Scholastic, $3.99, ISBN 0-590-84768-6
Horror, 1996

Wandering off with your friend in the Amazon jungles without telling anyone? Only in a Goosebumps tale, and lucky for you, Deep in the Jungle of Doom is a Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook.

That’s right, you and your BFF Zoe are so bored with the lectures given during the Junior Explorer Adventurer Club tour that you two waste no time sneaking off when you spot what turns out to be a gargoyle hidden behind a bush. Instead of getting to explore forgotten ruins, you two are confronted by the gargoyle who comes to life. Oh no! What trouble you get into will depend on your next move.

Choose to stay and fight it off with sticks, and you will end up turning into something like the fish-like monster on the cover and having to find a way to get back to normal before the club takes off without you. Watch out for hunters and such! Choose to flee and you will encounter a more standard arc involving the mysterious, wacky, but still dangerous beasts in the jungles.

This one is a typical example of the perfectly acceptable and just as forgettable gamebook in this series. It’s quite entertaining in places, although the whole thing is very linear and often your character will be railroaded into doing very stupid things just to ensure that the pitfalls keep coming. However, it is also shockingly unimaginative. Instead of drawing inspiration from various old horror movies set in such a setting, or presenting a kid-friendly version of some Cthulhu mythos thing, this one instead throws some bizarre and out of place tigers – seriously, are there no actual dangerous things found in the Amazon that can be included here? – and bats and Warrior Women (don’t ask) and even a freaking dragon – really now, tigers and now dragons in the Amazon? – plus a familiar troll if you have read enough Goosebumps novels. Most of the bad endings are just variations of you getting eaten up by the flora and fauna of the place, how boring.

Fairly or not, Deep in the Jungle of Doom seems like something RL Stine put together as fast as possible in order to meet a deadline. Consequently, it is one of those gamebooks that collectors will buy for completion, but they will rarely flip through it because it’s hard to recall what is so fun about it.