First: I have minor issues with the plot (unremarkable), characterisation (poor) and use of the second person ("you think mean things about Peri" seemed to be a common line, to which I kept thinking no I don't :( ), although I acknowledge the last one might be a me problem. Still, all of those make a book that isn't that great and is a bit forgettable. What elevates Race Against Time from the ranks of merely "meh" to "I'm about to go off on one" is how it was constructed on a technical level, as a choose-you-own-adventure book.

(Funnily enough I did once write a CYOA story, and it was even a fan Doctor Who story. I'm bringing this up to say that I know a CYOA story is a different beast to just a linear book and I know they can be more difficult.

But jesus christ.)

The story was dismayingly linear and poorly designed to boot - there was one occasion where my path landed me on a chapter I'd already visited several choices ago. What's more - in what I can only assume were attempts to make it Fun And Engaging - the reader was asked to solve puzzles or roll dice to determine what paths they went down next. The dice rolling seems to fundamentally misunderstand what makes a book enjoyable. A line that tells you "Roll an odd number to go left, roll an even number to go right" is fine if meaningless, because you could have just presented those options to the reader normally and let them pick. A line that tells you "if you solved the puzzle, go to page 5. If you didn't solve it, wait here until you've rolled two 6s in a row, and then go to page 5"  seems to serve no purpose but to waste the reader's time. And speaking of the puzzles-

Every so often, you're asked to solve a puzzle. None of them are especially interesting, and there were only a couple of times where they felt like part of the story (ie, You the Character solving them, as opposed to you the reader). Bit pointless, no? More than that, these puzzles frequently ended in lines such as "if you got the answer, turn to page 12. If you didn't, don't worry! The Doctor found it for you! Go to page 12" which is even more pointless.

I just...

Surely, if you're writing a CYOA book, you'd want to make it fun? Surely you'd want the puzzles you put in to feel like they had weight in the story?

At this point you may be wondering, after spending so long complaining about Race Against Time's construction, why I gave it 1.5 stars rather than anything lower. My honest answer is that I couldn't help but appreciate how gruesome or just plain bizarre all the bad endings were. In another life Pip and Jane Baker could've been wonderful authors of horror books aimed at 8-14 year olds