Gooseblog: The Beast 2

Previously on the ol' Gooseblog, I reviewed a non-Goosebumps book from Stine called The Beast. On first glance, I didn't expect much from it. At most I thought it would be like most Goosebumps books and be middling horror only with the added effects of having the shill a roller coaster. I was half right, as surprisingly, the book worked as a unique little time travel tale and a moral-themed story about how you can't change the past no matter how hard you try. That, and there was a roller coaster involved as well. So, much to my surprise, I ended up enjoying The Beast. Can the same be said of it's sequel? Let's find out with The Beast 2.

COVER STORY

We don't have Tim Jacobus on board for this one, which is a shame, but the cover we do get from Broeck Steadman is still solid enough. Although I do like the original one better. This one feels a lot more busy and the reds and oranges on the cover are a bit harder on the eyes. Makes me appreciate the more reserved first cover with the foggy blue. It still does what it set out to do I guess, sell you on the concept of a time travelling roller coaster, but I liked the first much more.

STORY

Quick recap of the first book: Cousins James and Ashley go to Paramount King's Island and ride The Beast. They love it so much they go for a second ride, when they learn from two teenagers about rumors that the ride is haunted by a ghost at night who moves the coasters. The kids end up staying late and end up locked in the park where they meet an old man running The Beast named P.D. Walters, who sends them back in time to the 1930s to Firelight Park, the fictional amusement park that was destroyed in a tornado. The kids get caught up in the thirties-ness of the place and end up meeting a kid named Paul, who they soon learn is P.D as a kid. The tornado happens, but the kids don't save anyone. They return to their own time, presumably murdering two security guards in the process, and learn that P.D sent them back in time in a failed attempt at changing the past. Got all that? Let us proceed.

We're back almost a year later with James and Ashley who are still as pumped as ever to ride The Beast at Paramount Kings Island. They make sure to do it at least several times in the day because we gotta shill this ride, dammit! In fact, the whole first act feels like a retread of everything from the first book, only the kids are a little older and still remember the stuff with P.D and the time travel. As the day gets late, Ashley wants on the coaster one more time, while James goes and gets concessions. We get a whole set-up with him waiting for a fat kid with a brontosaur shirt to make his choice in candy while he also tells two punk-looking teens about how scary The Beast is. Eventually, James gets his snacks (Karamel Kreemies as we get reminded a dozen times), and goes to meet Ashley on the coaster.

The two kids ride the coaster again and it all seems great. But when the ride ends, James sees that Ashley has vanished yet again. Again, a premise that happened in the last book, but got resolved super quickly. James searches the park for her, but to no avail. With the park closing for the night, James decides that he's going to have to stay in the park again to find her. He does so as the rain begins to fall on the park. He ducks security again, who do spot an old 1921 silver dollar. That seems random at the time, but it does play into the story somewhat. James returns to The Beast and sees P.D. once again. But before he can explain everything, security grabs James and takes him to the entrance of the park. Thankfully, P.D. is a ghost and turns into a giant head with a bug beard and hollow eye sockets that pour bugs out. Somehow more disturbing than the face melting from Dead House, I'll admit that.

P.D. and James return to The Beast, and it's here that P.D. explains that while he doesn't know what happened to Ashley, there have been incidents of objects from the past popping up at the park. Case in point the silver dollar from earlier. He gets James on the coaster, and despite the rain on the track, sends him back through time once again. This time he ends up in a strange capsule. He gets yanked out of it by a tall man with black hair and a mustache, who then tells James to strip naked, doing it for him until James tells him that he'll do it himself. Well this book got ten shades of nope really fast. A confused James is given a skin tight silver jumpsuit to wear and is dragged by the man to another room. A confused James tries to get an answer as to what's going on, and he gets the five fingers to the face treatment.

On his way, James sees a boy in a fish tank who is covered in scales, looking like a human fish. But before he can get an answer on that, he's thrown in a cage and put on stage with a bunch of other kids in silvery getups. These are the "children of the future" who are made to answer questions about the future to a paying crowd. Ashley is one of these children, and is considered a princess due to her braces being treated like jewelry of the future. After the performance, Ashley tells James that they've been brought back to Firelight Park, sometime in the thirties before the tornado. This man, named Captain Time, is the inventor of the time travel machine that has seemingly captured kids from different times and forced them to work for him on shows eighteen times a day. He won't let them leave, lest he experiments on them like he did with the fish boy. Plus, he doesn't actually know how to send things back to the future. So the kids have to keep performing for Captain Time until they can find a way back into the capsule.

That night they sneak into the capsule and press a bunch of buttons and pull levers, hoping something would send them out of this era. They pull one lever that starts to make them age rapidly. At least they aren't being pimped out to old cougars. They manage to fix the lever and return to their normal age, but when they touch a wheel on the machine, it awakens Captain Time who nabs the kids, and makes half-hearted comments about how he'll probably send them back to their own time. Probably. But he throws a dead fish at James. A warning that if they keep crossing him, they'll end up like fish boy. That's all the kids can stand as they escape the next day, searching the park for any sign of The Beast. If they get there, they can return to their own time like last time. They also look around the park, eat a coney dog, and make it to the ferris wheel, which gives them the highest view of the park. And luckily for them, their search rewards them with the location of The Beast.

But when they get there, it's just a dilapidated barn, meaning that they have no alternative but to go back to Captain Time. A few days later, Captain Time is screwing with the time machine and somehow brings a pterodactyl back from the age of dinosaurs. We get a pretty harrowing couple of chapters as the dinosaur shreds up Captain Time until the kids save him. The pterodactyl then attacks James and Ashley, intent on eating them. But before he can, the dinosaur ends up sucked back into the time machine. The kids ask Captain Time again to send them back, but he still refuses. Later that night, they hear Captain Time talking to someone, mentioning that the authorities are hot on them right now for pretty much the whole forced child labor thing and Captain Time has to get rid of the kids post-haste.

That's when James thinks of the only plausible way to get them back to the nineties. They have to get their old clothes back. He realizes that maybe having relics from their time will help the machine to move them forward. They manage to steal their clothes back and put them on, but get caught by Captain Time again. He threatens to turn them into animals like fish boy, but instead realizes that he's better off without any child bodies if the cops arrive, so he stuffs them into the time machine, hoping to send them with the dinosaurs. The time machine doesn't seem to be moving, so James makes one last realization. When they were on The Beast the last time, he was eating the Karamel Kreemies, but Ashley wasn't due to her braces. He eats another and tries to force Ashley to do so, but she doesn't. It isn't until Captain Time changes his mind and grabs at her that she goes through with it and that, somehow, is enough to pop the kids back on The Beast. Particularly early in the same day as fireworks are going off. And so our heroes, having not learned a thing about the dangers of that frigging roller coaster decide to ride it again. Because of course.

The Beast 2 is a step down from its predecessor. Not that it's a bad book by any stretch, but t feels more like it goes for wackier moments and bigger scares than writing an interesting time travel story. Granted, I did like some of the scares, particularly the whole section with the pterodactyl, but this whole book just feels like it has less of the thought and the effort in it that Stine put in with the original. I don't mind the time travel concept with them needing the present items to pop themselves back, but even that felt like a weird way to do it. Compared to the original, this one was lacking in story to be honest.  The original gave us more focus on the time period, the world itself, and a sobering ending. This one felt more like we have to explain how the time travel works, while focusing less on character and more on wacky adventure. We don't even get a really satisfying ending. The kids just go back on the ride again as if they're stuck in an eternal loop. Never doing anything else. It definitely feels like a cash grab sequel book, intended on cashing in on the success of the original. So, in other words, this book definitely feels more like a Goosebumps book than the other one. At least it's not Monster Blood IV at least. I give The Beast a B-.