The Escape Artist

Choose between values, not tactics.

You are Lester Honeycutt of Delaware, Ohio: amateur magician, tightrope walker, and dreamer. You've been practicing your whole life for a moment like this. Today, that moment arrives. Oudini, the greatest escape artist alive, is performing in your town. So is Heinrich, the knife-thrower whose shows leave audiences shaken and volunteers occasionally missing.

Before this weekend is over, you may find yourself on stage with a living legend. You may get yourself arrested. You may catch a knife with your bare hands. You may stow away to Europe, escape a burning building on national television, or walk a tightrope between two of the most famous towers in the world. Or you may go home, help your mom at the library, and live a small, good, quiet life. Which is its own kind of escape.

Most interactive fiction asks you to choose between tactics. The Escape Artist asks you to choose between values. Do you tell Becky the truth? Do you pursue love or fame? Do you make the promise? The choices are emotionally weighted. The consequences play out across decades. Of the 30 endings, only 4 are complete life cycles. Can you find them all?

For readers ages 14–17 who want their choices to mean something, not just now, but for the long haul. Reads strongest at the upper end of that range. Works equally well as a personal read, a creative writing text, or an ethics discussion starter in high school or freshman English.

The book in plain numbers.

UBU Adventure Series.