A review by vimesbootstheory
Secret of the Ninja by Jay Leibold

adventurous informative

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

1.5

I feel like Leibold actually wanted to write a regular, non-CYOA book, but somehow he ended up with the opportunity to write a CYOA book so he just shoved one of his special interests into the format. I did kinda like that he clearly did more than the expected amount of research to write a kids book about ninjas, but to be honest, it got a big bogged down in the exposition and the anchoring in real history, so that in the end, he really just took this way too seriously. There aren’t enough choices, and when there WERE choices, they felt railroaded. Like when I chose to go back into the past to ninja times (because of COURSE I did), the book was like, are you sure? There are other options that are not time travel? Like, fuck off, of course I want to time travel, are you kidding me?