Witchsnare By Ashok Raj
Puffin Books, Rs 125

The first thing that strikes you when you are reading Witchsnare by Ashok Raj is that it’s different. The story moves like a celluloid script, swinging between the past, the present and the future.

And the good or the bad thing, depending on whether or not you like convention, is that every page gives you the option to find out what happens next or to explore the “present” a little more.

This is an interactive, role-playing book, which revolves around three children, Leo, Paddy and you.

The story begins with all three standing before the painting of a princess that talks! This painting, you later find out, is actually a portal, a kind of a bridge between the real world and the unreal. So you go ahead, cross that bridge and find yourself inside the painting and inside a palace.

The adventure now begins and you soon realise that the princess who has lured you into the palace is a witch who has taken over the kingdom. What’s more frightening, she sucks unused years of children’s lives and adds them to her own. The witch, by the way, is a thousand years old already, but would like to live for another hundred.

The king has been drugged and the real princess has taken shelter at her uncles’ until she can get an army together to fight the witch. A group of outlaws and a sage with supernatural powers is all you get by way of help.

After an introduction to the story you have to start taking quick decisions. You must exercise caution here though, for your friends’ lives as well as your own depends on your decisions. And this is when it gets exciting. The plot unfolds gradually, leading to multiple endings.

The story feels a lot like a cat and mouse game. But it could have been made more intriguing. Also, it’s a little jarring to be told repeatedly that the children’s late arrival on the scene of action is just like the police in Hindi films who always land up after the thugs have fled.

The first among interactive books was A Story as You Like It by a Raymond Queneau, which was published in 1959. This in turn inspired the Choose Your Own Adventure series for children. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many of these by Indian authors. So, if you are looking to read something out of the ordinary, pick this one up.