A Man With An Agenda

This is a splendid take on the childhood favorite 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series. The 'A Date With Destiny' series only has one other title -  'Night of a Thousand Boyfriends'.

'Escape From Fire Island!' finds you and your narcissistic best friend Jose battling the weekend crowds to Fire Island only to have a zombie apocalypse break out almost as soon as you set out your towel.

First of all, let's get the bad stuff out of the way: some of the humor is dated. The jokes against drag queens and transsexuals can easily be taken the wrong way. There is a spirit of fun to the piece, but....urgh. On the other hand, the radioactive zombies' "tells" are a penchant for boas and calling you Mary as their press on nails slice open your throat, so some aggressive language against the queen zombies is to be expected.

The other problem I had was more mechanical, in several instances the exact page is duplicated: same text, same directions at the bottom, etc. Why not just have instructions go back to one page instead of wasting space? We could have fit in a couple more story threads with those pages.

Everything else about this book is amahzing. The cover design and interior illustrations call back to the original book series and it was a lot of fun seeing all the adventures to be had while saving Fire Island from Champagne Toast's zombie horde and/or President Bush's nukes. There were mermen, there were sexy secret agents, there were glory holes. It has everything.

I needed a good laugh, and you probably do too. This should do the trick.