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Choose Your Own Adventure #143

Project UFO (Choose Your Own Adventure) by R. A. Montgomery (1-Sep-2008) Paperback

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Your communication with an alien friend, Freedo, brings you to the attention of two different research groups that lead you to closer and more dangerous encounters of the alien kind.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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107 people want to read

About the author

R.A. Montgomery

151 books119 followers
Raymond A. Montgomery (born 1936 in Connecticut) was an author and progenitor of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series, which ran from 1979 to 2003. Montgomery graduated from Williams College and went to graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He devoted his life to teaching and education.

In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics.

He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.

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5 stars
22 (21%)
4 stars
29 (27%)
3 stars
34 (32%)
2 stars
17 (16%)
1 star
2 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Profile Image for Josiah.
3,460 reviews155 followers
June 3, 2024
Project UFO is an odd book. It's not often in Choose Your Own Adventure that you can be unexpectedly "swept away into eternity" just by opening a door. There are severals endings like this throughout the book, and the reader will often wonder what happened to bring the adventure grinding to such an abrupt halt.

Nonetheless, there is fun to be had. Let your imagination roam outside the normal parameters of a book, outside even the boundaries of a regular Choose Your Own Adventure, to a place where the connectedness of your mind to everything that you have ever known can be, at times, your only lifeline to reality. Immerse yourself in an alternate life in which you have been in mental contact with an alien being named Freedo since you were five years old, sending messages back and forth as you grew. Now, your seemingly benevolent friend requires your help to battle a mysterious alien force that is not as friendly as Freedo.

As you enter further into Freedo's world of extraterrestrial espionage, you'll have to make hard decisions about whom to trust, both among humans and aliens. If you make your decisions with the right mix of courage and wisdom, you'll finish in a better place than you were when the story began.

Readers who are partial to R.A. Montgomery's unique writing style will likely revel in this story, while fans of Edward Packard might be puzzled by the odd narrative structure. Most kids who read this book wanting to find the fun will have their expectations met, albeit in offbeat fashion. I would give Project UFO at least one and a half stars.
Profile Image for Alyssa.
15 reviews
January 22, 2014
I thought that the book Choose your own adventure: Project UFO by R.A. Montgomery was a good book. I thought that it was a good book because I liked some of the characters personalities and I liked the ending that I picked. I think that this author and the series is just unpredictable. In the book my favorite character was Freedo because I think that his personality was ok, I like how the author described him and I think that he is one of the main characters. I think that this series and this author are great!
Profile Image for Nick Jones.
328 reviews19 followers
January 12, 2022
This book unfolds like a dream. The central plot - an alien has been psychically(?) talking to you since childhood and might now be in danger - never goes anywhere; rather, every path the reader takes subjects them to strange, random, and often psychedelic occurrences that peter out abruptly instead of hitting a conclusion.

RA Montgomery must've done a lot of drugs in the 1960s, then presumably continued at least until he'd written Project UFO.
Profile Image for Christopher.
Author 3 books1 follower
December 21, 2019
This is one of those CYOA books that gets weird. Some readers may find it unsatisfying because you never really find out what's really going on. There's a whole thread in there that might be a hallucination.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
302 reviews1 follower
January 9, 2020
Read this book to encounter vintage RA Montgomery - quite possibly the most bizarre and eccentric writer to have tripped crazily across your childhood. Be prepared for an absolute lack of logic or plot (as I was), and you *might* be able to enjoy the book for the mind-boggling hallucinatory experience that it is (as I did).
Profile Image for Colton.
342 reviews32 followers
November 13, 2015
The first time I read this book, I never got through it. The story wasn't going anywhere for me. However, I decided to give it another go and I actually liked it a little more than I thought.

The book is very weird and out-there - standard procedure for this author. Montgomery's books tend to be polarizing, either really bad or really good. The story centers on your protagonist going on a mission to rescue an alien entity you have only talked to in your mind. That's the best way I can describe it. Lots of trippy, cerebral, metaphysical events happen, though few of them follow logical pathways.

Not much else to be said. This is a short, forgettable gamebook that is all style and no substance. It's nowhere near Montgomery's best, but I don't think it's abysmal. Just very, very below average.
Profile Image for StephanieNicole.
371 reviews5 followers
June 19, 2015
The basic premise: You are a kid who receives telepathic communications from an alien.

The introduction is several pages long before you get to make your first decision. After my first decision, I only had two more decisions, and there were many pages between them. Everything in the story was given in great detail, but suddenly, the story ended in one extremely vague paragraph.

I went back to the first decision, and I chose the other choice, and that lead to a more fleshed-out story with a non-conclusive ending (meaning the initial crisis wasn't solved).

Overall, I didn't enjoy this Choose Your Own Adventure because there were too many pages to read between decisions and because I was expecting a scifi story and instead it was fantastical.
Profile Image for Holly.
287 reviews
October 6, 2024
I remember reading CYA as a kid, and this is still fun. Some of the endings are better than others. The more you read, the more fun you have!
Profile Image for Garett W.
10 reviews
March 1, 2016
This was my first in the Choose Your Own Adventure Book and I really enjoyed it! I really liked how I could be the one making the decisions (especially after reading so many books that the characters were making bad decisions)
Profile Image for La Toya.
136 reviews26 followers
August 26, 2011
Nice little taste of sci-fi for those of us who are still green in that area!! And pick your own adventure is ALWAYS a good time!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews

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