Ship of Ghouls

Give Yourself Goosebumps #36

by R.L. Stine

In a fantasy story that features more than twenty different endings, a two-week cruise to Japan brings the reader face to face with a wacky scientist who turns humans into fish-like slaves, an evil stranger with a bomb, hostile natives, and sharks. Original.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, Childrens

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Reviews

[UK Goosebumps · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a one star rated book In my opinion. Massive massive letdown. Starts off with an awesome cover of the shark but the book is rubbish. Boring storyline for both options but one is definitely better than the other but not by much. Very repetitive and uninteresting options. Feels like the first story you don’t go anywhere and the endings feel incomplete and it all seems like a joke. Not funny. Everything dragged on without anything happening. This took me so long to read and I did not enjoy. Felt like a chore. 1/5

[fanboyriot · Rating 5 out of 5]

At no point did I know what was happening. Also it must have been the paths I chose because I didn’t have hardly any interactions with any ghouls.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlike what the title suggests, this book isn’t about ghouls, ghosts, or even zombies. Taking a massive turn from what you’d expect, I didn’t really vibe with most of this book. But there’s some positives that I was able to fish out (haha). First half of the stranded at sea storyline was A-Tier Goosebumps, and was almost an out-of-genre moment for the franchise, being far darker and more alike to an I Survived book. It was cool and even had some involvements of an apparition… which leads me to Steve (it makes sense when you read the book). Steve was a fine character until a big twist comes in, and I liked that our author—likely a ghost writer—was able to slam dunk that in and have it still actually be effective and dark. And really, the general tone of that arc is morbid and it really added some nice atmosphere and gave us this refreshing chunk of the book. There’s a small few great endings, one involving treasure and another just blatantly being locked in a room till death, which are very dark endings. There’s some nice body horror in the actual cruise arc, and whilst I’m mixed on the whole idea of that arc, there are some exceptionally gross instances, like the crabs and the melting scene. Also, there’s a terrorist. This would’ve NOT flown two years later, even if the setting is entirely different. But still, that’s a cool little leap the author took. And now for my negatives, which are the real kickers here. The cruise arc was unbelievably bland and offered a real lack of substance. Defying my expectations, it delves into typical trope of a mad scientist/experiments that we see at least briefly in every GYG, and it doesn’t work well because the whole arc is mostly a bunch of running and being chased, with only a few good intervals and moments here and there. It’s incredibly boring and easily one of the least engaging arcs I’ve ever read from this series. The back half of the lost at sea arc kind of devolves the awesome tension of the first and whilst it has the twist with Steve, it didn’t quite live up to that first half and felt rather meh. And, most of the endings are also quite mediocre; some stuck out but most didn’t at all, and usually devolve into “oh no animal kill me” trope endings or “thing happens that we didn’t want to happen” endings. Not inherently bad themselves, but still, they’re all pretty yawn inducing. Overall, 6/10. There’s a huge missed opportunity to have one of the endings say “Fin,” which we all know means end. Would’ve been so cheesy for an aquatic book lmao.

[Computeristgeek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this book for a while, since my friend A.I.E bought it with me in a book fair. I knew about this book even farther back in middle-school when our headmistress sent us on a trip to jarir bookstore to choose two books each that we would like to read! These series and animorphs were always a curiosity but I remember trying to read this book head-on without instructions and not getting it.

I started the book a few days ago but properly this time, and the experience was very nice, choosing my own adventures in the book then coming back for more variety of choices. It is a book most probably for early teens but I enjoyed it as an adult quite well, it was a nice set of adventures?!

[Katie]

Watched Bailey Meyers and Jenny Nicholson read this: https://youtu.be/KhO5yvS8sS4

[Kacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5. I read this so long ago but remember it being just okay.

[Griffin C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good for the most part although I feel like the lifeboat storyline was definitely underdeveloped. 8.5/10

[Naveen N. Bhat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those give yourself goosebumps books- with 25 different endings, if I remember right. Not all of them end badly, of course. But the ones that do...

[Colton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was just okay. It felt like a retread of previous Goosebumps adventures like Deep Trouble. I mean, there's a scene where you ride a dolphin through the ocean to safety, which is awesome, but you did that already, R.L. It also just felt like a bunch of random events, which is true for most of these books, but especially for this one. There are lots of things happening in this book, and very few of them were remotely believable. The final showdown is suitably climactic and there's a lot of action. This is probably the most action-packed book in the series, with bombs going off and ships sinking and island hopping and fish mutations (now ripping off Deep Trouble II. Even though you're on a cruise to Japan, you never actually get there, nor does it figure into the plot at all. Overall, its a decent addition to the series, but not one of the best.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favorite Goosebumps novel! The choose your own ending is refreshing and it opened the doors of the horror genre world to my young mind.

[Rebekah]

Goosebumbs. I LOVED Goosebumps as a child. I am so glad this series exists because as a child I was not the "Babysitters Club" type. LOL.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those role-playing ones.

[Abubakar]

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