Return to Terror Tower

Give Yourself Goosebumps Special Edition #2

by R.L. Stine

An interactive adventure is a sequel to Goosebumps #27, A Night in Terror Tower, and extends into a create-your-own, fright-filled time trek to the Middle Ages with more than twenty possible endings. Original.

Genres: Horror, Gamebooks, Fiction, Childrens, Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure

136 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

About the author

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Reviews

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a sequel to one of the most iconic Goosebumps stories (and one of my personal faves), Return to Terror Tower has a lot to live up to—and it’s been dealt a very bizarre hand. Instead of a traditional book, Scholastic and Stine’s goons AKA ghost writers decided to make the sequel into—you guessed it—a Give Yourself Goosebumps book. In my humble opinion, Terror Tower is a book that doesn’t a sequel, alike to many Goosebumps stories… but here we are. So… is it any good? Well, as a sequel… it does actually work enough. One thing I highly appreciate here is that there’s a legitimate continuation of that original story, and whilst this isn’t how I personally wouldn’t have done one, it does what it needs to do: it wraps up some loose ends and introduces new ideas to the universe. I liked some ties to the original book, and all-in-all, it is definitely not a bad sequel… but as a book… actually, it’s still good. There’s a lot of fun/quick sections in here where you’re trying to find two of the missing stones (from the original book, of which allow time travel). I liked all of them, even if they were obviously just dragging out the story. I liked all the endings in this one, and some of them are incredibly good and/or dark. My personal favorites are the lost in time ending which occurs early on (don’t give me nightmares) and the one where (spoilers, sorry) a group of charred skeleton dudes skin you alive—YIKES. The climax of the book (having found Eddie and Sue) is solid, the book is generally quite entertaining, and I loved the medieval theming this one heavily relied on. Now for some takeaways: the book doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. From the reason the story even gets going to decisions Edd and Sue make—or in other words, Eddie and Sue being doofuses—makes this story hard to believe to as a legitimate follow up. It’s clear the author isn’t Stine as well (the writing is noticeably different from the get-go, so it’s not even a familiar ghost writer), so that could be why this doesn’t feel like a logical sequel… then again, Monster Blood is somehow a franchise. Whoop-da. What I’m getting at here is that the logic to get this thing to work sucks and that this book shouldn’t even exist, as it doesn’t work even if was going in the right direction. Oh, and the Lord High Executioner felt underused as well as underwhelming af. Overall, 9/10. I want to love it, but I will begrudgingly say it’s a really good book—and a fine yet logically fucked six-ways-from-Sunday sequel to A Night in Terror Tower. I’m not curious as fuck towards a certain other GYG exclusive sequel… or kinda threequel? We shall see… in probably December, god willing.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m sure it helps that I love terror tower but it was so fun being thrown into a story that I love and being able to have an adventure that had so many different ways to go. This one is really fun and there’s a lot of magic and time travel and danger. Just an awesome book.

[Past Zach]

A vaguely medieval choose-your-own-adventure with talking skeletons, glowing stones, and orcs dressed like Robin Hood. Died quite a few times in this one before saving the day.

[Griffin C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is easily one of, if not the best Give Yourself Goosebumps Book of the ones I've read so far.

Pros:
Stine (or a ghostwriter) nailed this book's medieval atmosphere
The book has a total of six locations that can mostly be visited in any order making it somewhat open world
The book is generally very fun
The book improves upon my gripes with the first book

Cons:
It's too short. If you what you're doing, you can easily get the canon good ending in an hour or two
At the start, the book makes a big deal out of needing to bring three out of four items with you despite the fact that only two are actually needed
There should have been more magic and dragon action

9.5/10

[Ally Skinner]

ok

[Shady Alaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

first interactive story to ever read