Choose Your Own Adventure Retrospective: The Curse of Batterslea Hall by Richard Brightfield

The Curse of Batterslea Hall was always my favourite CYOA book – it was also, for reasons I'll get into, one of the more unusual ones. It sparked my later love of adventure games and inspired some of my sketchy early attempts at creative writing (including a thinly veiled recreation on 90s 'edutainment' program Storybook Weaver). It also deepened my devastation when I returned home one fateful school night to discover my mum had donated my extensive CYOA collection – precious gems tremblingly unearthed from the dusty Mills and Boon-straining shelves of my local Scope – back to charity.

Around twenty years later, and I took the obvious next step for a mildly lockdown-crazed 90s kid squinting down the barrel of their thirties: sourced a copy inflated by just four times the original cover price through eBay. But was it worth it, and does it still hold up? Dust off your bootcut jeans and fire up your Walkman – it's adventurin' time, 90s* style...

The premise

Batterslea Hall opens in a relatable modern domestic setting: the bedroom of the protagonist (that's you!). You've received a letter from a distant cousin orphaned in mysterious circumstances from England inviting you to stay with her at her family estate, and she's enclosed a plane ticket! 

Brightfield lays on the atmosphere and tension thickly from here on out – you next arrive at a deserted, fog-enveloped train station just after dark in the heart of the English moorlands, where, ominously, a storm accosts you as soon as you attempt to breach the castle. If you choose to wait out the storm, you soon hear rumblings of dark goings-on at the supposedly cursed hall at the local inn, where the locals fall into a sudden hush when they hear where you're going before warning you against persisting – not unlike the opening of Dracula. 

The warning signs continue to spring up at an alarming pace: reports of escapees from Dartmoor Prison, an unlived-in west wing, a great-great-grandmother called 'Lady Darkness'... all set against a blood-steeped historical background of civil war involving the massacre of loyal Cavaliers by rebellious Puritans.

A little heavy-handed, perhaps, but there's a higher level of development and worldbuilding here than in other titles in the series (see: You Are a Shark, which in fairness, also allows you to transmogrify into a husky, zebra and tree, among other life forms). Your mission? To stage a rescue of your cousin from the clutches of Lady Darkness and break the curse of Batterslea Hall, of course.

It's easy to see why this CYOA book in particular captured my imagination – as a daring young girl surrounded by boisterous brothers, something about the idea of making a connection with a young girl not unlike myself against a backdrop of perilous adventure resonated with me. Having grown up in a small rural town, I also loved the idea of being called away to some far-flung part of the world and being swept up in a historical mystery while visiting 'exotic' locations like a traditional inn, the enigmatic local woods and the foreboding fortress-like hall itself.

Overall, the premise was fantastical yet grounded enough for me to place myself snugly in the protagonist's Marty McFly-esque getup. 

The writing

Written for a *cough* middle-grade audience, the writing style is generally simple, straightforward and secondary to the dramatic situations in which you find yourself. An obligatory few opening paragraphs lead into the all-important central action in a quite bare, matter-of-fact way, hustling you along on your adventure without leaving much time to ask questions (like why are my parents allowing my tweenage ass to travel across the world unaccompanied to visit a mysterious relative I've apparently never met?).

There are some nice descriptive touches that build tension and characterisation, imprinting vividly on the mind's eye (for example, Blope is introduced as a 'huge, bent form [that] looms out of the fog [but] shrinks down to a short, gnomelike creature' as he approaches). Several pages end on simple yet effective cliffhangers, defying you not to read on ('A flash of lightning outside suddenly illuminates the room. The bed is empty. You switch on the light. Mr. Atwood is gone!').

Like the opening, endings can be perfunctory and underwhelming, even when positive, giving an almost list-like rundown of concluding events ('Amanda and her dog never return to Batterslea Hall. Amanda puts the Hall into the National Trust. She and Baskerville make their home with the innkeeper and his wife. You have to go back home, but whenever you go back to England you stay at the inn').

This sort of scarcity comes with the territory, however – after all, there are 22 endings in this title alone (comparatively modest compared to older titles – Space and Beyond has twice as many). Besides, it's in the rereads that layers are gradually added, and the endings do a good job of raising intrigue and encouraging further reading, hinting at mysteries that have yet to be solved. 

And, while my view is perhaps rosied by nostalgia, I found the book's concise nature to actually leave space for the imagination, with much of the excitement deriving from the exciting situations, locations, cliffhangers and choices presented.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a convenient excuse to take off to the other side of the world in the shape of a mysterious cousin? What would it be like to travel alone by train to somewhere you've never been, arriving at night in the fog, or to stay in an inn full of locals loaded with beer and dark tales of mysterious disappearances?

While it would undoubtedly make for a stronger – and longer – book, these characters and locations don't really need to be described with much sophistication for the tween imagination to begin whirring with possibilities.

The characters

Though your interactions with others are naturally limited due to the book's pocket-sized nature, Batterslea Hall features a colourful cast of memorable supporting characters with unique voices whose fates you come to care about almost as much as your own: Mr Atville, the detective investigating disappearances connected to the hall fronting as a National Trust agent; Blope, the West Country native and bizarrely 'gnomelike' but kindhearted hall dogsbody; and, of course, the sweet but mostly helpless Amanda, the princess in the proverbial (and quite literal) tower.

The cast of antagonists is led by the witches – Amanda's 'imposter' grandmother and Lady Darkness – but also includes the ghosts of the clashing Puritans and Cavaliers and the half-witted but mercenary escaped convicts, Freddie and Spike. Encounters with Lady Darkness herself are uncommon, fleeting and almost always lethal – making for a formidable main foe (who, again, like Dracula, must be toppled for the curse binding the hall and its inhabitants to lose its grip).

This lends to the witches' mystery but also means that you don't get to square off against them in a truly satisfying way or learn much about them; despite having backtracked through the book to find all 22 endings, I still don't know who Amanda's imposter grandmother really is (besides another lackey of Lady Darkness), how the witches (presumably) did away with Amanda's parents or exactly how they can be overcome – another casualty of the compressed, busy format.

(I, for one, would love to see an ending where you turn Lady Darkness' soul-sapping black arts back on her or run her through with a Cavalier's sword... Misleadingly, despite featuring the heroine clutching the sword on the cover, the only ending in which you can use it sees Freddie and Spike skewering you due to its unwieldy bulk.)

Somewhat disappointingly, Amanda remains the most mysterious of all. Something of a MacGuffin, she motivates your quest and has moments where she's actually useful but remains, for the large part, passive; who she actually is and what her experience has been outside of a captive of Lady Darkness are afterthoughts – though more than this is perhaps expecting too much. Still, I'd at least like to have seen more cooperation between the protagonist and Amanda, but an intrepid female lead and a female-centred relationship aren't bad going for a 90s gamebook.

The art style

There are some lovely black-and-white illustrations by Ted Enik here with linework that gives an almost wood-cut aesthetic, as well as some choice late 80s/early 90s fashion moments (feathered hair, bootcut jeans and turts being the style at the time). Several detailed full-page images complement the narrative, with some impressive sprawling double-page spreads.

I can still remember some of the more striking images due to the distinctive character drawings, fusion of modern and medieval elements and PG-appropriate horror. A dreamlike scene where you follow a sleepwalking Amanda into a lavish dance hall of Cavalier revellers from the past and another with Lady Darkness cackling over a skeleton you will soon join stayed with me long after my first reads, for example.

Batterslea Hall also takes the somewhat unusual approach of including a female main character on the cover and in illustrations (albeit in gender-neutral garb), which series daddy Edward Packard attributes to the need to counterbalance publisher Bantam's earlier focus on supposedly more 'identifiable' boys on the covers and combat the huge success of rival series The Babysitter's Club.

In re-published ebook versions, anything outside of the reader's POV has been left out to enable them to place themselves more easily in the protagonist's shoes, as Packard explains: 'I was always extremely rigorous never to have anyone refer to the reader as "He" [...] we decided that all illustrations should be from the reader's point-of-view, so everything that's drawn, except for occasional establishing shots, is what "you" see during the course of the story.'

However, I actually preferred Batterslea Hall's choice over the more disembodied recent one as it gave me a central figure to relate to amid a male-saturated adventure book market while still being able to place myself in her shoes (only natural, then, that I developed a distinct preference for a third-person to first-person game perspective).

Best ending

While there are multiple positive endings, the one that achieves all main goals – vanquish the witches, save Amanda and break the curse of Batterslea Hall – with the most satisfactory arc, and therefore, in my view, the most 'true', is the gypsy ending. All others either involve the witches being defeated without your intervention and Amanda breaking free without you connecting with her (boo) or hint that the witches may have disappeared but are still alive somewhere, with the potential to cause further destruction. 

In this ending, you and Amanda follow lilting violin music in the forest and find much-needed respite from the endless perils of the hall in a gypsy encampment. This is possibly the only truly safe space in the whole book (even the inn, where Mr Atwood vanishes, is not entirely safe), so it is accompanied by a palpable feeling of release. The gypsies, one of whom was captured and befuddled by Lady Darkness, have their revenge, weaving a curse of their own with magic older still than the witches'.

This ending ties up a lot of loose ends – the gypsies heal Amanda, Blope is freed from the spell he was under, the hall is taken on by a caretaker family and even adopts Amanda – but has the added boon of light triumphing over darkness.

Strangely, though, this ending is still quite passive, in keeping with many of the other hurried positive endings;  the action is taken out of your hands and into those of the gypsies, omitting a dramatic showdown with the witches and leaving a lingering sense of dissatisfaction, even though you've 'won'.

Worst ending

While there are several contenders, including endings where you're zombified, drained of your life force and Force-choked by Lady Darkness, the worst endings, for me, are categorically the ones that involve being trapped permanently in some way. The tunnel ending involves such a fate – the warning signs also rapidly multiply after you've already made your choice, so you're left to read helplessly on as you and Mr Atwood saunter blithely into certain doom like rookies who've never watched a horror film before.

And when you opt to escape the hall through a cellar tunnel of questionable structural integrity despite the anxious whines of Baskerville, Amanda's dog, then press ahead despite Baskerville's staunch refusal to accompany you (he's probably just spooked by something silly!), you know shiz is about to go down. The two of you are already quite far along in the tunnel when you hear the stone door grind closed behind you – guess we'll just press on – whup, that's a cave-in. Aaaaand we're entombed inside forever.

The final line is especially chilling: 'You call for help, but it does no good. You are only using up oxygen that will be gone soon enough.'

Weirdest ending

Things just aren't destined to go your way in the run-up to this ending. After falling into an apparent time slip, you promptly fail the 'Be thee a heathen?' litmus test of Puritan invaders by dancing uncontrollably to the infectious tune of a piper. They then attempt to cut you to ribbons but can't make contact because you're not technically there, so they conclude that you must be some kind of demon and flee (but not before somehow getting a nasty parting shot in that paralyses your arm).

The sequence closes with you watching a procession of battle-bloodied Puritans march past your hiding place while muttering something about 'burning those devils [the Cavaliers in the hall] out'.

This is quite an anxiety-inducing ending as you know you should be warning Amanda but can't shake yourself awake from what you think is a dream – one that 'will last a long time – in fact, for the rest of your life'.

It also leaves a lot up in the air and raises several questions – how long is the rest of your life? Do you live it out as a Cavalier, Puritan or other? Or do you remain in hiding forever, subsisting on forest berries and steering clear of piped music? (Presumably the Puritans don't succeed in burning the witches, at least, because the spell remains unbroken.)  

I'd like to think you make the best of it by capitalising on your newfound demonic status and spooking Puritans into doing your infernal bidding.

Conclusion

Batterslea Hall constructs a compelling mystery that requires several read-throughs to fully unravel – who is Lady Darkness? How did Amanda become crippled? What is the curse, and how can it be broken? Of course, this means many endings, both negative and positive, will be unsatisfactory and missing key details, leading to an imbalance of a careful setup but rushed, anticlimactic finale, and backtracking to make different choices can disrupt immersion somewhat.

But the real fun is uncovering a more satisfying, fleshed-out story through all these misadventures and finally 'winning', which feels more earned at this point. There are also some cool payoffs in connections made across different reads (one of the 'bad' endings reveals the curse origins and cause of the fire mentioned in several other endings; the aforementioned time-slip ending references another readthrough where you wake up from a bad dream with a dead arm), so even when you 'lose', not all is lost.

Overall, while it suffers from the same pitfalls as other CYOA books and a lack of autonomy even in the best endings, it's now clear to me why this was my favourite growing up: the combination of a strong setting, memorable characters, female representation and impressive tension-building still sets this book apart from others in the series.

While other titles can be condensed to simply presenting the reader with a series of high-stakes scenarios without developing any emotional connection to those involved, this felt like stepping into the pages of a tense, relatively well-crafted story that made my countrified tweenage self feel like history was thrilling and rural England was an exciting place to be. Quite the accomplishment – and surely one that warrants a place for this overlooked title in the relaunched Chooseco series.

If you liked this, please consider fuelling my next post by slinging a cup of coffee my way.

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