Bantam Books, $3.50, ISBN 0-553-26723-X
Sci-fi, 1987

Space Vampire may be a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook (read: meant for kiddies), but this one can be surprisingly graphic in the many ways you can meet a bad end. Perfect for Halloween, in other words.

As you can guess from the title, this one revolves around a vampire running loose in a spaceship. You are a “top recruit”, code named Osprey, of the Space Academy on Mars, and there is a current situation between Canopians and humans in the Solar System. You are summoned at the start of this campaign, however, not because of Canopians. Aboard the transport ship Petya, a vampire is killing off the folks there, and worse, the transport ship is headed toward Earth. You join the crew of the X-2 probe to stop this vampire. Isn’t it great that you are not going solo to stop this vampire like most gamebooks would tell you to do?

This one is pretty enjoyable despite the fact that most of the story paths are very short and can be ended abruptly with a surprise ending. Most of the endings are pretty cool, though, especially the ones where you will meet a gruesome end, heh. It is a bit odd when several options see you going on a different mission altogether, but you will still end up encountering vampires. Still, I have learned not to expect much from gamebooks in this series!

All things considered, this one has atmosphere, some pretty unexpectedly scary moments, and some cool scenes with the vampire. Think of this one as a sanitized written version of, say, Event Horizon or Aliens for kids, although I think adults who are young at heart may enjoy this one as well.