Stake Your Destiny: Hit or Miss?

[Cohen]

So after the initial Buffy novel series ended in 2004, SimonPulse came out with 4 Stake Your Destiny books, in the vein of the "choose your own adventure" books that were very popular in the late 80s/early 90s. There were 4 books that came out: Keep Me in Mind, Colony, Night Terrors, and The Suicide King. Now, when I first heard of these novels, I was averse to getting them, because I thought they would be lame. I remember purchasing one of them, though I can't remember off the top of my head which one, about 6 years ago or so, and I didn't hate it. It was similar to the other Buffy novels, but the reader gets to choose how the book plays out. I am looking to buy some of these in the next few weeks or so because these are the few novels that I never read initially and I want that experience of reading a Buffy novel for the first time again.

Have any of you read a "Stake Your Destiny" novel? Which one? Compared to the initial Buffy novel line, how did you enjoy it? Did making the decisions affect your enjoyment of the novel?

 

[thrasherpix]

I hadn't heard of these. I'm interested, too. Maybe I'll get 'em from the library, assuming they're still being published (or otherwise not an obscene price online so that the library can be expected to).

I'm also curious to any who read them...

1. Is it coherent or random? That is, does that backdrop change. For example, in the old CYA books, many would randomly change a character or event so that it made no sense. It just random whether you got a good ending or not, and hurt my enjoyment of them after awhile. Others were more like a game (video or RPG) in which what you choose is actually important, because the story your character is in remains consistent, and while your choices affect what happens, the plot and characters won't randomly change.

2. Are they designed to focus on what's important to the reader? For example, you could have a ship-intensive (pick one) narrative, or skip over it, depending on the choices you make. Or you could focus on mystery or combat, friendship or where say Buffy (or maybe even another character) is mostly on her own. This seems like a good marketing idea, but I don't recall it being used before. It would interest me more if this was the case.

3. Related to the previous, is it a "Disneyland" setting? By that I mean you can go to whatever evil is brewing you want, be it vampires, witches, a demon, or whatever. Give Yourself Goosebumps was like that (as best I recall). They were like several short stories in one book that weren't actually connected to each other (beyond being in the same book).

4. Are they all about happy endings, or so many tragic endings that it becomes funny? (Lots of CYA were the latter, especially those by RA Montgomery.) Or is it more like a regular book more or less, only different paths (and perhaps different results) based on which page you choose.

 

[Miss Muffet]

I have 2 and have done it a couple times. It was pretty interesting, and you stay Buffy through the whole thing. I was shocked when I was killed for the first time, but I will forever be happy I have them if only for this one portion of The Suicide King:

You [Buffy] have something stuck in your head and you can't get it out. Not like a pickaxe or a piece of shrapnel, but rather something far more painful, far more insidious: a Barry Manilow song. It lodged itself there last night when you went patrolling with Angel; he was whistling a tune that started as a haunting Irish lullaby and ended as the chorus of "Mandy". You could forgive a lot of things that come out of that vampire-with-a-soul's mouth, but this isn't one of them.

 

[Plasma]

I’ll have to check these out sometime. You’re a really bad influence @Cohen 😂

I can’t attest to these books, but I do remember reading some of those Give Yourself Goosebumps type books from when I was younger. I also read a Batman comic recently that was a choose your own adventure style where Batman would die these awful deaths if you chose wrong. 😂 I remember one choice in particular asked which villain you went after, and if you chose the wrong one the next page was just this garish page of him getting gunned down 💀

I really enjoy the “Choose Your Own” style of books. It’s always fun to go your own path and see how it would turn out. I particularly remember the Goosebumps ones having some seriously distressing endings. Not for everybody, I’m sure, but for people who enjoy RPGs like myself I consider them a slam dunk

 

[Cohen]

I just won a (super) rare copy of the Stake Your Own Destiny novel Night Terrors! And it’s signed by the author, like new! I can’t wait to read

 

[Taake]

These have completely passed me by, but it sounds fun. Let us know how thé book is!