In any case, because its an early Montgomery title, and he (or his estate) now owns the brand now under the Chooseco company, it's been reprinted and retitled, and slightly reworked. A newer reprint says that it has 38 possible endings, but my cover says that there are 36. I've since found that sometimes those counts aren't completely accurate, but more likely there were changes made to the text. Montgomery's titles, relative to Packard's, seem to have less text before making a choice, and more endings. He doesn't (or at least hasn't yet) had much in the way of structure; the choices are kind of all over the map, and the results are even more all over the map. Whereas in #9 Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? for instance, there was one solution to who the murderer was, and the choices just gave you different ways of interacting with the same story, in Montgomery's titles, for the most part, every choice could lead you to some random idea that Montgomery had. Some of them truly are random and have little to do with the theme of the story at all. I haven't decided yet if I think this is a good thing or a bad thing. One advantage of it is that Montgomery can add all kinds of ideas as they come to him and not limit himself to a smaller box. Although honestly, Montgomery's ideas aren't as great as all that sometimes. And of course, limits aren't necessarily bad; would Harlowe Thrombey have been better if there were more endings where other suspects were actually guilty? I suspect not. It would have just felt haphazard instead, and there would ideally have needed to be some set-up before the narrative veered in a different direction. Montgomery doesn't often give us this set-up, which makes his books sometimes feel a bit like an acid trip where stuff just randomly jumps out of nowhere and happens. I suppose as a kid, where punchy narrative that was fast-paced was better than set-up, description, characterization, etc. this didn't bother me at all, but it does now. I remember thinking from my younger days that Montgomery was the author who did all kinds of crazy exciting adventure story ideas and Packard was the guy who occasionally tried to be more educational, stuffy and lectury. After reviewing the first ten titles so far, six by Packard, three by Montgomery and one by a one-and-done guest author, I don't think that that's the case at all anymore. Packard wrote some great titles where he really iconically encapsulated various genres and Montgomery did a bunch of weird hippy propagandizing disguised as adventure. We'll see if this trend continues: the next book up is #11 Mystery of the Maya also by Montgomery, and then I never rebought #12, a Packard title, so after reading two Montgomery titles in a row, I'll read... another Montgomery title, #13 The Abominable Snowman. I remember quite liking that one, but we'll see what I think about it when I get to it. I don't remember really loving #10 or especially #11 very much, although the latter might be because it has a new illustrator who's work I didn't like, who also illustrated you, the protagonist, as a young girl in pigtails.
Although it sounds great on paper, even at the time, this wasn't one of my favorite titles. I liked it well enough as a kid, but I didn't love it, and it's one that I didn't read after I lost my copy of it for a long time, nor did I miss it even as much as some other titles that are arguably not even as good (Montgomery's own #2 Journey Under the Sea, for instance.) Something about it just didn't click with me as a kid. As an adult, I didn't really love it either, but for very different reasons; it's just too unfocused, all over the map in strange ways, and has too much unexplained and bizarre hippy mysticism. There are also a lot of endings where you get involved with some Wakanda-like hippy Illuminati organization, that despite their obviously shady dealings we're supposed to be OK with, because they gratuitously toss around the word peace in their mission statement. I do admit that my own current political, social and cultural beliefs seem to put me at odds more and more with Montgomery's work; the idea that an African-based Illuminati could possibly be good for anyone just beggars the imagination, yet Montgomery clearly thought so. His career in academia and proto-globalist NGOs didn't seem sinister in the 80s when I was a kid, but it does now.
That said, I don't want to think that every Montgomery book will end up being a social commentary, or that my own commentary on his social commentary will swallow up any other commentary about the book. I'll say instead that my impression of this book as an adult is similar to what it was as a kid; on paper it looks great, but in actuality, the end result is pretty mid. Even his exciting and good ideas don't get enough development to be the least bit satisfying, and the way the plot unfolds by bouncing around unaccountably and without much thought to any reasonable justification for why your choices lead you to where they do just isn't all that fun. And some things, which I probably didn't notice as a kid, are kind of cringey now, like the inclusion of his two sons Anson and Ramsey as cameos, or the odd references at several points to exciting adventurer Beech Muzzwell, who despite your best efforts you never actually meet in the book. At one point, there's a choice to literally just give up; it doesn't take you to any page, it just ends the story. The idea that anyone would actually do that is kind of depressing; is the book so bad and incoherent that you'd be looking for an excuse to just quit reading it and bail?
I know a few adult fans of the series look at this one, and Montgomery's #15 House of Danger as kind of high points in the series, at least in terms of liking them for being so insane; kind of like how you like really bad b-movies that are so bad that they wrap around to being good again because they're so bonkers. I'm not quite sure that this accomplishes that; it's not bad enough, for one thing, although I do see how fans of the series could hold that opinion.
All in all, although I don't regret rebuying this book, and having it in my collection, the chances that I will ever again in my lifetime at this point feel like reading it again are very low. If you're a completionist kind of collector, or one who expects to be entertained by the gonzo incoherence of the story I suggest checking it out; otherwise give it a pass. If you do, however, do not get any of the reprints with the new art and edited text. I've said before that I dislike all of that in every title that I've ever seen, but in this one if particular, if you're going to pick it up for either of those reasons, you need an original trade dress, original text and original Paul Grainger art copy of the book. I don't think this is Grainger's best work or anything, but Grainger is always preferable to any other illustrator who worked on this series, with the possible exception of Ralph Reese, and he does have some nice pieces here, including some high intensity action shots, and a moody Paris street scene by night, and a few others. We didn't realize how badly we needed Grainger until the next book, however, where we got a different illustrator for the first time. Grainger still did pretty steady work on the series for many more volumes, but eventually his work kind of petered out, and it was truly the end of an era. The less there were Grainger illustrations, the less I found myself very entranced with the series. Part of that was my own natural aging and moving beyond the target market for these kinds of books, but part of it was that Grainger just had more personality and style than almost anyone else who followed in his wake.
Anyway, let's get to summarizing the crazy things that happened to me while reading:
- While trying to recruit Beech Muzzwell, I get a call from the FBI that he's been kidnapped. Peter, Lucy and I give up.
- I blow up in a totally random terrorist attack in the Parisian subway.
- I get kidnapped and taken to some remote rural cabin, where a tarantula bites me and I die. (It's worth noting that in the real world, no fatality has ever been attributed to a tarantula bite.)
- I get accused of stealing the jewels myself, get tied up in red tape with the French police, and the embassy suggests that I go home and stay out of trouble.
- I get shot by some mysterious shady people in Morocco.
- Too many suspicious people are following me. After taking a hydrofoil from North Africa to Spain, I go home and give up.
- Montgomery's own son is called to Paris, but disappears. You give up the quest for the jewels and decide to find him instead.
- The jewels mysteriously appear in my pocket and I give them to some weird African wise man, who turns into a young, good-looking hippy Messiah before my very eyes. lolwut!?
- The jewels don't mysteriously appear in my pocket, the old man gets angry, and I walk out in the streets of Tangiers confused and unsure what I'm going to do next. But the story ends anyway. Also lolwut.
- I fall into a trapdoor (see illustration on back cover) and die of starvation or dehydration or something because nobody ever comes and gets me.
- I'm on a plane that is randomly hijacked by someone who has nothing to do with the jewels, but carries me and our plane off to China. Twice, in fact.
- I'm in a helicopter that is shot with a rocket launcher and blows up in rural France. Literally don't even know who shot me.
- A midget dressed like a little girl walks up to me with a dog that turns out to be robotic, and which also turns out to be a bomb that blows up and kills me.
- My plane gets shot down in Africa, and has to make an emergency landing in the desert. Without any survival gear, it's heavily implied that I'll die of exposure shortly.
- I went to the shores of Lake Chad, met the mysterious Nabooti tribe, and the jewels had mysteriously been returned to them, and peace is mystically flowing out of Lake Chad to the whole world. Even though I didn't have anything to do with their return, I'm congratulated on doing a great job anyway.
- I go to club Nabooti somewhere in Africa and find that the jewels were sold so that the resort could be financed. Who stole them from my cousins? How did they end up here? These are the kinds of questions that Montgomery rarely thinks to address in his endings.
- I go to Club Nabooti and find that it's actually not a resort, it's a training area for the hippy Illuminati organization called Nabooti, which I join.
- I get a random cable while in Paris that Peter and Lucy somehow got the jewels back and I should go home.
- I get the jewels, but they've been ground to powder.
- I once again and even more randomly join the hippy Illuminati.
- I end up in Greece after the hijacking affair mentioned above, and I like Greece enough that I bail on my cousins and just start working for an English language newspaper there as a journalist.
- I get kidnapped and stuffed in a trash can behind a restaurant. But for some reason I escape, give up and go home, complaining about smelling like fries and mustard.
- I get thrown out of a plane, but miraculously land unharmed in a farm pond. And then the story ends, even though that hardly seems like an ending.
- I get thrown into a French prison for charges that are... unclear... but I'm promised a long, tedious legal battle before I can do anything else again.
- I meet the crown prince of the Nabooti tribe or nation or whatever exactly it's supposed to be, but he's impressed that I seem to have a larcenous bent. It's implied that I'll join him in a criminal enterprise of some kind.
- I'm in the streets of Paris where I'm warned to run for my life. For some reason I stand around confused, and eventually find out that Run For Your Life is a rock band throwing an impromptu concert right there on the streets. I'm told to chill out, relax and enjoy the music, presumably forgetting all about the jewels. I think Montgomery may have literally just smoked a joint when he wrote that one.
- It turns out that the real jewels of Nabooti aren't really jewels; they're actually the four leaders of the hippy Illuminati organization. The way Montgomery describes the one I meet makes him sound like a insurrectionist and a terrorist, but I'm supposedly brave for helping smuggle him somewhere or something.
- I'm warned by some hoodoo symbol of dead mice not to touch the jewels of Nabooti, but I do and I'm struck by lightning. Inside a hut. The jewels vanish and I'm not worthy or something.
- Instead, I leave my African buddy with the jewels and head down the oddly alpine mountain glacier in western Africa, where I fall in a crevasse and die.
- I randomly get the jewels in a package, and they feel warm, peaceful and mystical when I have them.
- In another ending, I'm randomly given the jewels by someone I just met.
- Somehow, in spite of the fact that they were just stolen from my cousins, they are in a museum back in America, and the exhibit that showcases them is so popular that there's a new hit single called "Do the Nabooti" playing out in the street, lolwut.
- I'm in a boat that crashes at the Pillars of Hercules and all hands are lost.
- I'm taken hostage, along with my cousin and a French gendarme inspector, where it's implied that the jewels aren't delivered and we'll all get our heads cut off.
- I go up on the Eiffel Tower and look at the lights of Paris by night and consider that maybe they're the real jewels of Nabooti. Lolwut, yet again.
- I get a floating cutlass with the jewels of Nabooti set in the hilt, and I'm chosen as the new guardian for the jewels. Suck it, Peter and Lucy, who are conveniently forgotten about once again!
- A confusing and incoherent few sentences where I'm told I'll never find the jewels and I guess I just give up.
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