The Friar’s Lantern by Greg Hickey

 
The Friar’s Lantern by Greg Hickey

My Rating: ★★★

I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

In this choose your own adventure novel, you have the chance to join a study about the predictability of human behavior, sit on the jury for a murder trial, and test your luck in more ways than one. Along the way, you will question whether or not every choice you make is predictable or if fate has a huge hand in our lives.

I love choose your own adventure novels, so of course I had to read this book. Compared to other novels in this genre, I thought it was interesting that the basis of this one is a form of nature vs. nurture. However, I do think this book is shorter with a more limited number of endings than other novels in the same genre.

Personally, found this novel lacking in options. After returning to the beginning for the fourth time, I already knew where it was headed due to the lack of choices leading to new areas of an “adventure.” Some of the chapters were information heavy as well and didn’t always impact the next choice. That said, I could follow the author’s train of thought and see what they were trying to do with this, and I think it was a good first time run at doing a choose your own adventure novel.

Some of the chapter titles are a sequence of letters and numbers that appeared to be equations or science notes. Initially, I thought this indicated that at least a few of the paths one could take would gown down a sci-fi path. Paired with the light sci-fi feeling of the novel that reminded me of the indie movie, eXistenZ, I think that a bizarre sci-fi path would not have been outlandish.

While I think the story is lacking in options, I do think it’s a good beginner friendly choose your own adventure novel. I have some friends who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of options with some novels in this genre who would love something with a smaller pool of paths to take. I also think that the author is onto something here and I can see that there’s a lot of potential if they choose to write similar stories in the future.