The Brilliant Dr. Wogan (Choose Your Own Adventure #17)

This book, and probably all the newer editions of the CYOA series has nice comprehension quizzes for readers like me who have read all the endings. Also, the people quoted are different. There are readers in the front no the inside quoted, but there are 26-29 year olds quoted who miss this part of their childhood me included! It is like that little secret that you like but you do not want to admin if you are as old as I am.There are ads in the back of the book indicating that Montgomery is starting backup some of the children's series of the book, another ad for the Abominable Snowman DVD  Choose Your Own Adventure - The Abominable Snowman . An ad says that there's a book called "The Golden Path" that was released 10/10/07, but I cannot find it on the CYOA website now. I have already written them to ask about the ad. There is also an "Adventurer's Log" where a person can write notes in the book if they would like. The only thing I do not like about the new series is that it is all based on R.A. Montgomery's numbering rather than using the old numbering system.This is the best book that I can remember of R.A. Montgomery's I have read in the series so far. It has mystery, surprises, and a great mix of good and bad endings. Most of the endings are bad. So if you cannot handle that, , avoid #138 and #46 of the old series, and try reading #184 of the old series.You could go anywhere from trusting or avoiding strangers to getting kidnapped to your doom or finding Dr. Wogan and saving the world, publishing her plans so that the whole world instead of no one knows, you could find Dr. Wogan, but both of you end up as prisoners or dead, or you may even find a magical book that does weird things. Montgomery falls short on a few of his endings and they get so wordy that it just isn't great story making. He was trying to think in depth, maybe too in-depth for a teenage story ending in such a way that a few of the endings just do not work. "Time is on your side and both of you know it" does not sound like a great ending at all. Or the ending of "I must escape" without any real indication of if you've actually escaped or not.The CYOA series still do have their "signature bad endings" where instead of saying you "die" or are imprisoned for the rest of your life, their language is more to the tune of (something bad happens) and you become a part of that situation as well.

The book takes place far in the future: 2012. The world has been at the brink of nuclear war for 60 years. Dr. Wogan has invented, or nearly invented (an extremely aggravating detail) a radiation neutralizer that will mitigate against the effect of nuclear weapons. This brilliant scientist must make these plans public so everyone can build one, or else if only a small group of people have their hands on it, they can start a nuclear war, be immune to it themselves, and take over the world.The plot is terrible. I am flabbergasted that this book was reissued. In the era of the internet, the problem of this book is solved: publish the plans, and if they aren't finished yet, let crowd-sourcing work on the problem. If they aren't finished enough so that they would be useful to scientists, then who cares about them? The obvious solution to the problem presented in this book is to widely disburse the plans. Too bad the good doctor wasn't brilliant enough to invent a series of tubes called the internet to disburse his plans!There are literally zero satisfying endings. The neutralizer is never built, and the plans in whatever state they exist are never disseminated. This failure sort of points out how lame the premise of this book is.Other nonsense often ensues in your pursuit of finding Dr. Wogan, who has left our group of scientists (the Delta group -- we are world famous!) because word of his invention has gotten out, and he feels he is in danger. No one seems concerned at finding the traitor within Delta Group who let certain evildoers know about this device -- which seems like a major faux pas. And even though I am a young kid, I am implausibly inserted into a number of dangerous situations, and acknowledged by friend and foe to have a key role in whatever is going on, even though what is going on is never quite clear.They also don't mention that a nuclear weapon can still do plenty of damage, even if the effects of radiation are eliminated. None of it really makes much sense, and if you're like me, you won't understand what you are doing, or care very much.In a first for me, I noticed that one of the choices explained your rationale in arriving at the choices, "Do x because you don't trust them, or do y, but keep an eye on them the whole time" something like that. I did appreciate that subtle detail, because the big details were simply absent.I don't recommend devoting a scientific career to inventing a radiation neutralizer, but if anyone tries it, it should be Antonio Cesaro.