Basic Information:
Author: Tim Ddopulos
Edition: Kindle
Publisher: Aconyte
ISBN: 9781839081590 (ISBN10: 1839081597)
Start Date: April 22, 2024
Read Date: May 5, 2024
272 pages
Genre: Fiction, Book Group, Role Play
Language Warning: Low-Violence
Rated Overall: 3 out of 5
Fiction-Tells a good story: 2 out of 5
Fiction-Character development: 3 out of 5
Synopsis:
This is a role playing book where you get to follow along She-Hulk and her legal paraprofessional. The idea is that She-Hulk(Jen), has been hired by a former opponent of She-Hulk to track down who has been framing her for a murder.
You are given a certain set of attributes which you build on as you progress through the book. Progress is through either you deciding which avenue to take or the results of a battle. Eventually you get to a place where you find out who the murderer is unless you get killed off.
- Recommendation: Peter from Book Group
- When: October 2023
- Date Became Aware of Book: October 2023
- Why do I want to read this book: Book Group, fun read
- What do I think I will get out of it? Not too much
Thoughts:
The recommendation my book group got was to:
for She-Hulk you'll need a pad of paper (I managed okay with one sheet, but I could easily see it requiring or being made easier by multiple ones). You'll also need 2 D6s [six sided dice]and something to write with (a pencil may be ideal as you'll be adjusting numbers as you go).
I also think it would be a good idea to go through the book twice. (Not right after each other, go through it once and then a week or so later do it again. This way you can have a different experience / make different choices without immediate repetition.)
Being the retired geek I am, I created a spreadsheet on Google Sheets which seemed to do the job as well. It contained the following tabs:
Progress.
I had two columns: Chapter and action
If I do this again, I would add five more columns: Decision, Go to Chapter, Round One, Round two and Round Three-I think there was one chapter with a round three
CoreStats-Since you gained and lost points along the way, I created a row which summed up all of the points gained or lost in each characteristic
Chapter
Power, Charm and Concentration-which were the three main characteristics
Columns for the Characteristics which the character picked up along the way.
Dice Roll. I had two dice. Since Google Sheets will look through and recompute a function when entering a tab, this was a handy way to do dice rolls. The function was: =RANDBETWEEN(1,6)
Inventory. This is where I stuck the items being carried-maximum of five. There are three columns: chapter, Item, and disposition. I color coded what was being dropped.
In retrospect, I should have highlighted that which was active with yellow and grayed out what was dropped.
Achievements. As the character goes along, it achieves certain things. As far as I could tell this mostly was feel-good stuff. I noted the chapter and achievement.
This spreadsheet seemed a pretty good replica of my progress through the book.
As I am thinking about this book, I am also pondering how I judge a book. Some of the questions I ask include-most of these are not relevant to this book:
What goals did the book set out to achieve?
Did it achieve these goals?
What meaningful thoughts did I get out of the book?
What enjoyment did I receive?
How well did this book read?
Conversely, was the author/reading hard to follow?
How did it change what I am doing?
If it is a non-fiction book, or a fictional history, how accurate is it?
Also how does it shade the events?
What information was missing?
Is the author showing a bias which they did not warn about? If so, how did it affect the material presented?
Sometimes, if it has some originality, I will cut it some slack. But originality to me is overrated.
Is the author delivering what they said they were going to do?
This can be from the book blurb, the introduction or from some interviews.
Then this leads to the question about how did I judge this book? It is not the type of book which you read through to gain enlightenment by nor to acquire facts nor even to debate proposals. Instead the author designed the book to be interactive with its reader.
As I was going through this book, I realized that this was not my type of book. When I sit down with a book, I like ones which get me thinking. While this book was built more to be played. As I was writing up the evaluation, I realized this was similar to figuring out a programming problem or debugging a program. Unfortunately, this problem was not very stimulating.
Evaluation:
I will start off by saying this is not my type of book. It is more of a roleplaying, adventure game. The author starts by setting you up as the paralegal partner to the She-Hulk. The story starts off in California’s Bay Area with the murder of a tech guru. One of She-Hulk's former advisories is set-up to take the fall. It is up to She-Hulk to figure out who is behind this.
The author has a partnership with the reader. You jump around through the books based upon either your choice or the results of fights you had with one of the villains or monsters. As you wander back and forth through the book, more and more is revealed. But unlike a mystery, you are more interested in getting the path correct than solving the who-done-it aspect. You get the path right and the murderer is revealed.
The writing is fairly decent-nothing which you will want to memorize. As I was reading and going through the maze of chapters, I was realizing that it was not so much an intelligence test, but something which when you learned the trick, you could figure out what to do next. So there was very little cerebral stimulation. Being a retired programmer, it was similar to debugging programs. Is it a bad book, no, just not my type of book.
References:
- Publisher's Web Site for Book
- Author's Web Site
- Wikipedia-Author - interesting that this book is not listed as one of his. But Wikipedia does say he has over 100 published titles and not all are listed.
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- Cosmic Circus review
- Reddit-there is a user who notes that the book is dragging.
