War with the Mutant Spider Ants

Choose Your Own Adventure #152

by Edward Packard

While exploring the bayous of the Everglades, you discover a strange creature that looks like a cross between a spider and an ant. Quickly you find yourself under attack by hundreds of them. You try to escape by running down a path, only to reach a giant web with bird feathers and bones entagled in its thick, sticky strands. A clear sign for you to vamoose!" But turning back, you realize these clever spider ants have blocked you in with another web. Should you try to break through? You look around for another way out. Should you wade through the swamp? Its so murky, you can't tell what might be lurking in there.

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

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

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

[Josiah]

This book had me on the edge of my seat from the first page. What raises the stakes is that the spider ants are so powerful, the possibility exists for them to take over the planet. Another part of the story's success is Edward Packard's plotting, the way the narrative whips around unexpected curves like a fast-paced roller coaster. War With the Mutant Spider Ants is one of Edward Packard's best books, and that is saying something.

[Ichika27]

I read this as a child and enjoyed it but I don't remember much about it anymore as t's been a long time.

[JKR]

The premise is a bit ridiculous (giant mutant spider ants that eat people have evolved in the Everglades!) but the adventure is genuinely exciting.

[Jacek]

In the Everglades, you encounter a new species - mutant spider ants, because ants and spiders are too cute and cuddly on their own. You must try to survive their onslaught, without succumbing to the other dangers of the Everglades. This is an engaging book, and it gets a little unsettling, as the mutant spider ants are perfectly content to eat humans, including on especially happy ending where they eat you in your hospital bed. Don't worry, they don't eat you in every ending, as sometimes they poison you and then eat you, or simply use their webs to immobilize you completely. Of course, the mutant spider ants are also dangerous as they distract you from the other dangers of the Everglades - quicksand, alligators, and lightning strikes while on open water. In fact, if you accidentally enter quicksand, you are doomed no matter what you choose, as either you sink in the quicksand, or the mutant spider ants catch while you are trying to get out of the quicksand. Sweet dreams.

[Emerson]

why don't they write kids books like they did back in the days of huck finn and alice in wonderland? boooooo!

ps: the spider ants were totally phoning it in.

[Sheila Read]

the adventures that I went through when I was bored I just read these books over and over again you would never get to the end of the story.