Doctor Who: Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken

Doctor Who: Choose the Future #1

by Jonathan Green

When one choice can lead to triumph or failure, life or death, glory or destruction . . . which will you choose? WithChoose the Future, YOU decide how, when, where and with whom the Doctor will fight to save the world! In this brand new adventure, Night of the Kraken, the Twelfth Doctor meets a roguish time-smuggler and faces a terrifying creature from the deep with a plan to destroy the Earth. The fate of the Doctor and the universe he protects are in your hands...

Genres: Doctor Who, Gamebooks, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Novels, Media Tie In, Choose Your Own Adventure

252 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2016

About the author

Jonathan Green is a writer of speculative fiction, with more than seventy books to his name. Well known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy range of adventure gamebooks, he has also written fiction for such diverse properties as Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Sonic the Hedgehog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Moshi Monsters, LEGO, Judge Dredd and Robin of Sherwood.

He is the creator of the Pax Britannia series for Abaddon Books and has written eight novels, and numerous short stories, set within this steampunk universe, featuring the debonair dandy adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver. He is also the author of an increasing number of non-fiction titles, including the award-winning YOU ARE THE HERO – A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

He has recently taken to editing and compiling short story anthologies, including the critically-acclaimed GAME OVER and SHARKPUNK, published by Snowbooks, and the forthcoming Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu.

To find out more about his current projects visit www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com and follow him on Twitter @jonathangreen.

Reviews

[Taksya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classico libro gioco, crei l'avventura in base alle risposte proposte per ogni azione.
Il dodicesimo Dottore, alieni, villaggi abbandonati, fari misteriosi... veloce, semplice, un classico prodotto per ragazzi.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun choose your own adventure style book featuring the 12th Doctor. It was pretty short and it felt like it could have done with a bit more content as the couple of read-throughs I did didn't take very long at all. Despite this I still enjoyed it and Jonathan Green managed to capture the spirit of the 12th Doctor very well. I'll probably return to this again to try out different paths through the story.

[Brooklyn Tayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was yet another fabulous buddy read with Natalia. We were both pleasantly surprised with how 12 was actually written as canon, for once. And we had a lot of fun swapping pictures and talking about our choices as we were reading :)

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not the compelling/exciting/dark delight that I found in many of the classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels, but it maintains a good atmosphere and it has the 12th Doctor well characterized. A soft bit of nostalgia for younger days.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3233521.html

As with Green's previous game book, The Horror of Howling Hill, this is set in southern England - 18th century Cornwall, to be precise - and is rather well written, capturing the Capaldi Doctor very well. It has several different storylines, most of which revolve around the Kraa'Kn (an aquatic alien monster, of course) with a galactic smuggler and a barmaid playing walk-on roles, but other variants include the Terileptils and a brief appearance of a clockwork robot. There are numerous endings, including one in which the Doctor is killed by zombies and another in which he is stuck in a perpetual time loop.

A structural gimmick which was new to me - at several points your choice is constrained by what has happened before, eg chapter 78:

- If the Doctor has already visited the Hispaniola Inn, go to 142.
- If not, go to 103.

This is a very interesting way of creating new lines through the structure. Unfortunately it's a bit too clever - there is a set of five chapters, starting with Chapter 12, which are orphaned (and I couldn't see where they were meant to fit - Chapter 12 starts with the Doctor heading toward the village with the smuggler, but no other chapter offers that as an option).

Anyway, more interesting than I expected.

[Helen (they or he) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. This needs more choices and more endings. The appeal of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books is that they are supposed to be fun! They should be full 0f possibilities with many different choices which will ultimately lead to a different path from which you took last time. It's not fun when you choose a different path and then end with the same path. That's no different from a normal book then, is it?

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doctor Who: Choose the Future: Night of the Kraken is a systemless gamebook (that is, it doesn't require dice rolling) written by prolific gamebook author Jonathan Green. The story encompasses an encounter that The Doctor has upon visiting one of the earlier Centuries on the planet Earth, but exactly where the plot goes is up to the reader.
Now, clearly The Doctor is the star of the show here, as he is always is when it comes to anything Doctor Who, but that isn't to say there aren't a few interesting side characters to meet along the way. I quite enjoyed the barmaid Bess, so much so that I actually wish she'd played a bigger part in the overall narrative as The Doctor's companion. Being that these are not recurring characters from the television show, you won't really know much about them going in and you're not likely to learn much more either, as there isn't really time for character development when the future of the Earth is at stake! The story has one specific narrative device, that is, the root cause of the difficulties experienced by the seaside town of Bosmouth (yes, there's a little play on HP Lovecraft there), and the varying paths will often steer you back to this plot. Otherwise there are actually several paths with varying stories and protagonists who will be involved in this plot (for example, one playthrough might have a simple group of people battling against a swarm of aquatic creatures, whereas another storyline might involve a powerful alien being unrelated to those same monsters, even though the sea creatures still play a part. The story pads along at a hectic pace, and is quite amusing mostly due to The Doctor's less-than-serious outlook on everything.
I should say at this point that there might be the odd time where this book is its own worse enemy. For example, my first playthrough had me making decisions I considered honourable and logical, and led to and ending which seemed like it was really good, and possibly the best ending of the book. The story leading to that ending wasn't the most engaging fare, however. Now, while some readers might just put the book down at that point, having 'read' it already, I continued re-reading through from beginning to end until I'd encountered what I believe to be all of its content (so much so that I discovered a couple of orphaned sections, which isn't uncommon with gamebooks). As I did this, I encountered storylines which were much more fun than the first one I've experienced, and led to endings which were even better (though not all of the endings are happy ones). This could be problematic for a book of this kind, as some readers will play it once, get possibly a story that doesn't engage them, and then spread via word of mouth that the book might not be very interesting. That would be a shame, as there's a tonne of fun and some interesting characters to meet for those who explore.
I do think Doctor Who fans will get more out of the book than people who aren't regular watchers of the television show, as there are references to things and technologies that readers might not understand if they don't know the background of the wacky universe of The Doctor. The book is still a fun read, though, so I do recommend it for Doctor Who fans and readers who want a bit of interactivity in their books.

[Samael Kovacs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so cool!

Don't know why I never found out about these choose your own adventure novels but I'm glad I finally did. The 12th Doctor was also very much in charchter here which doesn't always happen so that was great.

Because it's a choose your own adventure I can't really say things about the story because it's so diffrent every time but I really loved the endings I got. Defentily going to revist this soon.

Can't wait to read the rest in the series!

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little bit disappointing. You have to make some extremely specific choices to get some of the better endings, and the story itself is very barebones.

It could have done with some more QA testing too, as in my first "play through", the story completely broke. I reached a certain point and the doctor suddenly knew about the monsters and had a plan to defeat them, despite having never met them.

Hopefully the other books in this series are a bit better.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know how one marks a book like this finished, but I have done many of the story possibilities and would like to put it down. It's a wild ride and it's fun to see 12 written canonically instead of, well, not. I loved it and I hope there are more.

[Michela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little book to enjoy over and over: it is a gamebook, in which you can decide what the Doctor does at the end of each chapter. You do not read it from start to finish, but you follow the story, and I love those! I really recommend it.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A choose your own adventure story featuring the 12th Doctor. I read through it twice, with varying results. In both versions the Doctor wins and the alien is destroyed. The second time there wasn’t even a Kraken. 🤨

[Rob Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style book, although the format does leave the story very light in depth. There are very discernable storylines that make revisiting it a must after your first attempt.

[Madison Povelaitis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great! Got the less than stellar ending - time to reread!

[Dimity Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like watching it, being there - everything! Love these.

[Rue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Choose your own adventures are never very deep, but it was fun nonetheless.

[Barry Hammock · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many choices, and so many outcomes. Quite enjoyable.

[Joti Stratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

If “Choose the future” books are your thing this is perfect, unfortunately they are not for me, however I can appreciate the appeal.

[Gloo The third · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accidently killing the doctor in 50 pages or less, 10/10!

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. I'm not big a fan of choose your own adventures to begin with and somehow, I picked the shortest version of this story...

[MrCampop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun choose your path book.

[Kribu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure how one marks a book like this finished, and I'm fairly certain I haven't managed to explore all the possible story threads, but frankly, the book smells so bad that I can't seem to spend more than 8-10 minutes at a time with it before feeling like throwing up (yeah, I know, I'm supposed to love "the feel and smell of real books" but the combination of paper and ink is awful in this one, sorry).

So I'll probably be dipping in and out whenever I feel like it, but for the time being, I'm marking it finished since I've read at least a fair amount of the possibilities.

And. Well.

I didn't grow up with books of the "choose your own adventure" kind so maybe that's the problem, and obviously I'm not the target audience anyway, but whatever the reason, I'm not really getting on with the format. Maybe if the bits were longer? As it is, it seems I've spent twice as much time flipping the pages and trying to locate the next bit than I have reading, and this means a very disjointed reading experience.

Other than that - does it feel like all I'm doing is complaining? because it feels like that to me, oops - I actually enjoyed the story bits (that I could locate and tease out and make sense of) well enough. There's one with the Terileptils that was okay. And some possibilities involving Bess the barmaid that were promising.

Ultimately, I do think I'm just, well, not really the right audience for this. I'd much prefer a book of straightforward short stories - or barring that, a book with much longer sections between making one choice or another. But since it seems we're not getting any actual novels, or anything beyond comics featuring the Twelfth Doctor at all this year (other than the Christmas special on TV), this new line will have to do, I suppose. A chopped up, disjointed, ultimately quite unsatisfying Twelve is still better than no Twelve at all, after all.

... How far I have fallen.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Green, “Night of the Kraken: Doctor Who – Choose the Future” (​​London: London, 2016).

A fun interactive way of reading about a classic character.
Examples of the story:

(Entry 1)
“With a grinding wheeze the TARDIS materialises and comes to a juddering halt.
'Right' says the Doctor, straightening the lapels of his jacket and running a hand through his wiry grey hair. 'Let's take a look around, shall we?'”

(Entry 85)
“'Zombies and mysterious strangers with the wrong weaponry for this century aren't exactly normal, are they? I mean, they are if you're me, but not for everyone else.'”

(Entry 98)
“'Evening, all!' the Doctor says, in an effort to ingratiate himself with the locals, all the while wishing he had someone here to guide him through this social minefield.”

(Entry 130)
“Something suddenly steps out from the gloom of the graveyard in front of the Doctor. At that same moment the clouds pass away from the rising moon, and the church and the graveyard are bathed in eerie light.”
- - -
Note: In our first reading we came to Entry 133 which included information that we hadn't encountered before so it made no sense. This must be a mistake.
“'What does it do?' Asks Ravenwood.
'Gets you, and the Kraa'Kn, out of hot water,' replies the Time Lord.”

On our second reading we took a different route and came to Entry 55 which introduced this creature to the narrative: “'Kraa'Kn! Primitive, vicious and usually hungry!'”
- -
When one choice can lead to triumph or failure, life or death, glory or destruction . . . which will you choose?
With "Choose the Future," YOU decide how, when, where and with whom the Doctor will fight to save the world. In this brand new adventure, "Night of the Kraken," the Twelfth Doctor meets a roguish time-smuggler and faces a terrifying creature from the deep with a plan to destroy the Earth. The fate of the Doctor and the universe he protects are in your hands.

[Dani Lestrange · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bueno, he leído ya varias opciones de este libro y creo que ya va siendo la hora de marcarlo como leído...
Se nota que no sería jamás el Doctor, porque todas las elecciones que tomo acaban con la historia yendo fatal así que... bueno. Es mi primera experiencia en este tipo de historias en las que eliges tú y la verdad es que me lo he pasado bastante bien. La historia es sencillita, nada del otro mundo, tampoco, y las opciones aunque limitadas están bien hiladas y aunque un poco cortas, te llevan más o menos hacia el target en el que está enfocado el libro, que supongo que será un target un tanto más joven que el resto de libros.
Aun así, el libro está bien para pasar un rato y ya digo, nada del otro mundo.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

More fun than it is good, because of the "Choose the Future" format. Still manages to be a recognizable Doctor Who story, though, with all that this entails. Brilliantly well put together, I thought, but I found that I am perhaps too old to be flipping pages back and forth this much. I got three distinct tales out of this before I had a section overlap, so definitely worth the money and Fall Break reading time.

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this! review to come :)

[Donna Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been years since I read a "Choose your own adventure" story and it was fun. I have another one on hand from the public library, so off to start that one

[Sofie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not in any way an amazing piece of literature, but the choose your own adventure format is very enjoyable and nostalgic :)