis · Rating 2 out of 5]

El segundo de este tipo que leo. Prefiero el de los vampiros, pero siempre es divertido analizar estructuras narrativas arbóreas. Algo que prefería de ese es que se sentía que había un componente místico más presente, y los caminos se sentían más divergentes. Aquí solo sentí que unos pocos caminos específicos te llevan a una conclusión satisfactoria.

[Kynzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so much fun! However, I disliked that most of the endings were very open-ended if you did not die.
4.5 stars

[Mandyalam0de · Rating 5 out of 5]

My son and I kept picking the wrong choices LOL but it was amusing to go back and write the story!

[Joshua Whatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had fun going down memory lane reading a "choose your own adventure" book.

[Chrystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 8 year old loved how many choices you get to pick a path. Some were sad, some were exciting and some were interesting. She lovesd learning about the Amazon women and indigenous people.

[Sadie]

We chose the wrong way a lot!

[Adrian Celis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kinda liked this book its nice to choose your own adventure. But I can't seem to get all the alternate endings. It's confusing me because if you make a mistake you have to start over or remember your page you were on last. All the endings seem wrong non of them seem to make me feel like i finished the book with the right ending.

[Petercsm730 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lost on the Amazon by R.A. Montgomery is the 24th book in the Choose Your Own Adventure series (or the 9th if it's the reissue edition). This is one of the rare CYOA books that doesn't have a kid for a main character. Instead you are a doctor specializing in third world diseases visiting the Amazon to help treat the lost villages of the forest people. Unfortunately a previous case has held you up and the expedition's had to go on ahead of you. And then it turns out that they've disappeared after being lured deep into the jungle by the sounds of a mysterious flute. Now you must choose whether to go searching for your friends via a small boat guided by a native, a rented plane, or to instead wait a few days and go with the River Patrol.

The books I've previously read by R.A. Montgomery have ranged from not very good to bloody awful and I hadn't heard a lot of positive things about this book. But I really enjoyed reading this! It was very imaginative and full of great atmosphere. One example of this is a headdress a tribe of Amazons gives you resembling a bird cage that contains a pair of small green snakes inside it. As you approach the location of your captured friends and hear the hypnotic flute music playing, the two small snakes slither down from the headdress and stick their heads into your ears to block out the music. You'll also encounter giant anacondas, feeding frenzied piranhas, ghosts, huts full of darkness, banditos, and lots more. I had hoped one path would lead you face to face with a giant alligator since the possibility is mentioned at the books beginning but alas it was not to be.

The downside to the writing is that there is absolutely no continuity at all. The source of the magic flute changes from being from one tribe to another or sometimes it's from the jungle itself. You choose one path and on the next page your friends are all dead but if you choose a different path then on the next page your friends are alive and happy without any of your actions affecting their fates. There are two tribes of Amazons for some reason. And one seemingly friendly tribe of Amazons have your missing friends backpacks piled up by a temple yet in no other path are they connected to the kidnapping and it's never explained. The whole book is like this so if a lack of continuity throughout really bothers you you might want to skip this one. I found it a little irritating or confusing at times but the story's so imaginative that it outweighed my annoyance. It also added to the mysteriousness of the story, which isn't usually the case.

There are a few really obvious choices like to go or not go against the gods or whether or not to tell a friend about a seemingly innocuous knife wound. There are also a few non-endings where the story just ends even though your character's adventure has not (oddly both witch doctor storylines end in non-endings the very next page after his introduction). The art in the original book is by Leslie Morrill and it's some of the best I've seen in these books. The only problem is that it apparently was decided to purposely obscured the main character's face and it leads to some awkward panels. I don't know the rational behind this since the character is a specialized doctor and I doubt that mirrors most of our real lives but it severely limits what the artist can portray and that's a shame. The art in the reissued version isn't nearly as good.

Overall this was a fun read that really had me excited to try all the different paths.

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and constantly borrowed them from the library. I owned a few, too, and would mark little pencilled notations on all the endings I managed to reach in my own copies (I'd tuck aside a piece of paper for the ones from the library). When I was nine and ten, these books got re-read so many times it was unreal, and they paved the way to me wanting to write, too, as sometimes I got annoyed at an obvious, missing option.

[Omar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A doctor who is living in the amazon figures out that his friends have mysteriously disappeared and he wanted to save them but he had no experience going to the forest. So he meets up with a guy that knows a lot about the amazon forests and its mysterious wonders that bestow upon him inside. Then when he meets the guy all that lies in the story is in your hands. Will you survive?

I think this stories theme is suspense because you choose your own path and you never know what is going to happen.