A review by scottishben
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
3.0
I have a lot of nostalgic good will for "choose your own adventure" type of books and I am always drawn to books that try to do something a little bit different so I was understandably drawn to Meanwhile which is the only choose your own adventure style of graphic novel I am aware of.
Meanwhile is very clever. The way the choose your own adventure works within the story is very well thought out and is a visually appealing follow the string/paths which are utilized together with tabs at the ends of the pages so you never need to turn to page xx but rather just follow the string via the tab to whatever the next page is.
The story itself starts out with a simple choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream but quickly becomes stranger and sillier when you see an inventor with several creations such as a working time travel machine.
I occasionally lost the bit of string I was following and this meant i needed to either start again or retrace my steps but most people will probably have no problem following their path.
One problem with time travel in choose your own adventure type stories is that you can find yourself in loops where you have been somewhere before. You dont want to put a book down part way through a story but you do not want to keep relooping. Dying (in the game) would be better.
I never found my heart warming to this the way my head did. Whether this was the story, the characterization or the illustrations I am not sure. I was glad I got to read it and will enjoy showing it to some other people but it is not something that I think fully realized its potential. It may be in part that with choose your own adventure type stories normally they are written in a way in which you are the protagonist. As soon as your character is a child who you see then it does not work in the same way. Its not choose YOUR own adventure its choose THEIR adventure and that seems very different.
Meanwhile is very clever. The way the choose your own adventure works within the story is very well thought out and is a visually appealing follow the string/paths which are utilized together with tabs at the ends of the pages so you never need to turn to page xx but rather just follow the string via the tab to whatever the next page is.
The story itself starts out with a simple choice between chocolate or vanilla ice cream but quickly becomes stranger and sillier when you see an inventor with several creations such as a working time travel machine.
I occasionally lost the bit of string I was following and this meant i needed to either start again or retrace my steps but most people will probably have no problem following their path.
One problem with time travel in choose your own adventure type stories is that you can find yourself in loops where you have been somewhere before. You dont want to put a book down part way through a story but you do not want to keep relooping. Dying (in the game) would be better.
I never found my heart warming to this the way my head did. Whether this was the story, the characterization or the illustrations I am not sure. I was glad I got to read it and will enjoy showing it to some other people but it is not something that I think fully realized its potential. It may be in part that with choose your own adventure type stories normally they are written in a way in which you are the protagonist. As soon as your character is a child who you see then it does not work in the same way. Its not choose YOUR own adventure its choose THEIR adventure and that seems very different.