Deadwood City (Choose Your Own Adventure, #8) by Edward Packard

Deadwood City (Choose Your Own Adventure, #8) Reviews

• 
  Josiah

  I love the twists and turns of this Western story. The narrative advertised on the back cover involves going up against outlaw Kurt Malloy, but if that isn't to your liking, you can move toward storylines that have nothing to do with him (personally, I always liked battling Malloy and his men). Deadwood City offers dozens of smart, interesting choices that lead to a variety of adventures. It's among my very favorite books of the original Choose Your Own Adventure series.
• 
  Tim Chizmar

  These books got me into READING as a kid. I loved that the books were about me. So cool.
• 
  Stuart

  I read this in 5th grade (I think) about that time it was published. There was a boy on a pony on the cover. The pony wasn't terribly realistic looking, more like a stuffed animal I would say. It was a library book so I cannot remember a lot of the details. But it was a hardcover published by Lippincott and the series was then called "The Adventures of You." I loved the concept of these books, and still do and would really be glad to find a copy of this but I just do not see it ever. I was not particularly interested in Westerns... I lived in Texas and somehow I felt I had had my fill of that stuff... but I did have my moments and somehow a western themed choose your own adventure is memorable because its not like all the others... not that the others are bad books, because in general they were all great.
• 
  David Sarkies

  Out to tame the West,/b>
  25 August 2012
  
  Well, I gave this one a lower rating because it is a western and I never really could get myself into westerns all that much. Okay, they were sort of like the action movies of the 50s and 60s, but still, I always, and still do, find them quite boring. Not all westerns are bad though, there was one starring Johnny Depp called
  Dead Man, but that is an exception. I have also gone through and noted the ones that I do not believe I have read, namely because, as with most books that are released as a series, they tend to decline in quality simply for the sake of quantity, and unlike the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, these books are not really able to continually push the boundaries. The only real way to differentiate them is to explore new settings.
  Now, I think I might use this as a time to discuss the concept of the western. In a way it is about civilising the wild. The concept of the West, while not unique to the United States, is a particular part of its culture in that as the nation expanded westward during the 19th century it would take its culture with it. The US had conquered (and bought) the entire continent by about the 1840s, but they still did not have complete control over it. The civilised part was generally along the Eastern seaboard, and the great plains, but the further west one went (that is until they hit the west coast) the wilder it became. The rule of law pretty much broke down to become the rule of the gun. While the traditional sheriff was present, in many cases, it was just one man (with his deputies) that would be responsible for enforcing the law over vast areas of wilderness, which meant that bandits could raid towns and caravans, and disappear into the wilderness with impunity.
  The civil war also caused the rule of law to break down as many of the southern soldiers fled to the West after the defeat of the South, and in many ways they continued the war against the victorious North, simply acting as bandits and insurgents. However, as the railroad was laid down across the continent, and then as the gold rush brought people swarming over to California, many of these wilderness areas began to disappear. However, there were one group that steadfastly attempted to retain control of their land: the Native Americans.
  Now, this is probably why I don't like westerns, and that is with regards to the treatment of the Indians. It is all well and good to have the sheriff and other law abiding citizens fighting bandits and ex-civilwar soldiers, but it is another thing to invade was it effectively sovereign territory. However 19th century America did not (and many argue still do not) recognise the Indian territories to be sovereign states. Many also argue that the United States does not actually have any concept of sovereign territory outside of their own territory. Sure enough they recognise and get upset if anybody dares to defile their sovereign territory, but nobody is allowed to bat an eyelid if they were to do the same to other countries. While this type of attitude has been the attitude of superpowers right back to the invention of government, it does not mean that it is right.
  We have come a very long way since the days of Gilgamesh and the days when the Assyrians romped all over the Middle East claiming that everybody should be under their rule because there is no other rule that matters, however in many cases nothing seems to have changed. When the Cubans overthrew Batista and installed Castro as their president, the Americans threw a hissy fit and attempted to remove him. They did the same with Grenada and with Nicaragua. They even attempted it with Iran, and did the same with Iraq. It seems that the only legitimate government are the governments that the Americans approve of, and it does not matter whether these people are nice or not, as long as they support American interests then these people are okay (though this opens up a much bigger debate which I will not go into here).
• 
  Julie Decker

  You're in the Old West--not as a visitor, just as a person who actually lives in that time--and you can choose to have some typical shootouts with outlaws or you can try to find peace out West.
  
  This was an oddly disconnected book with short beginning-to-end tracks--maybe because a lot of the scenarios did not interact with each other, so they had to be thin to coexist. I mostly wasn't interested in gunfights, so I panned for gold, and . . . got some gold. Ya know.
• 
  Krystal Booth

  I found out that I would not survive in the Old West. Thank you, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!
• 
  Sara

  so many endings I really liked how you could be bad or good or you can go be a ranch hand or a goldminer👨‍🌾👩‍🌾
• 
  Jesse

  Read through a good chunk of this. It was very enjoyable. Easy to follow. I like the subject matter, breezing into a crappy western town and having run-ins with the local outlaw. A fun variety of endings. Not too many grisly deaths (yet). And I really appreciated the way it was laid out, with many choices leading to side-by-side pages, so you can quickly read one if its an ending before moving on in the other direction. Lastly, I appreciated that the illustrations depicted your character as a girl.
• 
  Rosina

  Found this book in a little free library! This book was so fun to read as it is a choose your own adventure book. I had a lot of fun reading it and it was a quick read, but I rated it 3 stars because I feel like some of the endings are a bit boring and are of just your character leaving the city. I got 2 options that end with money, but all the other endings I tried just are boring. I understand this is a kids book, and I do believe children would love reading this and it’s a western book! But again just wish there were better endings!
• 
  Priscila Reis

  I remember loving these books when I was a kid!
  
  It was a little difficult to find a copy of this book... I ended up listening to a podcast, in which a group of people read it together. They got to maybe 5 or 6 different endings (out of a possible 30-something) ...
  
  So, I don't think it would be fair for me to rate this book...
  But, it was fun!
  
• 
  Tamikan

  Classic
• 
  Nate

  A fine edition to the series that spent a lot of time looking for jobs and writing newspaper articles. Snore....
• 
  Mark Austin

  Ah, Choose Your Own Adventure, that paper bridge between that 5th grade fantasy map (see my Hobbit review) and my life-changing discovery of Dungeons & Dragons in the 7th grade.
  
  Some of them were great, some punishing, some arbitrary, but they revealed to me for the first time that I could make choices and that they had immediate effect the course on my (fictional) reality. For a kid whose home life felt largely hopeless and inescapable, the empowerment of making my own way by the power of my own choices and facing consequences traceable directly to my decisions - wow!
  
  While day-to-day reality seemed to deal out arbitrary, unpredictable punishments regardless of my actions, here was a place where I could experiment and learn and grow in safety and if I was punished there was always a why.
• 
  TYson

  This one was a classic in my youth--at least in my eyes. Hands down the greatest in the seemingly neverending "Choose Your Own Adventure" series. By far I spent more time with this book over the course of my childhood than any other book.
  
  This book is also noteworthy for most likely engendering my autistic tendencies (at least as far as the "nurture" side of the condition goes). Case in point: One needed only to give a number between 1 and 118 (the number of pages in the book) and I could give you a pretty accurate description of the events which transpired on the corresponding page (with about 82-88% accuracy).
  
  
• 
  Hannah

  This is a book that I like because you can make your own choices and in the end, you either die, survive, or get rich. On each page you read, at the bottom it says like, if you choose to talk to Mr. Jenkins, go to page thirty two or something like that. You never read strait through the book because then it will not make sense. Every time you read the book, it ends up as a different story unless you did the exact same thing as the last time you read it. That is why you can read this book with out getting bored of it because it is always a different story.
• 
  'Nathan Burgoine

  I read these when I was nine/ten years old, voraciously devouring them and re-reading them over and over. My grade five teacher saw how much I loved them, and brought a "how-to" book to give to me, and I remember writing one of my own. It was probably terrible. Still, these books were one of my gateway books to reading non-stop for most of my childhood.
  
  This one was less interesting to me as it was a western, but it was still fun.
• 
  Jenna 🧵

  Another cool thing about these books is that I remember how beat up they were from the library because SO many kids read them. And all the corners of the paperback cover had worn away from the thumbing back and forth to check out different choices and endings. These books were a great combo of pulp fiction and dungeons and dragons style play - and the kind of interaction the Interwebs would someday provide. Also love the 1980s school book report subject matter.
• 
  Swankivy

  I didn't like Westerns or gunfights but I did like the Choose Your Own Adventure concept, so I picked this one up and tried to read options that let me avoid fighting the mean outlaw whose face threatened me from the cover. The most memorable line for me was the "panning for gold" option.
• 
  Lani

  I'm sure this gets 4 stars for nostalgia more than anything else. But of the handful of CYOA books that my brother had, there were only a couple that I read over and over, and this was one. Now I want to go back and read it again.
• 
  James Elkins

  Do you ever really "finish" a choose your own adventure book? I remember mapping out 3 or 4 adventures when I read this book while on a trip through Oregon and California for Christmas break in 1979. Loved this book and every book in the series (that I read).
• 
  Laurie

  I can not tell you how many times I read and reread this book. It was the first choose your own adventure title I read and I was enthralled with it!
• 
  Dani

  These books are so cool! You don't read cover to cover, you choose what happens! Sometimes all goes well, and sometimes the worst happens!
• 
  Marts (Thinker)

  Have your own wild west adventures!!
• 
  Nathan

  The protagonist of this story was strong and memorable, a real likable fellow.
• 
  Denise Schiller

  I will never grow up! love to read all the choose your own adventure books!!! this one is my personal favorite.
• 
  Marilynn Shea

  choose from 37 possible endings...shows results from your picks..so be careful....
• 
  Mandy

  Never a fan of westerns but it was ok.