Il castello proibito

Choose Your Own Adventure #14

by Edward Packard, Alessandra Padoan (Translator)

The Cave of Time whirls you back to medieval England. You must solve the riddle that leads to the Forbidden Castle, where riches await - and maybe a way home. But the king wants the fortune for himself and his army is right behind you! Which way do you go? If you go through No Man's Forest, turn to p. 74 If you risk the Dragon of the Ledges turn to p. 77. Be careful! In this mystical land, anything can happen! What happens in the story all depends on the choices you make. And the best part is that you can keep reading and rereading until you've had not one, but many incredibly daring experiences!

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

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Edward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text.

The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.

In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Caston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a bit of a sequel to the first old-school one, The Cave of Time. This adventure sees you going to only one place, Medieval England as you navigate the choices and pitfalls of either avoiding the king or embracing his evident madness. Quite enjoyable. Man, that artwork brings me back. It's unreal.

[Peregrine 12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dude, I read this when I was eleven years old - stole/borrowed a copy from a boy who'd checked it out from the school library. (I returned it to him, of course.) Do kids still read these things today? This was one of the formative pieces in my present-day state of bibliophilia. Yay, books! Yay, kids! Yay, books for kids!

[Josiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glancing at the cover you wouldn't guess it, but The Forbidden Castle is the first sequel to Choose Your Own Adventure book one, The Cave of Time. After surviving the time travel labyrinth of caves some time ago, you rediscover the main entrance on a hike in Red Creek Canyon. Peeking inside, you slip and fall, hit your head, and awaken in an empty field. Two men in knight's armor ride up nearby on horseback. Not seeing you, they converse about a riddle regarding the "Forbidden Castle." The knights mention that King Henry of Cotwin Castle has been suspicious of foreigners lately, and you realize that in your modern garb you resemble the strangest of foreigners. Should you risk explaining your time travel story to the knights, or wait for an opportunity less likely to land you in the dungeon?

Hiding while the knights gallop away, a man named Garth sneaks up from behind. An outlaw declared by King Henry, he welcomes you to live with him in the woods. Garth sheds a few rays of light on the riddle the knights spoke of. A monk first told the riddle to King Henry, promising that whoever found the Forbidden Castle would rule all of Europe. To date, no one has solved it. Stay on with Garth, and he teaches you wilderness survival. If you never make it back to your own time you can have a good life here building a network of supporters and earning the king's trust, but perhaps you'd rather move on to the court of Mad King Rufus of Hereford. His castle is grand but his society crazy; are you clever enough to supply the correct nonsense responses to his questions?

Part ways with Garth and go to King Henry at Cotwin Castle, and you're accused of allying with the devil and sentenced to burn at the stake. Coax the king's men into telling you the complete Forbidden Castle riddle before your execution is carried out, and you may be able to convince them you have the solution. Face still hot from the flames, you'll be taxied into King Henry's chambers to share your interpretation of the riddle, but beware: you walk a knife's edge with the king, whose patience is thin. Perhaps you can persuade him to send you and a team on a search for the Forbidden Castle in the French mountains. The journey is tense; the knights will slay you in a heartbeat if they suspect you're conning them. You can attempt escape and hide out at a tavern, where you meet a serving girl named Michelle who's willing to leave with you and hunt for the Forbidden Castle. Go west, and you stumble upon a farm used by a group called the Philosopher Knights. Can they get you past the notorious Dragon of the Ledges to the Forbidden Castle? The Philosopher Knights are amusing yet offer dubious advice. They may be more trouble than they're worth.

Traipsing through No Man's Forest is likely to get you and Michelle killed, but the dragon trail pits you directly against the fire-breathing behemoth. Are you willing to bet your life on the modern certainty that dragons never existed? Surmounting that last stressful obstacle may finally lead to the Forbidden Castle. If you went east and never saw the farm, you and Michelle are chased by wolves; you can scamper up a tree or ford a stream on foot so the wolves lose your scent, but if Count Gaston finds you on his lands, you'll have to decide whether to continue pursuing the Forbidden Castle despite his dire warning. Persistence could earn you passage back into the Cave of Time, but is making it back to your own time worth the gamble of ending up somewhere deadly?

There are earlier paths to success in the book. In one you meet Madame Leeta, who claims prophetic powers. She assumes you have them too because of your electronic wristwatch; she and Baron von Sal plan to search for the Forbidden Castle. You could decline to join them and redouble your efforts to locate the Cave of Time, but throw in with Madame Leeta and you're soon traversing the precarious mountains of southern France. Baron von Sal and Madame Leeta are losing patience with your lack of magical insight, but keep going and you'll wind up at the Forbidden Castle and meet its extraordinary residents. The castle isn't the Shangri-la that grifters and greedy royals dreamed of, but it is a miracle nonetheless, tucked into the mountains of Europe in an era before modern living. Whether or not you return to your own time, a life of discovery centuries before your birth can be the most satisfying future imaginable.

Wherever and whenever a person considers to be their home, life is challenging. Advice that people give you ranges from ludicrous to deceptive to wise, much of it divvied up between the first two categories. An individual or group's claim to enlightenment doesn't make it so, as we see from the Philosopher Knights’ theories of how to outsmart the dragon. Wisdom is crafted via experience and calm, rational thought, not self-congratulation among elitists. Common sense, lateral thinking, and courage are a rare trio, but as necessary to surviving your quest for the Forbidden Castle as they are to flourishing in real life. This book is excellent training to combat foes of circumstance and person; survive the journey to claim sanctuary at the Forbidden Castle, and you'll have proven more perceptive than most.

Subversive, surprising, and brimming with fresh thought, The Forbidden Castle is one of the best Choose Your Own Adventures to this early point in the series, on par with The Cave of Time. There's more than one route to the Forbidden Castle, but pitfalls are many; you'll find yourself speeding along making choice after smart choice, only to grind to a grisly halt with a single decision that's slightly suboptimal. Big prizes aren't handed out blithely; to meet your ultimate goal you have to earn it. This is one of the more immersive, intelligent gamebooks Edward Packard wrote, a highlight of the original series. I come back to The Forbidden Castle when I start forgetting how good Choose Your Own Adventure was at its peak.

[Shelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have such good memories of going to my local library and checking out book after book in the fun series. I read so many that I could never remember them all. These are great for 8-12 year olds. Usually fantasy, the stories break at certain points allowing the reader to choose what a character says or does next. Once a choice is made the reader turns to the corresponding page to face the consequence. Sometimes the story abrubtly ends. The book can be read multiple times with a different story each time. It's good for kids because it teaches how choices create consequences. It's good for parents because they can see their child read the same book several times and really get their money's worth.

[L81ucky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THESE BOOKS! theyre meant for kids and thats when i read this one. i still love them though! its so much fun "writing" your own story!

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books were such a wonderful and engaging idea for a kid- I loved reading them!

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read so many of these books I can't remember all of them.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me gustaría dejar de morir.

[Eduardo Boris Muñiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este es un libro que leí gracias al PopSugar Reading Challenge que estoy haciendo este año. Una de las categorías pide leer un libro de elige tu propia aventura, y este fue el que salió seleccionado. Si no fuera por el Challenge dudo seriamente que hubiera leído este libro, es un tipo de libros que pertenecen más a mi infancia que a esta etapa de mi vida.
Este tipo de libros me volvían loco cuando era niño, el tema es que eran libros caros y era un lujo tener un par. Para los que no conocen de que van son libros en que cada lector toma la decisión de como sigue la historia, dependiendo de la opción que elijan es la página que deben leer a continuación. Usualmente tienen más de 25 finales posibles y casi siempre el 99% de los finales eran bastante malvados (siempre involucraban muertes bastante ingeniosas o graciosas), la gracia era sacar todos los finales o por lo menos llegar a los pocos buenos.
En este libro todo gira entorno a un castillo prohibido, un niño es transportado por razones desconocidas a la edad media y deberá sobrevivir mientras intenta volver a su tiempo. En medio de sus aventuras descubre la existencia de él castillo prohibido y deberá decidir si busca el regreso a casa o el castillo.
Es difícil evaluar este tipo de libros desde la adultez porque son libros de niños, entonces lo importante no es tanto la coherencia de la historia sino que sea entretenido, si lo vemos desde este punto de vista cumple la función y por un rato te engancha con las diferentes opciones y finales.
Si creo que es de los peores en lo que respecta a finales e historia que he leído, la historia en sí no tiene mucho sentido y no engancha ni genera empatia el personaje principal.
De nuevo, es un libro para niños, y con ese fin es más que correcto, le permite a los niños agarrar el gusto de la lectura e indagar en la curiosidad y las ganas de saber más.

[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.

[Matt Littrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to see if the happy memories with these books were all nostalgic, and thankfully they aren't. This wasn't expertly written or gripping, but it was a very fun little read.

[Mark Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, Choose Your Own Adventure, that paper bridge between that 5th grade fantasy map (see my Hobbit review) and my life-changing discovery of Dungeons & Dragons in the 7th grade.

Some of them were great, some punishing, some arbitrary, but they revealed to me for the first time that I could make choices and that they had immediate effect the course on my (fictional) reality. For a kid whose home life felt largely hopeless and inescapable, the empowerment of making my own way by the power of my own choices and facing consequences traceable directly to my decisions - wow!

While day-to-day reality seemed to deal out arbitrary, unpredictable punishments regardless of my actions, here was a place where I could experiment and learn and grow in safety and if I was punished there was always a why.

[Chrissie Whitley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable medieval-based volume in the tried-and-true, Choose Your Own Adventure series. Reading these with my two boys is so fun for us—if there is a conflicting opinion in the matter regarding to which page to turn, we flip a coin and all is well. Usually the reason for the argument is that one of them believes the page-turn chosen by the other is going to result in the inevitable and swiftly delivered death. That death, of course, dealt by the harsh, bold words:

THE END.

In various readings, we managed to die, to simply survive out our book character's life without reaching our goal, and then ... we finally managed to locate the titular forbidden castle, survive, and return home to the present (which was a time when I was a toddler). The ultimate success.

[Ethan L · Rating 4 out of 5]

This medieval story is about a young boy who only wants an adventure in his boring life. The boy finds a cave while walking home from school which he went into. After going into the cave he realizes that he is not in the same time because the sun is setting. He tries to find a place to settle when he suddenly runs into what looks like two castle guards. When I was reading this book I got to choose what I wanted to happen, which made the book more interesting.

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these when I was nine/ten years old, voraciously devouring them and re-reading them over and over. My grade five teacher saw how much I loved them, and brought a "how-to" book to give to me, and I remember writing one of my own. It was probably terrible. Still, these books were one of my gateway books to reading non-stop for most of my childhood.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

So here you go into this time warp and end up in medieval England searching for some treasure, but be careful!

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love these books. Most books you read once but you get more use out of these and you have the power to change the story.

[Kaylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of all of the choose your adventure this is one of my favorite

[saw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This made me very busy!!!!

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Forbidden Castle is another entertaining book from Edward Packard who once again proves that he can write a more cohesive narrative than some other CYOA authors.

This time Packard revisits his original book "The Cave of Time" with our protagonist making the mistake of once again entering the cave only to find themselves stuck in medieval times. After avoiding (or being captured by) authorities because of the way you are dressed (wearing a striped shirt means you must be an evil witch or demon!) you eventually begin a quest to solve a riddle and discover the whereabouts of the Forbidden Castle.

The book actually reminded me of some of the Endless Quest books released by TSR and shows that Edward Packard is pretty good at spinning a tale set in this era of history. I especially enjoyed the portions of the story in which you are teamed up with another character (that you may or may not meet depending which path you follow) for an extended period of time and couldn't help but think with a more in-depth book these two characters would have been fun to see develop their friendship a bit more.

Another decent read from Edward Packard, who was definitely one of the better early CYOA authors.

Oh, and no extra terrestrial encounters either. I felt compelled to at least mention it. :)

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I'd probably rate this more like 2, but if I were a kid in the audience intended, I'm giving it an extra star.

Better writing than many CYOA, twists that make more sense in context of the story. This is still the brutal "you die" a lot, but there are more variety of interesting "you failed" endings.

There is a burning at the stake early on, for parents of littler ones. Seems a bit more graphic than the usual "you're eaten by a shark" suggestions in such books.

[Finestrelle2020 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ripresa l'idea della Caverna del Tempo, Packard ci regala un volume avventuroso, piacevole e con alcune idee assai carine. Ci sono alcuni finali un po' troppo simili e alcune scelte sono contraddette dalla prosecuzione. Nel complesso, comunque, ci si diverte.

[Azalea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this because I wanted to make up my own story. It was okay because it's kind of like making up your own story, but I'd rather write it by myself instead of just making the choices.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly awesome! Plus, it’s a surprise sequel to the first book in the series!

[Ciara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the forbidden castle ( spoilers, the dragon is a wizard of oz style fake).
The cave of time still eludes me...

[Jennifer Abella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one lasted me a while, I made such good decisions.

[Izzyy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hay algunas historias que están bien por ejemplo la de Michelle pero otras bastante sosas, para leer en una horita está bien y para niños, pero no muy pequeños que se hace mención a la muerte.

[Eve · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a fast read. Amusing enough. I ship Michelle and the 20th century kid that doesn’t have a name

[cozierboo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was a young girl and ever since I've fallen in love with literature. :)