Golden Sword of Dragonwalk

Twistaplot #4

by R.L. Stine, David Febland (Illustrator)

It's a riveting fantasy, it's a choose-your-own adventure Twistaplot--it's a wild new work from a bestselling author. R.L. Stine leads his legion of fans to a new realm populated by dragons, sorcerers, valiant knights, and a kid who accidentally opens an attic door into their world and now must save it.

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

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

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

[Dope Ghost Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

R.L. Stine's contribution to the Twist A Plot series which served as the prototype for his Give Yourself Goosebumps series, where you choose the way the story progresses...managing to trick many kids into thinking they did just that, but many of the choices wound up being repetitive or aligned with other options secretly.

Anyway, this is a pretty simple fantasy-adventure book to wade through, very easy to find a good ending, so long as you wade through it with average compotency. I'm sure smaller children (who this was meant for) will have more of a blast with it, considering it tough, but yeah, my adult-ass self reread it for nostalgia's sake, and I finished it in ten minutes.

Kudos to that fantastic Scholastic artwork though! I miss vintage Scholastic cover art.

[Tym · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty standard fare, fun but doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the table

[Danielle Notz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This kept me entertained as an adult for hours. I can’t imagine how long a kid would spend with this.

[fanboyriot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the high fantasy vibes and overall the choices were ridiculous and hilarious to read.

POV: Choose Your Own Path
Would I Recommend? Maybe
Emojis Based on Vibes: 🔮⚔️🐉

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book came out, I thought it was the best choose-your-own-adventure book ever to be published, in spite of the fact that I was really a couple of years past the target audience. It had such a fun attitude, quirky sense of humor, and fast-paced adventure model, that I thought it could not be surpassed. It’s not quite as perfect to me now, but still has a nostalgic enjoyability for me.

“You,” the protagonist, are imagined as a kid about 12 years old, who is forced by your grandmother into taking care of Stacy, a much younger child. This tends to set “you” up as imagined male, but it isn’t necessary to the storyline that the reader think this. As you head off to find something to do in your grandmother’s house, you discover a secret portal to a medieval fantasy world, ala The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The world you discover is a good deal nastier than anything CS Lewis ever gave us, with man-eating dragons right at the gate, flesh eating trees, and corrupt frog warriors, as well as an evil sorcerer to defeat. I think part of what was fun for me, actually, was the fact that you died amusingly in a number of the outcomes, but could easily start over and try again without wasting too much time. Also, there are some interesting choices you can make: toward the beginning of one pathway, you choose a “traveling companion,” either a warrior, a magician, or a merchant, and depending on which one is with you, you may be able to resolve certain problems more quickly. It’s not always the one you would expect that gets you out of trouble, either. There’s also a number of choices that depend upon you picking random numbers, which probably reminded me of D&D, which I was fairly fanatical about at the time.

Looking at it now, I would say that there are fewer paths than I would have liked, and fewer endings as well. It’s more linear than it really appears, because there are two ways to get to the same point, and because you die so many times trying. But, it still has that quirky fun attitude that makes it better than most “children’s books” of the period. A joy for fans of the genre, at least

[Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to love the find your own adventure books as a kid. I stumbled on these recently and was delighted - it wasnt' what Stine usually wrote, or at least what *I* thought he wrote. I've been trying to get my son into these. This one isn't the thriller genre like his Goosebumps, but it's a fantasy/action-adventure type where a kid, who must bring along a bratty 7 year old relative, has to use an ancient sword to save a mystical place from an evil wizard. Yeah, that kind of does sound Narnia now that I think about it, but there are differences in the story. There are dragons, forest trees that try to trap you for someone else's dinner, and other perils. Sometimes I grew irritated with the decisions (I'm older now...)and I found all three endings slightly weak - still, these books were great ideas for kids and Stine wrote this one well.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this when I was a young kid. I loved these kinds of books where you get to choose your own adventurous path..."Turn to page 6 if you want to fight the Green Knight. Turn to page 8 if you want to run away". Though very short, for an 8-yr old kid, it was packed with adventure, bravery, close calls, and certain "death". More books should be written like this for kids to help pique their imagination and draw them into the joys of reading. My only complaint is that it should be much longer, at least 50-60 pp.

[Ashleigh Furry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first time ever reading a "choose your own" book. It was certainly interesting but not quite my thing I suppose. the story can't feel fun for me when I have to keep reading directions and boucing to different pages but I can see where others would really love it.

[Tongchheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book sucks.

[April-lyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating probably isn't super fair considering it's a gamebook intended for children, but in my humble opinion a good book should be enjoyable by anyone regardless of age, and the story laid out in this book, besides being a horrible hack job of the Narnia series, was uninspiring and bland. Good enough for some brief enjoyment before sleep, but not anything special.