Last week I stopped into my local library to pick up an item that I had on hold. I hadn’t realized until I walked in that the library was having a huge used book sale. I perused the tables to see if anything caught my eye. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Choose Your Own Adventure book among the stacks of bargain books. I remembered the series fondly from my youth, having checked out many of them from that very same library when I was a kid. Vampire Express by Tony Koltz wasn’t one that I recalled reading, but for the price of 25 cents I couldn’t resist picking it up.
Choose Your Own Adventure books were popular in the 1980s and 90s. The stories, which spanned genres including mystery, sci-fi, fantasy and more, inserted the reader into the role of main character via use of the second-person present tense. (Instead of “Jim entered the haunted house,” it would be, “You enter the haunted house.”) Every so often the reader would come to a decision point and could take control of the narrative by making a choice. If you go up the rickety old staircase, turn to page 17. If you explore the dark and dreary hallway, turn to page 39. Each story had multiple endings, some good and some bad, that were driven by the choices you made.
In an effort to share the wonder of Choose Your Own Adventure with a new generation, I started reading Vampire Express out loud to my daughter, Cora, and letting her make the choices.
The story starts out as you, your friend Nina, and Nina’s aunt, Mrs. West, are riding on a train to Romania. You are going to meet up with your Uncle Andrew to go on an expedition to prove that vampires exist. Mrs. West has an amulet around her neck, and you are traveling with a painting concealed in a wooden box that is in the baggage car. Suddenly Mrs. West becomes quite agitated and goes to check on the painting. She does not return. After a while you and Nina become concerned and go look for her.
The first few choices that you make revolve around who you talk to on the train. There are a couple of men, a pair of gypsies (is that term even PC anymore?), and a count and countess. You also have the option to go to the baggage car and look around there.
Cora chose to talk to the count and countess, who have their own private car. A troll-like servant named Bela answers the door and tries to send you away, but the count shoos Bela aside and invites you in. The count and his wife encourage you to partake in a spread of candy, cookies, pastries and fruit punch. You can choose to accept or decline. Cora chose to decline.
I turned to the appropriate page to decline the treats and resumed reading. I was confused. The page had you and Nina walking into a room that you recognize as your own bedroom back home, and that Nina also somehow observes as being her room. I stopped reading aloud and silently skimmed for a second. Was this some plot twist that was going to make sense in a minute? Not at all, as Uncle Andrew and Mrs. West walk into the room, and the painting (which last we knew was still in the baggage car) begins to growl.
“Sorry,” I said. “I must’ve made a mistake.” I quickly retraced our steps in the book to get back to our last decision point. I double checked the page number for the choice to turn down the treats. Turn to page 112.
I turned to page 112. Sure enough, that was where we had just been. You and Nina walk into a bedroom that you each somehow recognize as your own. Uncle Andrew and Mrs. West walk in. The painting starts growling. Maybe this would’ve made sense if you had accepted the snacks, and they turned out to be laced with LSD.
Cora demanded that I hand her the book so she could check my work and see if she could figure out where I messed up. While she skeptically scoured the pages, I grabbed my phone and did a quick Google search. I doubted there would be anyone else reporting an issue with a Choose Your Own Adventure book published in 1984, but I looked anyway.
Apparently, Vampire Express is well known among Choose Your Own Adventure enthusiasts for having multiple mistakes that send the reader to the wrong page, robbing them of the intended experience. Subsequent printings corrected some of the errors, but apparently it took multiple attempts to get it right. I had a first edition which had the most mistakes.
Upon learning this, I did what any rational person would do. I read through every possible choice in the book, took notes on what all the errors were, then figured out what pages they were really supposed to go to. So, if you, dear reader, are stumbling upon this blog thanks to a Google search of your own after you have also picked up a copy of the original 1984 printing of Vampire Express at a book sale, you are in luck! See the handy chart below for the corrections!
From what I can tell, the fully corrected version sports an alternate cover which depicts two characters riding away from a castle on horseback. I assume the characters are intended to be Nina and “you,” although it might be the author and editor of the original version trying to flee from angry readers.
Flaws aside, this is not a bad example of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It has a creepy and ominous vibe with some interesting characters. One thing that I liked was that there are certain scenes that you circle back to in multiple paths, but they play out a little differently depending on how you got there. For example, that moment of knocking on the door of the count and countess and being greeted by Bela can happen with just you and Nina, or it can happen later when you have another character named Professor Hartz with you. The same illustration of Bela is used for both scenarios, so for a second you might think you’ve found yourself back at a page you’ve already read, but you quickly see that the storyline has changed now that you’ve picked up the Professor on your way there.
On the other hand, the villains of the story don’t really do anything. The count and countess (spoiler alert, they are vampires) are trying to get ahold of the painting and the amulet because the painting has the power to destroy them and the amulet can protect them from the painting. The story doesn’t even commit to its own logic though, because there is one ending where you destroy the vampires with the painting while the countess is still clutching the amulet. Most of the endings are pretty tame, including some where the story ends before you even encounter the vampires. There are a few endings where you defeat the count and countess, and more than a couple where you meet your demise. One involves the train going over a cliff, and there is another where you are surrounded by an army of undead zombies. The most disturbing ending is probably one where you and your friends all become vampires yourselves, and the story concludes with you all heading to town to find people to feed on. There is also one ending that implies the whole thing was a dream, which is an ending that I absolutely hate any time it happens in a movie or TV show.
Overall this was a fun read, and the errors actually made it even more of a unique experience because it prompted me to really explore every possible path. I consider Vampire Express a quarter well spent.
Russ Dimino is the author of Spilling My Guts: A Crohn’s Chronicle. It is not a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.
Despite Reality 