Terror in Australia

Vyber si vlastné dobrodružstvo #11

by Shannon Gilligan, Howard Simpson (Illustrator)

The reader's decisions will determine what happens when he or she travels to Australia to help Uncle Gilroy, a famous archaeologist, search for an ancient civilization

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

113 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1988

About the author

Shannon Gilligan began writing fiction for a living after graduating from Williams College in 1981. She has written over fifteen books for children, including eleven in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She spent a decade working on story-based computer games in the 1990s. Gilligan's day job is publisher of Chooseco, a company she co-founded alongside her late husband, R.A. Montgomery. She lives in Warren, Vermont, but travels widely.

Reviews

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay ... not that many choices though. All the exciting stuff happened without my accord.

[Russ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Be careful, reads the dust jacket: "You might be picked up by the Australian Intelligence Service--or by foreign terrorists!" With a blurb like that, a book cover with a kid who has to takeover the cockpit of an airplane, the title Terror in Australia, and a 1980s publication date, I assumed that a skyjacking would be one of the possible storylines. No such luck! That was a letdown.

A few of the adventures do involve a terrorist group, the "Brotherhood of Allah," (operating on the ground, not in the sky) who you must outwit. If you don't, a supply of uranium in Australia's Gibson Desert could fall into their hands.

Meanwhile, your uncle is searching for the lost civilization of "Satyrion." The bad guys are using your uncle's expedition either as cover or to help them get where they need to go.

It's fun. Like other CYOAs, it's tricky to know if you're making a good or bad decision, and whether you're going to finish the adventure prematurely or after your bedtime!

But several of the adventures in #81 ended while you're in transit trying to connect with Uncle Gilroy. The ratio of lame endings is a tad high and the meatier adventures are too rare for me to give this one more than two stars.

[Nick Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

The old Choose Your Own Adventure books were prone to occasional errors, but Struggle Down Under is the second in a row of the reprint series that I've read with multiple path-breaking mistakes, which is unforgivable.

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shannon Gilligan wrote a couple of the more lauded mysteries in the original Choose Your Own Adventure canon. How would she fare with an archaeological thriller containing hints of aboriginal mysticism? A resident of Melbourne, Australia, you feel lucky when your parents go on vacation for three weeks and leave you home alone, but the excitement hasn't even begun. Your twenty-year-old uncle Gilroy T. Adams, an archaeologist, is featured in the Melbourne Age newspaper that morning for finding an amulet he believes came from an ancient society called Satyrion. Gilroy calls you on the phone but sounds more nervous than triumphant. He's in Alice Springs but will head back to the Gibson Desert dig site in a few days, and wants you to join him. Your parents never let Gilroy take you on his excursions, but with them out of the country, here's your opportunity. Should you travel to Alice Springs by train to save a few dollars, or airplane for faster arrival?

Things take a weird turn on the train. You run into a jittery man clutching a briefcase; investigate further and you'll find he's a government operative who has Uncle Gilroy in his sites and is authorized to use lethal force. The man won't hesitate to have you eliminated if you hinder him, and even if you make it to Alice Springs and gain allies among the aborigines, your fate is unlikely to be a happy one. You might be better off ignoring the man completely, but at the train station you are met by a woman named Anna Williams who claims Gilroy sent her. Your mental alarm should be ringing, but spurning Anna sends you into a madcap adventure with a gang of camel thieves. Go with Anna, and you get wrapped up in a plot apparently orchestrated by the Australian Intelligence Service in tandem with Gilroy. Your uncle has stumbled upon uranium, and the Brotherhood of Allah terrorist group plans to pillage it for their own ends. You can accompany Gilroy to the real dig site, or go with the government agent posing as your uncle and hope to assist in the terrorists' apprehension. Be careful; you could wind up stranded among a large group of the bad guys, desperate to signal that you require help. The race to finish Gilroy's excavation is intense and often violent.

Going to Alice Springs by airplane has its own complications. The first departure is fully booked, but you could accept a berth aboard a mail flight. Nature conspires against you, though, as a storm cell no one forecast threatens your plane. You're savvy enough to execute a guided crash landing even after the two pilots suffer sudden ailments, but will you survive being stranded in the desert? You could bypass the mail flight and wait for the first available commercial one; in that case you meet Gilroy at the airport without any real drama. Gilroy and his friends Bininuwuy—an aboriginal tracker—and Fifi Redburn bring you up to speed on their theories regarding Ancient Satyrion. A man on the plane made a strange remark to you that may prophesy where Gilroy should dig, but was the man right? You're close to uncovering the truth about why Satyrion vanished thousands of years ago...and the answer could be relevant to the world today.

I'm going to say it: Terror in Australia is one of the worst Choose Your Own Adventures in the original series. Coincidence is a constant heavy burden on the narrative, and way too much goes unexplained. For instance, why are the two mail flight pilots afflicted by maladies at the same moment? Was it foul play, and if so, by whom? There are a dozen or more instances of the author creating unnecessary stumbling blocks for her story. A single ending explains the legacy of Satyrion, and is nothing but tone deaf political propaganda. There were brief moments I thought Terror in Australia could be great, but I struggle even to rate the final product one and a half stars. This is a study in what to avoid when writing a gamebook.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

These books are so fun. However, my first read-through wasn't very fun because I was killed/maybe put into a coma before I was able to figure anything out.

[Speck Rejk · Rating 4 out of 5]

P87 from 68 -huh? Was there a mistake?
P67 from 50 is a definite mistake made in the pages

[GM Hayes-McCloskey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is horribly racist, sexist, and xenophobic. Children should be supervised when reading this choice-making fiction book.

My husband and I found this title in his childhood collection. We decided to revisit the series for old times sake. It was a mistake.

[Mikana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the choose your-own-adventure books during my early years, and believe these are a great set of books for those who are new to reading their own books.