Akotsko.substack.com has added a new review for Ryan North‘s “Star Trek: Lower Decks – Warp Your Own Way”:

As a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure novels—at least until I really, really didn’t. For a lonely, cerebral kid like me the concept was irresistible. I would get to escape into a story, but I would also be able to control the events! Something similar drew me to video games, but I gradually discovered that, like the earliest Nintendo games, CYOA books tended to be punitively difficult and maddeningly frustrating. No sooner had I worked my way to something interesting, finally, when I would invariably make some arbitrary error. Somehow I was just supposed to know that you shouldn’t mention the South Pole when time-traveling to the Middle Ages, or that saying “hi” rather than “hello” would lead to me getting pushed out the airlock. When my mom finally decided to defy my wishes and buy me a regular, linear novel at the book fair instead of yet another CYOA, I was initially annoyed, but I quickly learned the pleasures of a story that is carefully crafted not to kill the hero in dozens if not hundreds of random ways.

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