Adam

I am still shaking my head in dismay at this travesty. Aliens is, by far, one of my all time favorite settings. I fully admit that. I have just about all the action figures from when I was a kid; I'll still buy figures in this particular series even now! I have all the video games, I have the collectible card game, I have all the comics, and I even have all the novels! So imagine my excitement when I found out a Role Playing Game was produced in this universe. I really enjoy tabletop RPG's quite a bit, so I was pretty excited to delve into this and maybe run some games with my gaming group. After reading this, that is definitely not going to happen.

Granted this game came out in the early 90's, well before Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, and well before major stories in the comics took hold and pre-Alien 3. (This is early writing is also painfully obvious when you read about how they think internet shopping will be in the future. I got a chuckle out of that actually.) The fact it was pre-Alien 3 gave me a little hope for it, because that movie was a terrible follow-up to the action packed Aliens movie. I am disappointed in Leading Edge for producing a game like this and it kind of turned me off to trying to track down some other games they've produced as well. After reading this I'm not too surprised the company did not survive over the years, however, their miniatures line for the Terminator 2 and Aliens series are quite awesome. In that they certainly succeeded. Anyway, I should get into what I dislike about this.

Maybe it's because I'm reading it way after the fact, but I simply hate their system. I don't actually need to play through a campaign to know it's not going to be fun, I've played enough RPG's in my day to understand game mechanics very well and I know what I do and don't find fun. Going into combat with this system is a grueling exercise. It is entirely based on tables. Tables are not a terrible thing, I mean I enjoy playing Warhammer 40k, but there is seriously a limit to how many tables you have to look at versus when you stop having fun. In certain combat scenarios, if you hit things just right, you could look at up to NINE tables to figure out what happened to your character. For a SINGLE combat sequence, which is only supposed to last a few seconds at most in game time! I'm sorry, but that just doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I understand they wanted to add a degree of realism into the system, but this is absurd. Part of the interest in gaming is that you can do things that you can't do in the real world! While the Aliens setting is incredibly realistic, all the table searching will have any player inundated with tables rather than actual game play.

One mechanic that they particular harp on is how “this isn't like your other role playing games”, by that they mean they got rid of hit points. Hit Points are a pretty simplistic and fast paced process to judge damage. Instead this system has a couple different kinds of damage factors, but they both deal Physical Damage. You then have to check your physical damage to your Knockout Value. (This has a huge range and the examples tout numbers in the three thousand ranges!) Anyway, if you hit a specific value you have to then get medical treatment, which you have to cross reference with ANOTHER table to find out how long you can last without being healed. Naturally this is after cross referencing your Physical Damage table with your Damage Total table to see if you can be revived! All of this stuff is abbreviated too, so we have your PD, referenced with your DT, to see if you get an RR. Of course if you're trying to hit something everything goes against your SRM. Ugh... I'm already NOT having fun playing this game!

Alright, so the combat system is an absolute travesty. Maybe the other content isn't so bad. That's not entirely true. It does have its good points, but it certainly doesn't outweigh the bad. For the record though, they do say that anything here should be modified by the GM, which is fine to say if you don't have to virtually overhaul their entire game system! For example, the treatment of Alien physiology in this is absolutely god awful in my opinion. Granted at the time the Adventure Game was written, they might not have had a lot of these details, but I seriously think some of them were quite implicit from the film. One of the most blatant errors is the part on Alien vision. Aliens don't have eyes. It's blatantly obvious they don't, I have no idea why they have this in the book and relate it to have a visual spectrum. They are not like the Predator! I also disagreed heavily with the concept that the Alien warriors also lay eggs. This is another aspect that I thought was pretty clear did not happen in the film. Finally, the other major issue I had with the Aliens was the face huggers can also implant embryos in dead bodies. That just seems plain counter intuitive to how an organism like this should work. The Chestburster only eats the dead flesh AFTER it comes out. It's supposed to grow inside a living host first! This was so disappointing. Luckily the Comics never used any of this tripe to move their stories along.

One thing I did like about this was the Marine character sheets. Despite all the table viewing, I thought the development and treatment of Marine characters was decently well done. It's basically one of the only things I'm not going to have to overhaul and rewrite if I want to competently play in the Aliens universe the way I believe it should be played! The book also feels very disorganized and disjointed sometimes. Like the table methods are so interrelated that it made the explanation on how to use them feel out of place. Like one chapter will discuss how a certain mechanic works, but it relates to this other thing a few chapters later and by the time you've gotten to that after reading three other chapters, you've already basically forgotten how to connect the two. They also try to grow the Aliens universe by introducing the whole ICC system of planets, which is very cool. I liked that a lot. However, they introduce these new insect like creatures on one planet called Harvesters. Are there any illustrations of these? Nope, we don't have illustrations, instead they went with movie screen shots, which are cool, but they're useless when trying to envision new creatures. They seem to keep touting these new encounters with the Harvesters over encounters with the Aliens... seriously; I bought this RPG to play against Aliens, not some other facsimile. I do agree that it's a good idea to introduce new material, but to use it in examples as much as they did was disappointing.

In the end I'm going to have to seriously rewrite this game in order to make it even remotely fun to play. The only salvageable aspect of this game is in chapter 8, when they give you ideas for campaigns to run. Some of the campaign suggestions are really great and are definitely something I could see my friends and me playing through. I just wish they had more detail for them, like a full module. A final thing that bothered me about this book is they kept making reference to another game they wrote called “Phoenix Command”. They would reference this in case we wanted clarification on rules... seriously... the rules in this should be complete! I like the Aliens series so much that I just might rewrite most of this game! I'll probably borrow the Marine character sheets and development from this book, but seriously I'm putting hit points back in. This added “realism” they've included by referencing a bunch of tables is not fun. This will be a huge project for me, but I really think I can do it better and more competently.


P.S. It IS worth getting if you're a collector like me though, I'll say that much.

This series of books looked like a fun and playful read, and that's basically what I got out of them. “A is for Amour” is a collection of short stories focused on the realms of passion. Each story is different and should speak to a wide spectrum of readers. In terms of intensity I don't think any of the stories really go very extreme, but stay more on the “softer” side of things, if that makes any sense. This is sort of what one would expect from a book titled “A is for Amour”.

It's an extremely quick read though. I think I managed to read everything in about an afternoon. The one quibble I have with it is the price. I'm still up in the air as to whether it really warranted the ten dollars I spent. Granted there were multiple writers involved and I enjoyed the stories, but at only 132 pages, I feel I get a lot more bang for my buck (no pun intended) out of a novel for 8 dollars.

I would say only pick this up if it really intrigues you. I don't think many readers would be overly disappointed with it, regardless of their passion, but if you think you'd get more out of a novel, that's where I'd go first.

Based on what I could find this is Aishling Morgan's first novel. I made the mistake of reading a novel she wrote years after this one and the writing has improved dramatically since the release of “The Rake”. Unfortunately I think this has put me in a bit of a biased perspective for the quality of this novel. I don't think this really competes with her later works.

First off I would like to say I enjoyed the setting. This takes place during revolutionary era France. Aishling uses period slang in parts, but she includes a little glossary in the book so you'll be able to easily figure out what is really meant. This story is centered on a rather uncouth fellow named Henry Truscott whose main passions in life seem to be sex and drinking. However, Henry usually likes to be in control of his situations and this takes a turn out of his control when he meets Eloise. She is from the uppity realm of higher French society, so her sense of entitlement runs in conflict with Henry at times. He doesn't seem to believe people are entitled to the same things she does. “The Rake” takes us through a great journey these two have to embark on when the Revolution starts to get out of control. Henry winds up in a situation where it's in his best interest to escape England for a while and it just so happens Eloise could use some help... whether she wants it or not. Eventually these two find that their lives crossing paths was one of the best things that happened to them. They can fulfill each others needs sexually as well as other things.

Now don't get confused, this book has plenty of erotic scenes in it. One of my personal favorites was the one involving Eloise and a mud pit. Henry's depravity is quite whimsical in the sense that he doesn't seem to “plan” his sexual escapades. Rather he chooses to embark on them in the spur of the moment. There are some corporal punishment scenes in the guise of mostly spanking. There isn't very much bondage and anything related to the human toilet fantasy is actually kept fairly low key, though it is included in parts. There is a decent amount of f/f activity and one of Henry's goals is to be in a situation of m/f/f, where he does succeed in getting this. The majority of the scenes are built around submission, usually in the form of Henry getting what he wants from a willing woman.

For me the first part of the book was kind of hard to get into. It seemed like the whole point of “The Rake” was to get into whatever wanton erotic scene could be thought of without actually crafting a story. Eventually, about half way through, the story takes off a bit more. The characters are developed more fully and the book actually becomes quite adventurous. If Aishling could manage to balance this out a bit more in her writing she would be a tour de force in the genre of erotic writing. She is clearly quite skilled at crafting stories, but I don't think “The Rake” is a culmination of her actual abilities, rather a glimpse at her potential. It is an admirable first effort, but I'm more eager to see what else she has in store for us in the future as her writing prowess begins to develop with experience.

This book is not entirely what I was expecting. When I was out looking for books on Lost because I was sure I was missing out on some of the more subtle aspects of the show. I kind of wanted something that would help bring me up to speed on all the elements that Lost tends to include. This book has a lot of those elements, but it is also so much more than that.

Rather than just being an abridged overview of Lost “Living Lost” is also an extensive social commentary about elements that may or may not be used as an influence for Lost. Much of what J. Wood goes over is merely conjecture, thus it is likely just a coincidence. However, he touched upon the fact that the producers seem to be reading the forums that the fans go on, because he's noticing a bit of a feedback loop between theories fans have and elements in the show. I thought this was incredibly brilliant. While I'm really interested in Lost, my experience with the show is sort of in a vacuum, consisting of just myself and the show. Lost incorporates many other methods and elements to keep fans interested and I miss out on a lot of these. I feel this book was excellent in getting me somewhat acquainted with aspects I may have missed.

This book mainly covers aspects found in the first and second season, so concepts concerning terrorism are constantly revisited. J. Wood draws many parallels to the 9/11 plane crashes in the U.S. and the following era that is the War on Terror. He suggests that Lost is directly influenced by these real world elements and I don't think he's very far off the mark. As the saying goes “art imitates life”. I do wish J. Wood would write another book for the later seasons, because I feel the scientific elements of the island are getting quite a lot more treatment. Not to mention the metaphysical elements are also being heavily emphasized. I would love to read J. Wood's commentary on these later seasons.

“Living Lost” is a relatively quick book to read through, but the volume of information it contains is quite impressive. The latter half of the book is merely a character overview and gives the reader a brief description of all the characters we've encountered thus far. It would probably be rather boring for someone who watches Lost closely, but I read it anyway, just to see if there was anything I missed out on. When it came to these things, there wasn't much for me in here. The one element that was kind of annoying was the poor character sketches. I'm not sure who did those pictures, but they would've been better off hiring a sketch artist at the very least. My girlfriend is an illustration major and her abilities are leagues ahead of whoever drew these.

I actually think this book has a lot of merit for fans of Lost. It gives a great overview of elements someone may have missed out on in the first viewing. Also it closely discusses some links that were harder to see within the seasons. I found this book utterly fascinating and I would recommend it to any Lost fan.

Now this was a very bizarre and interesting book. Seriously, I thought “Sindi in Silk” dealt with strange topics, but this one definitely exceeds that! However, “The Obedient Alice” at least has a far more linear and coherently developed story! So it definitely has a plus in that regards. So what exactly is so bizarre and strange about this erotica novel?

Like this novel I'm going to assume that you've heard the story of “Alice in Wonderland.” Now “The Obedient Alice” certainly isn't a kid's tale by any stretch of the imagination, however, you certainly do need your imagination to get through this novel! That's naturally part of the fun. Anyway, the main character in this book is naturally named Alice (Alice Brown actually) and from there you can tell its going to generally parallel the original tale. However, there's a major difference between the two and one of those is that they call the world “Underland.” The world you and I live in is called “Overland”. I'm not sure why the name change, but things are very different here and the tale acts around the premise that the original Alice lost in Wonderland seems to have set some strange things in motion. In that “The Obedient Alice” takes place long after the first Alice showed up, so the Alice we go adventuring with is dealing with a vastly different world.

Frustrated with the world around her and wishing for an adventure Alice Brown sees a giant white rabbit. Just like we see in “Alice in Wonderland”, however, the rabbit doesn't quite act like the one we're familiar with. He needs to test this Alice before allowing her passage into Underland, tests which require her to be stripped down and prodded in various ways... to test her ripeness I'm sure. From this meeting and on the adventures Alice has somewhat closely parallel the original story and the author takes note of that in the book, so if you haven't read “Alice in Wonderland” in a very long time, or ever for that matter, you'll see where the author took her influence. At some point since the first Alice there seems to have been a societal shift in Underland and it seems like the notion of keeping human female slaves (called girlings) was a great idea. So basically what happens is animals like the white rabbit would sniff out girls that would seem naturally submissive and lure them into Underland. In Alice's case she was brought to Topper and Lepus' training school where she was trained in the art of absolute submission. Alice didn't know she was such a natural submissive, but she would certainly soon find out. If the slave/master relationship is something that you're really into you might find this book enjoyable on that basis alone, except there's one factor that might turn a lot of people off to it. I'll get into that later. Anyway this book is very heavy on the bondage scenarios. There is some spanking and whipping punishment dealt with here and there, but I found them to be sparser than other books I've read. Instead Adrianna Arden focuses more on the binding of her characters, what it feels like to be bound and used, etc. She's probably speaking from experience and so we get a very good dose of realism, despite the fact this is truly a fantastical scenario. There is a decent amount of training for the use of Alice's rear, but the novel didn't focus on that particular element as much as the few others I've read in this genre. For me it was nice to change that focus as that is not something I really go after.

While up till now things sound like a normal S/M novel... except for the fact that if you remember in “Alice in Wonderland” there are a lot of sentient animals! They're a little smaller than humans, but for the most part they're close to the same size and have a larger anthropomorphic body. This is why I think this novel might be more for special interest people... there is a large amount of bestiality in this book. While the animals may have human qualities, they definitely don't have human anatomy, of which Arden seems to know a good amount of. I have to admit, her premise is very creative. If you remember the original story there are no female animals that Alice encounters. One animal our Alice encounters mentions with dismay that there are no sentient female animals. This tells me that the niche for female human slaves is huge in Underland. So Alice in her adventures, since she ends up going all over the place, ends up doing a great many creatures. In all she engages a dormouse, the rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, two toads, a gryphon, and the Mock turtle. She also engages with her fair share of humans like Topper, the Queen and the Duchess, so it's not all animals all the time! Alice certainly makes her rounds and I found myself wondering why a horse wasn't thrown in for good measure since that seems to be a fairly popular fantasy. Anyway, I can see the animal choices not particularly appealing to most people... such as toads, which I personally am not a fan of... so yeah intimate scenes with them were kind of tough to read. There's even one point where she gets turned into a “cow” not literally, but she drinks a potion that increases her milk production... and yeah you should be able to figure out what I mean by that. There is also a lot of interesting points concerning the potions that can change people's shapes and other strange things. However, if you have an interest in the majorly bizarre then this is definitely the kind of book you want to read, especially if your not getting enough extreme scenes from the already available bizarre repertoire of novels that I'm sure is already out there.

There seem to be two other novels that continue on after this one and now I'm curious to read those because this book ended in a definite conclusion. A conclusion that you can't really go anywhere else. I suppose I should explain my rating a little bit. It's not the animals that really turned me off, it was more the story and the way it develops. Alice Brown is kind of a stupid blonde girl who gets fairly reactionary towards things she should keep quiet about. I suppose reasons to punish her aren't a bad thing, but her comments were annoying. It was only towards the end where she finally realized that she enjoys submission that I really started to like her there. She had this whole rationalization and we got to see the internal struggle much more genuinely, but only at the very end! Where she realizes that she wants a master that will punish her fairly, but someone she can love at the same time. I figure the unwanted scenarios are an extreme analogy of something as simple as choosing a boyfriend and not liking him in the long term. In this case Alice looks for the perfect master that can truly fulfill her needs, just as most people do when choosing a mate. I guess there just wasn't enough character depth for me and instead there was way more focus on the scenes. It doesn't bother me that her initial reaction was to resist/dislike what the people/animals were doing to her, which was the whole point of the training process that moved the novel along. The bondage scenes were great and very well described, but maybe even twenty pages of a little more character development would've made me more engrossed with this story. Maybe it's also the fact that I knew the “Alice in Wonderland” tale in general, and I sort of knew what to expect next, thus there wasn't anything that really put me on the edge of my seat. I think maybe if Arden had used the Wonderland world and then created her own fantasy adventure it would've been a lot more engrossing for me. She certainly had the ability to do so. There was talk of revolution against the queen, the time dilation between different dimension, and the science behind how the potions worked. There were lots of opportunities to build the world and maybe I'll get more of that in the other books. Maybe I'm an oddball, but I like a lot of story thrown in with the extreme scenes, something that makes me surprised to see what happens next. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised by much at the end of this book.

Needless to say this is definitely not going to appeal to the greater populace, not even to just the bondage fans. I did enjoy the creative application to the fantasy world, but in some cases the story is far too simple. This is probably due to the fact it parallels a children's story, but I think an adult audience should have been considered more than just in the intimate scenes. So if my description above sounds highly interesting to you, then I definitely recommend you pick this up.

I ended up getting this because it seemed rather intriguing. I really enjoyed “To Reign in Hell” by Steven Brust and I thought maybe this would be on similar lines. I was sort of confused at first when I was reading through this book, mainly in terms of if this was fantasy or if the author actually thought all of this was real? Personally, I think its fantasy, but I don't know about it because he goes through lengths to actually include pictures of these ancient and lost manuscripts. So maybe he is trying to tell the world something?

Basically this book deals with the finding of a lost manuscript in Italy, supposedly found in an old house that was in the author's family. It recounts the meeting of a man and Lucifer. Basically Lucifer tells the man the true story of what happened and basically says that everything that was passed down in the Bible was a lie or twisted in some fashion. Lucifer isn't the real enemy of our souls, but it is in fact the deity a lot of people worship in Christ/God. The story is actually pretty interesting, but sorely suffers from the lack of having an editor go over the material. This book mostly had me until it started delving into the alien theory, where God has left this planet and is now mounting an army on another, it reminded me quite a bit of some story line concepts from Area 51 by Robert Doherty. However, I found the inter-dimensional beings saying they are Gods/Angels a far more plausible concept to stomach. Overall it's a very ambitious story and I really did enjoy reading it, because its concepts are very close to my own. I do like how the author took Biblical passages and then told the story from another point of view; it's something we certainly don't get from the Bible. Whether this is told from the point of view of someone who thinks it's real, or from fantasy, I still found the tales enjoyable and I liked their twist on things.

On a philosophical note, I have to completely agree with this books core concept. Now I'm no devil worshipper by any means, but the demonizing of the Bible did make sense. This book certainly didn't convince, nor was this a revelation to me; I concluded these things a long time ago. I know there will be many that might say my soul requires saving after reading this, but this books premise is true and I cannot deny the possibility. After all the premise of their “devil” seems to be based on a being coming in the guise of something wonderful and beautiful, but instead wreaks complete havoc on the Earth and ruins people's lives. Has this not happened because of worshippers of these religions that profess love for thy neighbor? I simply cannot deny the reality of the situation and if you are a like minded individual and enjoy fantasy/science fiction this book might be quite a breath of fresh air for us that oppose. I have to give this an extra star simply for its bold move in this light for I quite enjoyed how it painted a reality so close to our own.

I read this book in about two days because it was so good, yes, I know some can read it in one sitting, but I'm fairly busy. Anyway, it was nice to read something that mirrors my sentiments on this topic almost exactly. Sam Harris isn't apologetic in his critique of religion and I think this is a breath of fresh air to simply call hypocrisy for hypocrisy. One thing I did like is that Harris didn't single out just Christianity, but he actually goes over religion in general. I think this is because he didn't want to give out any illusions that Christianity is the sole problem religion out there, it's not, it's all religious conceptions.

One point that I hadn't really given much thought was the financial perspective. Which is funny because I have a degree in finance and economics. Anyway he brought up the concept about the untold millions of dollars that are going into these Christian organizations. Most of this goes to support the infrastructure of the church, you'd be surprised how little goes to charitable organizations. I used to look at Church accounts in an old job and it shocked me how their balance continued to grow versus how much was actually leaving. Some non-profit organization that is? Another point is that there's a drastic opportunity cost. Could you imagine if people took the money they normally give to the church and either saved it on their own, or donated it to medical research to cure something like cancer or come up with a vaccine for AIDS. It's such a crazy notion to think that people willingly give a portion of their income to an organization that is bent on informing them that they are all sinners and none of them are good enough for God, but, hey, he loves you anyway, so give us your money. That's just asking to be beaten down on a regular basis and happily give them your money. Doesn't this fall into a notion of a possible pathological disorder?

One aspect I'm sort of surprised at is that Harris didn't attack the Biblical history. Frankly it doesn't really matter if Christians follow a creationist policy, the fact is most of those stories are borrowed from ancient societies. The Sumerian tale of the flood greatly predates the Bible and Noah's real name was Ziusudra. You'd be surprised at the parallels. Even the Garden of Eden parallel story can be found in a tale about Inanna. Most Christians don't care to acknowledge this cherry picking of other religious stories, but they are happy to cherry pick the “good” quotes out of their Bible to justify that their God is actually only loving and perfect... but we'll ignore that thing about slavery now won't we? Further on the historical note it's pretty clear cut that Moses didn't write the first five books. Aside from blatant borrowing, the Bible was written down in 600 B.C. during the Israelites captivity in Babylon. Yes, the Torah was written in Babylon. Historians figure the Exodus with Moses happened in the vicinity of 1300 B.C. and it's pretty clear he died during that book, so how he wrote it in 600 B.C. is beyond me. I've listened to many Christian preachers and they all purport that Moses wrote the Torah. Did it ever occur to anyone he died before it was finished? In fact it recounts his death and keeps going, it doesn't just abruptly end. This is a very strange literary technique, the dead continuing to write a book...

Another point I'm surprised he didn't attack is the blatant proof that God is an unjust deity. If you read through this text it's made abundantly clear in the New Testament that if you don't follow Jesus you will not be saved. In fact you are doomed to suffer eternal death. This doesn't matter if you are actually a good person, a wonderful and loving father to your children; if you don't follow Jesus you are done. I can't physically think of any concept or proof more unjust than this. Naturally people will quote Pascal, but it's an aberrant proof. Harris blatantly points out that people DO have something to lose and that religion is detrimental to others on a global scale. Maybe it's not God, maybe it's the followers, because they simply can't deal with religion responsibly. It must be imposed on others. I just don't understand this mindset and if God truly is a loving and caring being then the actions of his followers should be making him weep constantly and not an atheist that doesn't rape, murder, and honors his neighbor. But the faithful don't look at it this way, it's the atheist that is the problem, not the child molester who believes and can have his sins forgiven despite his problems.

This book is an outcry to a nation that sorely needs it. Where science is constantly on trial and regardless if science doesn't have a ready answer means God did it. This is a huge problem, more people need to read this book and understand it. Do NOT cherry pick this text like so many love to do with their religious texts. It must be taken in as a whole, much like the Bible should be read, but most people don't read the Bible so they don't understand the hypocritical concepts Harris brings up on a textual level. I know the Christian militant front will decry this review, but I urge you to read about intellectual honesty when it comes to this topic.

With the title “The Book of D'ni” and the last book, “The Book of Ti'ana”, I half expected them to go even further back in D'ni's history. Maybe a story about the inception of D'ni! Which, that would be a great tale in itself. Despite this expectation, and not getting it, this still ended up being, probably, my favorite in the trilogy. “The Book of D'ni” picks up where “The Book of Atrus” leaves off and brings us into a world of struggle, rebuilding, and astonishing beauty.

I will make this an uncommonly brief review because this book just grabbed me at every turn I do not want to give away much of anything. Basically Atrus has learned a great deal more about D'ni and its writings. With some natives from other ages he's seeking to, essentially, rebuild D'ni to its former glory, much like his father Gehn was trying to do, rather unsuccessfully by himself. While they were clearing away debris in one area they uncovered a sealed library that must've been there about as long as D'ni has. He had people look through them to see if any of the Ages seemed stable and decided to go visit one. I'm going to leave it there, the mystery and beauty will give away far too much of the story line.

I think readers will be very pleased with this book because it is everything we love about Myst. It has the beautiful worlds, the mysterious intrigue, everything we could possibly want! At this point I could only hope that this would be a continued novel series, but as I write this in June, 2008, that doesn't seem to be the case. A “Book of Miriam” was supposed to be in the works and we got a taste of a first part in the Limited Edition version of Myst V: The End of Ages. So the series was intended to continue! Unfortunately I recently found that “The Book of Miriam” has been pulled and it will not be released. I can only relay how dismayed I am and I will still hold out hope that someone will pick it up and eventually publish the book. With the success Blizzard's video games have had in the world of novels, why can't Myst, a game about books, maintain a solid foothold for the reading public. These three books are held in very high acclaim by readers and fans, so it only seems prudent to me that one should continue with this amazing storyline. That's my piece, if you're already a Myst fan I do not think this book will disappoint in the least.

I picked this up because I was interested in reading a little more of Victorian era erotica, so I picked up this up because the title boasted “from the Victorian library”. So naturally I wasn't expecting what this book was about. For a few pages I thought I was in old world Paris circa the 1700's, but then out of nowhere the use of credit cards gets mentioned. Wait credit cards? In the “Victorian library”? Okay, I guess this take's place somewhere in the 1970's then, based on what I can gather and the year it's published.

Anyway, this book reads very much like a dairy. It's kind of interesting, in a sense, because you get a lot of that internal struggle and thoughts one would expect to read. Basically this story goes through the story of French model that's searching for her place in the world. It brings her intimate desires down a path of depravity until she just can't take any more and needs to get away from it. She is somewhat of an annoying character to read at times because she can't seem to figure out what she wants. There are various men she has to choose between, but most of them have the same penchant for needing her to be submissive. Things don't go to major extremes that involve corporal punishment, but more with the concept of what man's whims to submit to.

That's really all there is to say about this. The book is under 150 pages, so it's not like there's a lot to get into. The story picks up when the girl is in her 20's and going through life and it's only a short span of her life that we get a window to. The one thing I did like was getting in side her head pretty deeply at times; if this was just erotic scene after erotic scene I think I would've become very bored with the whole thing. Regardless this isn't the best thing I've ever read, but it does read like a true story so that part is very good. If it's really fiction I'm very impressed, because it feels very real. The only real complaint I have is that after page 100 the editing gets pretty shoddy and words are spelled quite wrong. Other than that it was a decent read overall, nothing to really rush out and get in my opinion.

After reading through such a phenomenal sequence of tales found in the Grove Press collection of “Justine” I was quite excited to read another book riddled with Sade's writings! Maybe my philosophical mind was set so afire that I was simply expecting far too much from Sade. Don't mistake me; I did like some of the tales, especially “The Crimes of Love”. That story was simply superb. However, the main piece of this edition was not what I was expecting, so allow me to go over that in a little more detail.

“The 120 Days of Sodom” is legendary at this point and from what I've read of Sade, this is by far his most depraved and debauched. However, we must put this story into a bit of perspective. This was his first attempt at a great and overzealous work, thus I can't rightly compare it in full against “Justine” which he had written as a more mature author, someone who has grasped the concept of writing a good tale via practice (granted he rewrote and refined “Justine” numerous times). As anyone who reads “The 120 Days of Sodom” we all know it is an unfinished work. I must commend the publisher for including not only the first part of the four part tale, but also the drafts for the unfinished three sections. I confess that regardless how brutal Sade got, regardless of how fragmented and unfinished the tale, I still would have rather found out what happened via a draft than not at all! The way the introduction is setup and the way the actual parts play out, it feels more like Sade was going for being the playwright rather than just a novelist. It's no secret he was interested in theater and I think the setup of this clearly shows that, however, it would be a little while before he really refined his work to become the novelist. However, I have to agree with other people who speculate that Sade has merely tried to reclaim “The 120 Days of Sodom” in his other writings. It's as if this was his blueprint for the vices we would see visited in his future tales. It is no wonder he was surely outraged to have lost it when the Bastille was sacked. I am not so sure he was trying to rewrite this with his later stories, but I think this gave him a sure footing on what he would be able to bring to light in future stories.

“The 120 Days of Sodom” is like a veritable list of sexual manias by that time periods standards. Some of these “manias” have actually become fairly normalized as society has progressed, such as the vice of being whipped and dominated. That concept has been sent intermittently throughout society that it is not as bizarre of a notion as it once was. It makes one really think over Sade's point concerning pleasure and its vices, because if those pleasures can be considered ultimately a norm and thus “good” by some people's standards, then if society progresses further will those more extreme concepts become a norm? I must admit when Sade gets into the torturous and brutal vices it was far beyond my ability to handle such tastes and I had to mostly skip over those sections in the drafts. I could handle a good portion of them, but eventually they just progressed to something so brutal that it was beyond what I enjoy reading. Amidst this list one would expect to find just about everything, and Sade sure does cover just about everything. He spends a great deal of time on coprophagia and whippings, towards the end this develops into torture. Frankly, I'm surprised at the lack of bestiality presented. It's mentioned in a few tales, but it doesn't hold a great focus. Nor do any of his characters seem to practice it. I find this surprising because Sade seemed to be trying to make this a well rounded list, but he greatly neglects this. I see it as a fairly common notion that I would think it should be touched upon, both because it is not generally a normalized practice by the greater population, and it is simply an obvious notion. Perhaps it simply did not interest Sade in the least, or perhaps that he figured cruelty to other reasoning beings was far more evil than cruelty via animals. Either way I was sort of surprised, because he seemed to cover all the bases concerning the other smorgasbord of manias, just seemed a bit curious to me.

The problem that I had with “120 Days of Sodom” and felt was more refined in “Justine” were the philosophical explanations for the vices, basically their justifications. I felt they were glossed over far too quickly than they should have been. The four friends clearly were presented as intelligent men that truly internalized their vices and manias and deemed them to be a very pleasurable thing. However, we only see minute touches of their reasoning. I think Sade spent too much time thinking up crazy scenarios of libertinage for the ladies to tell to the gathering rather than really developing his characters in full. At least as Sade moved into his writing over the years he really developed his characters with a much stronger stance toward their particular interests and went over their justifications. However, there is one point that Sade briefly has his characters touch upon that I find to be paramount in his arguments and that is the relativity of evil. Such as one man may consider coprophagia to be a great evil, while another may see it as a virtue, especially when he finds another that shares the joy of it! Unless, of course, they are similar to the true Sadean motif where the only true pleasure can be found in committing evil, in which case that person would hunt down people that don't like it and do it with them anyway.

Complete in this book are two essays that really try to think about Sade's work and his motivations. I have read a few of these essays that really try to get behind the man and his madness. On some levels it feels like people are over thinking “The 120 Days of Sodom”. In some ways I think that by the time Sade was locked up, he was quite outraged at society in general. Granted I'm sure his writing was a therapeutic form to deal with his imprisonment, but with “The 120 Days of Sodom” I think he was out to enact some semblance of revenge on society via the ideologue of writing. No stone could be left without corruption! One of the essays speculates that Sade himself practiced a good deal of these debaucheries, but flatly points out that little is known of Sade in his younger years. I submit that an author merely needs to imagine, which is limitless, it does not mean he was completely speaking from experience. Granted I'm sure he experienced some of the things he wrote of, for there are quite a few vices that he repeats consistently throughout a great deal of his tales, such as coprophagia, whippings and sodomy.

At this point I've come across a rather interesting observation, based on other novels I've read, Sade's work, and just life experience. I've tended to notice that the greater majority of people that have these so called “vices” tend to be male. In Sade's work the females are always presented as being adaptive to the male genders particular mania. Take the character Duclos, for example, while she participated heavily in a varying degree of these vices, she was presently happy to be at the whim of these “heroes”. I find this an interesting notion. If you read through his works, the people he speaks of require a very specific ritual in order for them to reach the desired level of “joy”. The females act out these rituals as necessary, but don't seem to display any major strict vices of their own. My question is, can this be applied to the greater population? Sure there will be some females out there with quite stringent requirements, just as these fellows are, but I have a feeling they will be in the minority. I simply wonder why that may be.

There are three other creative works included, as I've already mentioned, “The Crimes of Love” is probably the best. It has the shocking Sade styled ending that I have really grown to love. He really faked me out on this tale because I really felt it was going to be a typical happy story, and Sade was just showing off his diversity as a writer, but then it ended on a great note. Most people would think it's cruel, but I like the ending you don't expect. The two tales concerning “Ernestine” were less than interesting, and personally I thought the play was better, mostly because it was the shorter. “Ernestine” the short story is decently written with a great deal of drama and a fairly brutal ending, but a rather happy ending overall. Frankly, I just had a hard time getting into this story and thus it was just okay. Maybe it's because I was expecting a twist like we get in “The Crimes of Love” and I just never really got that.

It was unfortunate, but this collection doesn't seem to collect a lot of Sade's most solid work. I know some fans will probably disagree with me, for many herald “The 120 Days of Sodom” as Sade's best work. The overly thought out justifications just weren't present enough and I think some people find Sade's philosophical points either repetitive or simply unnecessary. Which, I can understand this viewpoint, but I happen to enjoy that aspect of Sade's writing quite a bit. Regardless of how much he beats a point to death or how circular some of his logic is at times, I think it's a very interesting thing to read and try to unravel. Granted a poor work by Sade still gets a great rating, because even at his worst he would still surpass many others by my book. I really enjoyed “The 120 Days of Sodom”, but I spent this review time to merely compare it to other works I had read by the same author. When compared against other author's Sade still remains supreme on many levels and I certainly cannot deny the man that.

I'm fairly recently getting into Tesla. As I mentioned in another review I've always known who Tesla was, his work on Turbines and the Tesla Coil, but I didn't know too much about the man or his other inventions. When I saw the movie “The Prestige” I became far more intrigued into the person that was Tesla, so I decided to pick up a few things about the man. A great introductorion, from what I can tell, is the PBS Documentary on DVD, but it has almost no depth and is really a very brief overview of the man and his inventions. “Tesla: A Man Out of Time” on the other hand seems to be a very in depth researched overview of the man, his inventions, and his friends.

For the most part I thought this was a good book and it did keep my attention. It's not written in a manner of an engaging tale, but rather a critical analysis of the man's life. Some people may not enjoy this kind of writing as it has almost no story-form, but I'm the type of person who can sit down and read books on Mathematics or Ancient History, where it's a bit of a report like format. Granted “Tesla: A Man Out of Time” is not nearly as dry as some History texts I've come across over the years! One of the greatest misgivings for this book, however, is the way it is organized. The first half of the book seems to be organized by invention. So if we're dealing with Tesla's most monumental achievement for mankind, the Alternating Current, then that chapter takes us through all the years with the boons and plights of that invention. Actually a few chapters are dedicated to this. So we're dealing with a time period of like 1893 to the 1915's or so, if I remember the dates correctly. But Tesla invented a lot more in that time frame, such as the Tesla Coil. Granted I totally understand the approach to organizing it in this fashion, but Cheney doesn't really let you know the beginning dates when she starts talking about an invention so it's up to the reader to project when it is happening. This format could have worked if she was more forthcoming with some dates so people can put it in chronological order in their heads, though maybe she just didn't want to clutter the book with too many dates, which I would normally agree with, but not in this circumstance.

Some other reviewers have commented on the her lack of explaining the technology in a lay readers understanding and some technical analysis shows that she likely didn't fully understand what Tesla's inventions did. That being said, I must point out that Cheney is not an engineer, she's a biographer and it says as much on the back of the book. While she does try to delve into the technical aspect, even I got confused with her explanation of Fusion and it's relation to Plasma, and I actually have a decent grasp on how Fission and Fusion work in terms of atomic structures. So people or engineers (specifically) reading this book may want to overlook that drastic aspect and focus more on the tale she's trying to tell about the man. I can kind of get over the technical aspect since there is very little explanation on the details and more focus on just Tesla's inventions and what he was general interested/motivated by as a result of his inventions. There are times when the author tries to liberally project her own conclusions to the reader such as Tesla's pre-concept of the circular “atom smasher” or cyclotron, which also lead to a premonition of Cathode Ray Tubes we've used in televisions and computer screens. While I think Tesla may have been on to something conceptually with the splitting of the atom, he by no means led the world to discover CRT technology as far as I can tell. However, I felt this kind of bias/commentary was in the minority overall.

That being said I feel I have a better grasp of who Tesla was and what he has done for this world in the grand scheme of existence. This book is definitely more for those who want to know more about who he is, the hardships he dealt with, and what he invented over his life time. Cheney goes through great lengths to quote letters Tesla received from friends and his responses, even quoting news articles with his comments or comments from others. There is no doubt that she spent an exhaustive amount of time peering over news articles and letters from this great inventor. The book also has a grand amount of notations so you can do further reading when she abridges some of the quotes in this book. She goes over the types of people he has gone to over his lifetime and friends he's made like Anne Morgan (J.P. Morgan's daughter), Mark Twain, and having met Thomas Edison and worked for him. This is just a taste for who he met and worked with over his lifetime.

In this book we meet a man who has practically no interest in woman and has enough obsessive compulsive quirks to astonish anyone. While I don't think his quirky nature was fully touched upon in this book, Cheney does give us a taste of some of his phobias, like earrings for example. We meet a man who was on top of the world for a portion of his life and who seemed to be on the way to making it big in the world, but then after making rather overly generous financial decisions he could never really get out of debt's clutches. He literally had to beg to borrow the money as the years got worse and worse over the years. Things looked up for Tesla for a while here and there, but he was also quite generous with his funds to help his friends financially during the Great Depression and his friends gave him the same treatment.

Towards the end we get a portrait of a man who liked to make grandiose statements for what seems to be for the sake of being in the limelight again. It feels like Tesla simply missed the fame and attention, quite a different scope from the man who worked in seclusion and extreme secrecy. But his secrecy was intriguing and I think he liked to emerge to the public for attention every now and again. As he got on in years his claims didn't end in much fruition for the world, which isn't surprising since towards the end of his career and life he lived out of a hotel room without a laboratory. However, he still claimed his wirelessly transmitted electricity would work. He also ended up being wrong on quite a few things, especially when he said Einstein's relativity was not an accurate representation of our universe. Even Einstein would have wanted to agree with him, but Einstein's accuracy cannot be denied. Like Einstein they both died with dreams of a final theory, Tesla's wirelessly transmitted electricity and Einstein's Grand Unified Field theory, both of which have not been proven definitively yet. When Tesla's life was finally over his papers and research items were confiscated by the government, because amidst the grandiose claims was high grade weapons technology like ray beams and so forth.

In the end we get a portrait of a man that struggled to change the world for the better and not always at his benefit. As his life ended in debt we are all left with the great boons of his inventions. Thanks to his Alternating Current we don't need a power station every two miles like we would need with Direct Current only systems. His research into radio which was eventually fully realized by Marconi made great leaps in that field. He was clearly a visionary more than anything else and a brilliant mind on top of that enthralled with electricity, machines, resonance, and the various waves that power and drive the like. I thought this book at times was a bit overly laudatory, but I think it did him justice. I get the feeling that Cheney felt a little bad for the man since he clearly does not get the same kind of esteemed recognition in America as Edison does. Some of the best tales of Tesla's life was when the two bitter enemy's fought the war of the currents, which is literally worth a book in itself. Say what you want, but in the end I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to people who want a more in depth portrait of the man behind the inventions. Truly a great inventor who should be well known in the annals of history.

I'm actually quite glad I'm finding a decent amount of books that have merit in this genre. I was actually very nervous, because as most people will point out when it comes to the “movies” or “videos” the writing isn't exactly there to keep you interested! I was hoping somewhere out there I could find literature that actually held a competent tale and could at least keep me into the book and not because of all the lascivious play. Not that I'm going to complain about that latter comment, I just get more into it if it's interspersed with an interesting tale.

So, as I've said in my other reviews in this genre, I'm sort of trying out authors at random and while Tara Black isn't the most engaging author I've come across, she is still quite good. I really like the story in this book, I thought it was pretty well thought out overall, especially since it's about books and I love books. The story revolves around a house called Ardingley End in a small village. It's set in modern times, but with people that have a bit of a penchant for Victorian era punishments, if you catch my drift. The main character is Dr. Jane Greene and she works for the rare books section of the British Library. Not only is she a scholar for old erotica, she also loves to practice the Corporal Punishments as well. The story is generated around the master of Ardingley End becoming deceased. He has allowed the British Library to take his rare books into their collection and he is rumored to have very rare editions dating back to the 1700's, this would pique any book collector's interest immediately regardless of content. However, Ardingley End has a rather interesting reputation of having a long history catering to Corporal Punishments of the perverse nature. Dr. Green is immediately sent on the case! She is to secure and retrieve these books before any other high profile collectors get word of it.

In her research she comes across some writings by someone who pens themselves as Uxor Studiosa. The person appears to have lived in the manor during the early 1700's and the writings are her notebooks, she is the young wife. This takes us on a journey of mystery and intrigue while trying to seek out these notebooks. Dr. Greene thinks they are hidden somewhere in the manor and that brings us on a journey to secret areas! Now the household still holds to the Victorian traditions the End is known for, so getting help from the staff puts them at odds and results in very necessary corrections. However, there is also an American historian snooping around and it seems a race to find out who will get to the rare collection first! Did I also mention there's a time limit on this? There is! Apparently there is a new master of the house coming to claim the estate and the books have to be moved before this other avid collector can get his hands on them. The story takes us through spanking, caning, birching, paddling, whipping, and even hints at an incestual situation between father and daughters. Alongside this are all the other common occurrences one would expect from a novel in this genre.

One bad part for me was that the author is clearly pretty well versed in other languages. There is a small amount of French in this book because the characters travel there at some point and the author never really says what the French actually means. My knowledge of French is fairly rudimentary and I could guess on a few points, the rest I had to rely a bit more on what I knew of Latin to translate it. Unfortunately I never could work out a full translation or grasp the full meaning, just because a word derives from a Latin root doesn't always mean it means the same thing in another language depending on its use in a sentence! This made the train ride through France somewhat annoying for me, but it was very minor. The other part that was kind of a little off is that there are usually gaps of time between each chapter. I don't know if this was to shorten the length or what, but it felt like I had to refigure out where the characters were at the beginning of most chapters or what kind of time had passed in the process. It is a minor complaint overall in terms of the grand scheme of this novel.

Overall I really enjoyed this story and the way it's written. It's written entirely from the Dr. Greene's perspective in the first person. This does leave a few gaps here and there because you don't get to see any other characters or see into their thoughts behind the scenes. However, this did add to the book's “mystery” factor a lot more, because in some cases you don't even know some people's names and you never do. The focal point being on hunting for rare books gave me an air of “The Club Dumas” as a possible influence, especially with all the bouts of mystery and intrigue of the characters. De Sade's the “120 Days of Sodom” gets referenced a few times in this book as well, so I think some of the scenes are influenced by that work. One of which I haven't read yet, but after reading this I feel like I should read it next. So if you have a penchant for domination and submission with a healthy dose of warm bums, then this is definitely something to read amidst a very well told and intriguing story about rare books.

I will admit that I'm fairly new to this whole Erotica genre of books and I've been buying stuff at random. So far what I've read wasn't giving me hope for this genre, but then I came across Aishling Morgan. From a literary perspective this is precisely the kind of author I am looking for! I've noticed I tend to read these kinds of books because I actually enjoy the stories and sometimes not for the reason they are intended. Why do I do this? Mostly because I like the perspectives on the subject, because it is usually considered quite taboo in my society. I think it's a dose of real concepts into fictional worlds. I like reading about these additives in my literature. Like in other series I read, such as Dragonlance, for example, you won't find any sadistic characters modeled after a De Sade style tale! Nor should there be, mind you, this would ruin my experience in that world. So I come to this genre to get a dose of that “other” element that is usually hidden in the mainstream avenues of any fictional world (not just a Fantasy setting). That would put a black mark on what Dragonlance is to me. However, I acknowledge that there technically should be characters that adhere to the most depraved concepts within even that kind of a fantasy world. I guess my mind is depraved enough where I very much get intellectual enjoyment out of reading stories on this level.

That being said, Aishling Morgan provided the exact kind of quality I would expect from literature! He even exceeded in many facets that caught me off guard and made the adventures all the more enjoyable for me. “Wenches, Witches and Strumpets” is basically a collection of short stories. Naturally some are better than others, but all of them are at least very well written. I noticed I tended to prefer the longer stories because Aishling was able to flesh out the characters a lot better in my opinion. Topics of this nature, I always like to get into a characters head to see what they are thinking and possibly what drives them, not just lewd scenes for the sake of it. Aishling, for the most part, gives that to the readers.

One really superb thing about most of the stories in this book is they have awesome endings. Despite the fact that a lot of these stories have fairly practiced and sometimes cliché elements, I could not actually predict most of the endings! This, to me, shows how adept of a writer Morgan is. I've come in contact with enough writing in my day to be able to judge fairly well where a story may end, but I couldn't on most of Morgan's tales. He just had surprise endings that made me laugh in hysterics or were shocking (but also funny at the same time!). He adds in a serious degree of humor and one short story “A Lady in Church” seems to be based on the concept of a naughty joke and it's just fleshed out.

Some of these tales were just downright creative as anything else I've come across. “Virtual Tramps” really caught me off guard because it was very science fiction-esque. And it kind of combined the concept of Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck into the story, but I don't know if that's what influenced the idea because they both came out in 1988! On of the other strong stories was “Virago”. This has nothing to do with the erotic content because doing that stuff in practice doesn't even interest me, the story was just so superbly written! I really got into the characters and wanted to see what would happen to them. Basically the story takes place in the future and the human species has lost some height. A professor is giving some college students a lesson on history and touring a museum and she goes into a section with an electronic nanny (robot), but it malfunctions and they are trapped with the robot! Needless to say the sequence of events after that are highly absurd, which is what made it hilarious and fun to read. It also created enough intrigue for me to want to know how they might escape or if they would!

I know this will sound strange, but one of the worst stories in this collection was the first one “Mistress Perfection.” Honestly the tale was fairly dry in concept, but from that one story I could tell I was dealing with a writer of a very different caliber and knew it was very well written. This may be due to the fact that the characters in this short story just didn't grab my attention to find out what would befall them. The worst story on here is by far “Princess”. This one really didn't work for me at all. Frankly this is due to the short length of the story. The characters just appear and do random stuff, but they have absolutely no depth. I know only the bare basics of the characters involved, but that's it. Personally I want more out of a story. The other tale that befell this same problem was “Tigress”. “Tigress” was interesting because it used anthropomorphic characters, like Tigers with humanoid characteristics, etc. I thought this was a very interesting tale and really should have gone onto something bigger.

One thing that is incredibly interesting about Aishling Morgan's writing is that he doesn't always adhere to that concept of beautiful people. Instead he even uses characters that are downright repulsive in his tales. I think this adds a heavy degree of realism when you think about it from a literary perspective. In the story “Cows” he uses some people that are very overweight, and while this is not something I'm attracted to, I found myself enjoying the tale because it ended up being a mystery at the same time. This duality is really what makes his stories interesting, I think. I was surprised I enjoyed the stories despite these factors being used and the tale “Virago” where they used ugly homeless men. Never would I have thought I'd find merit in the use of such characters in a novel of this genre. That just goes to show you what a testament this writing is! Now I should point out that this novel isn't for the faint of heart. There is spanking, diaper/child role-play, there is even a degree of toilet humiliation concepts. Also the story “Cows” they actually have women being milked, which I will admit, not everyone is going to be very interested in reading about. There are a lot of humiliation scenes catered to, but this is alongside fairly interesting stories. Just thought I would at least warn people what to expect because it really is a variety that stretches from fairly normal scenes to the downright bizarre.

Honestly, I'm saving the absolute best for last! The story “Succubus” is my absolute favorite. Favorite! It feels extremely influenced by Dante Alighieri's “Inferno” and being a pretty big fan of that whole idea and the Divine Comedy in general, I really got into “Succubus”. It's basically about a guy who is sent to Hell to live out his days in his kind of torment. However, before he goes into his sentence he is taken on a tour of the different punishments by a very alluring succubus. I have to say seeing Dante's work used in this light was pretty exhilarating. It's just a shame it was a short story and I was disappointed it ended. However, in the essay at the end he mentioned he was going to write a full novel based in that world. Needless to say I can't wait to get my hands on that one.

I would have enjoyed this book without the essay at the end, but Morgan decided to write an essay about fantasy fiction and why he does what he does. Frankly this gives me absolutely newfound respect. I would have just been happy with the stories, but it was taken to a whole new level and intellectualized perfectly! Morgan goes into detail about the worlds he created, which I found fascinating. He also discuses, at length, about how he writes for his interests and why you don't see certain things in his books or why you do. I found this great! You can tell he writes about what interests him and that's probably why the stories are so well thought out. They're not written with blind intent, they have a purpose. I hope after this that I have done Aishling Morgan's writing justice in this review and I hope he will be pleased to see a reviewer that gets it. At least I hope I get it from his perspective at the very least. I like to think I comprehended his motivations and got the point of his stories.

Okay I will admit, I played and beat the game before I read this book. I know that's not what it's intended for but the damage is done. In some ways I'm kind of glad that I did because it gave me a much better understanding of the imagery. This book is pretty well written in that regard, but having the image in your head of what it actually looks like adds so much more weight to it! Normally I wouldn't go for that kind of thing, but this is a video game based novel, so I prefer seeing the created world. Also I should point out that Shepherd isn't in here at all, remember the game develops that character FOR you, because it is you. Just in case someone wanted to know for whatever reason... I thought it was obvious.

If you've played the game then everyone will know what I mean when I say that this is really the story of Anderson and Saren. I think the author left out the development of Anderson's character quite a bit because you get to see him and interact with him a lot more in the video game, so the author didn't feel the need to be overly redundant, probably realizing most readers will play the game first anyway. Overall this book is a pretty quick read and I didn't find it overly technical in its explanations, rather it focuses a lot more on the adventure and intrigue. It does go into detail about some of the specific weapon systems, but it's by far not a majority of the book. I don't think it's any secret that this game's world is pretty obviously influenced by the world of Star Trek, and I would dare say it's more like “The Next Generation” with its political intrigue between species etc. Maybe a touch of Deep Space Nine with the story based around a space station, but that could easily be Babylon 5 influence as well. There is a heavy layer of warlike concepts in here, but that usually comes with any Science Fiction world so I really couldn't pin down an example very well for that.

I'll be honest; I wasn't truly engaged in this book till around page one hundred. This is when the story really came together. Unfortunately it was slightly predictable the way the characters met, but frankly, I loved it. I read that part with sheer anticipation and then when my wishes were granted I actually smiled. It's not often I actually enjoy this in writing, but Drew Karpyshyn did it beautiful in my opinion. From that point on I was absolutely hooked and couldn't put the book down.

I have to give Mass Effect praise for creating one of the best bad guy characters I've come across. He has this ruthless duality where he rationalizes all of his actions down to the smallest detail and really blurs good and evil concepts. I know this kind of character may have been done before, but the way it's culminated in Saren is just perfect and I really identified with him in a very odd way. I really don't want to go into anymore detail and ruin his character for everyone, but he is brilliantly methodical in his actions and that's something that really makes him interesting to read about.

Mass Effect deserves further praise for really tying in a novel correctly! It was a breath of fresh air for me after I had just finished reading the Star Trek: The Next Generation book debacle. The lead writer on the Mass Effect video game also wrote this book, so all the characters are presented correctly. Saren clearly being the most interesting one. It's pretty clear to me that the author is purposefully leaving the series very wide open, maybe to spawn more writers to write in this world, kind of like we have with Diablo and the other Blizzard releases or Halo. Mass Effect gives us a very specific time and it's a very small piece of a larger universe, so maybe another author will be commissioned to write the story of the Protheans for example. I get the feeling this author is specifically leaving that detail out to give us a more in depth tale much later. Again, if you enjoyed this video game you definitely have to read this book, especially since you'll want to know much more about Saren and Anderson by the time you finish the game!

Needless to say after finishing “The Book of Atrus” I had fairly high expectations for this series going forward. At the end of “The Book of Atrus” we think the story is going to continue forward from that point, but there is a major story that has not been told yet. The fall of D'ni. This tale is frequently alluded to in the game and the prior book. In fact most of the prior book is trying to rework what was lost during the fall of the D'ni Empire.

Journey with us to a long ago time when Atrus' grandmother was a lot younger and originally known as just Ana. Unlike the other Myst stories so far, this book deals on the level of an entire society. Most areas in Myst that we've visited have been fairly desolate and uninhabited, except for one section in “Riven”, but we never interacted with the native population. Well in this book you get to see the height of the D'ni Empire. This story is actually pretty epic in scope and it starts during a time when D'ni was expanding their empire. They knew they were underground and politically there were some people pushing for a way to the surface of the world they were on. You get really involved in all of this political intrigue and that's what makes the book really exciting. I must point out here that as a reader I typically don't enjoy this type of thing and I go more for the action or mystery based types of books. “The Book of Ti'ana” has the perfect blend of political intrigue and mystery as far as I'm concerned.

So the book starts off with the digging teams working their way to the surface and this is where Aitrus (Atrus' grandfather) is introduced into the story. Something happens and the political winds change and the project is put to a halt. At this point you're brought further into the D'ni culture and Aitrus' background story. The D'ni culture is so fascinating that I honestly couldn't stop reading the book. However, going in tandem to this world underground is also a surface world where Ana and her father survey the land areas that haven't been used yet. The surface culture is also on the expanse and often Ana and her father are commissioned to go and explore.

Honestly, I can see how some people would think the book is sort of dry at first because there isn't that much intrigue and it is more based on character development. Such as the introducing of Aitrus' powerful friend Viovus and so on. He becomes a very integral part of the story in the future, but at the beginning you don't know that, nor do you suspect anything... but that is the whole point! One day everything changes in the D'ni society when Ana shows up in their world. Not only that but she can learn language and the D'ni society was haughty enough to think they were the only culture on this world possible for such words and technology. Granted the D'ni technology far exceeded that of Ana's knowledge, but her ability to learn astounded them.

I don't want to give too much away, but that's just a taste for what you can expect to see in this astounding novel. Eventually the story turns into a sort of fate styled meeting for two lovers, Aitrus and Ti'ana (the “ti” was added onto her name in D'ni). They are simply destined to be together. However, this is also the tragic tale of a lost friendship which eventually leads to the fall of an entire empire. In the end it's a rather sad tale, but an incredible background story of Atrus' forefathers and why his father Gehn was so obsessed with D'ni. Let's just say, I now know why he was so captivated with that world.

I simply can't recommend these books to people enough. They're simply shocking! Of all the video game based books I have read, these are probably the best in my collection. They are superbly written and they literally bring you into another world, just like the video game series can do! They are made in the spirit of Myst with small drawings and notations about what is being described in the book, so it has a bit of a journal feel just like we get in the game! I've actually read these books twice now and that's the first time I've ever done that with a book, that's how good these novels actually are.

I really wasn't sure what to expect from this book judging by the sub title of this book; “The Culture of Success.” I sort of went in expecting something about how Goldman Sachs' culture was superior to others in a very detailed manner. That's really not what this book was; this was basically a pretty broad overview of the Goldman Sachs history. In retrospect I think I preferred it to be the firm's history than what I had initially thought it was would be. It does discuss how important culture was to the firms development though, so that was in the book, but it was more of a historical perspective overall.

The author takes you back to the beginning on how the firm began by running promissory notes in the late 1800's in New York. I thought this was fascinating since I knew next to nothing about the firm before delving into this book. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much, it was a wealth of new information for me. I thought Lisa Endlich did an excellent job in bringing the reader through the history. She brought us through the firm's humble beginnings all the way to the firms IPO in the late 90's when it was considered one of the most dominant power houses in the financial world.

One of the parts that I found to be the most interesting was some of the family history concerning the Goldman's and the Sachs' during the great depression and moving into World War II. The Goldman in one of the top positions at that time was extremely proud of being a German Jew and longed to retire back to Germany. Unfortunately history would not make this a pleasant situation since shortly after he returned to Germany Adolf Hitler was named Der Fuhrer. I couldn't help but feel bad for the man since, from what Lisa reports, he embodied a lot of elements that Hitler would respect in a person. Pride for ones homeland being the primary factor for what is important to Hitler. This is made very clear to anyone who sits down and actually reads “Mein Kampf.” Goldman had to return to the U.S. quite disillusioned with everything.

For those interested in the history of markets the book also covers the time frame when the American firms tried to enter into the European market and all the difficulty that came from that. In the 1980's there were multiple scandals with traders, some of which hit home to the firm. She brings us through all the agonizing hardships and gives a pretty interesting inside look into the leaders at the time. It was interesting to note that Goldman Sachs was usually one of the last firms to make any move it deemed risky, but would let other firms go in and make mistakes. However, this kind of an attitude would have to change over time as the markets became even more competitive. The book finally closes with the discussions about Goldman Sachs issuing its first IPO (Initial Public Offering). This was a huge thing for a firm that had lasted as long as just a partnership. You get an inside look into the board meetings and what was going through the partners' heads during this major event in the company's life.

There isn't as much focus on the technical financial workings of Goldman Sachs, a few figures are quoted here and there. I did find some of the history here interesting, especially about the creation of Block Trading and Hedge Funds. These are things that are used throughout the market place today. However, if you're looking for some deeper financial workings on Goldman Sachs this isn't the book you want to pick up.

I thought this was a great read by the time I finished. I found it incredibly fascinating to see this firm develop throughout the years and didn't realize the immense impact it had on the market place. Some of the language use is great because it tells some of the more humorous parts, such as in the 1980's how investment bankers/traders were the most hated people in the country, lower than lawyers! I thought some of these little anecdotes were brilliant to include because it gave a slightly lighter mood to a read that could have been overly dry. I'll admit that this isn't a book that most lay readers will pick up, only those of us who are in the economics, business or investment fields. Sure some lay people may enjoy it, but I can't ignore the fact it's for a fairly specialized audience. I definitely recommend this if you're interested in reading a broad overview of the firm and its history since its inception.

Okay, I should start this off with the statement that I am straight. Personally, I don't care about a person's preference and I know that people other than my specific preference enjoy underwear and lingerie. Personally, I consider myself quite the connoisseur of such things as lingerie, because I love seeing it on a woman. My girlfriend and I have a wonderful collection. It's incredibly alluring and can be quite exotic depending on what is worn. So when I saw this particular book in my recommendation list I thought it really catered to something that would interest me and I could identify with. Unfortunately what I found was an incredibly biased book towards m/m and f/f (even less towards this) crowd. Not that this is a bad thing for them, but it doesn't have much of anything for straight people. Since this book seems to be advertised towards equal footing, I thought it wouldn't be this strikingly biased. I know this book has gotten rave reviews, but being a man of mathematics, they just don't lie. Here's a breakdown of the stories in the book and where they stand.

Panty-of-the-Month Club f/f 3 pages
Sniff Test m/m 9 pages
Choices m/f 6 pages
The Elephant Jock m/m 9 pages
White T f/f 6 pages
Cross-Dressing Confession m(cross)/f 4 pages
Your Gift to Me f/f 5 pages
A Storm of Me m(solo)/(fantasy)m 5 pages
Practice Makes Perfect f/m 7 pages
Brief Encounter m/m 9 pages
Things Between f/f 8 pages
Burlesque and Answered Prayers f/f 8 pages
Nine to Five femDom/m 11 pages
Student Body m/f 8 pages
Surprise Package f/f(cross) 6 pages
The Wash Line m/m 8 pages
Designer Fantasies f/f 6 pages
Thong Appeal m/f 7 pages
The Banana Dash m/m 13 pages
Signet and Silk m/m 5 pages
Dirty Little Boxer Boy m/m 10 pages
Never Take it Off f-cross/f 4 pages
The Politics of Gray m/m 10 pages
Whose Panties? f/m-cross 4 pages
French Cut m/f 7 pages
On the Bias f/f 9 pages
Fate and Gravity m/m 19 pages
Panty Play m/f 7 pages
The Ol'Bada Bing m/m 7 pages
A Graceful Revelation f/f 9 pages
Jock Bait: A Spike the Skaterpunk Story m/m 8 pages

I know... it looks decently balanced as you work through the list, but when you break down in terms of percents the stories are weighted towards m/m. I left out the two introductory pieces and focused solely on the stories. Here's what I found in terms of percent.

m/m = 12 or 38.71%
f/f = 10 or 32.26%
f/m = 9 or 29.03%
Total: 31 or 100%

So even looking at that chart it doesn't really seem that bad. Yeah it's weighted, but not by a huge difference. But as I was reading this I got the feeling it was weighted towards m/m a lot more. So it felt like the story total was a bit skewed in this calculation, so I decided to present a chart based on page number! Boy did I get different results (again, not including introductions):

m/m = 112 or 54.11%
f/f = 64 or 30.92%
f/m = 31 or 14.98%
Total: 207 or 100%

As you can see when you look at the amount of pages spent on m/m versus m/f there's an absolutely huge divide. Even for f/f, you don't have very much going for you here. I consider myself a man of equality and where there's only 14% of this book for me to really identify with, I can't help but think I'm strikingly in the minority here. Granted if you're a bi male you've really got a good chunk of this book to enjoy, but if you're a bi female that's only 45.89% of a book for you to enjoy.

Most of the stories are written from a first person perspective. This is probably so the reader will feel like they are doing the actions in the book. While this writing style does have its merits, by the end of the book I was sort of tired of this style and did want something different. Maybe it's my literary interest, but I do understand why it was written in this fashion.

Also I was quite surprised to see that there wasn't much of a focus on actual lingerie in this book. Most of the works were based around general underwear, even a lot of the f/f stories were biased this way. I would say the ones that really focused on the lingerie garments were “Burlesque and Answered Prayers”, “French Cut”, “On the Bias” and “Panty Play” to a degree. “Nine to Five” really didn't have much to do with lingerie as it had to do with stockings specifically. Granted lingerie is a rather all encompassing term these days, but I didn't see this story fit as much as others into the criteria. Although it was an interesting story and I did enjoy the ending. Even in the stories where the men were crossing and wearing panties the garment felt like a background item, not a major player in the stories. It was just as if the characters were doing it, but that's all... nothing special about it. Though I seriously have to commend this book for stepping over that bound and presenting men in that light, especially as being straight. The concept of a male wearing women's under things is usually a misnomer for a preference for other men. When most people don't grasp the fact that if you're a man and want men, you tend to like male things, not womanly things. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, but a majority of these people are quite straight. So, I must say I enjoyed this particular accuracy in the stories.

The weirdest story in this book is by far “Storm of Me”. It's about a guy in space by himself and all the things that happen with zero gravity. I'm sure you can get the picture. It was just a bizarre story. The other part that was kind of frustrating when I was reading was whenever there were stories of f/f where females cross dressed, like in “Surprise Package”. For a while I thought they were m/f stories, but then halfway through the gender switches on one person and that was just confusing. For a while I even thought the person was a she/he. In “Never Take it Off” I'm still not sure what the gender of the second person in the story is. I think the stories should have been broken down by what was in them on their title pages so readers knew what to expect. Otherwise this manner of writing was incredibly confusing. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most people don't find gender confusion much of a preference. Granted this kind of story was in the minority so maybe they were trying to cater to such an interest, I'm sure it's out there!

So, overall would I recommend this book? No, considering it's advertised as having something for everyone, it just doesn't balance out nicely. Even if you are into m/m, you only have about half the book to read, so why would you buy it? Some of the stories were quite excellent, as I've said, but they're just so far in the background against this entire book that I can't help but feel somewhat cheated for my time and money. Eventually I started skipping stories that were m/m because I knew the book was heavily weighted that way. At a cover price of fifteen dollars, I can't figure out how that's justified. When I can purchase a regular novel for eight dollars and have more to do with lingerie in it! Frankly, I think these people should have released maybe three different books focusing solely on each sequence and then released them at a reduced price. Granted the m/f stories probably would be cut out entirely because there isn't enough page count to justify having a book published.

From my point of view this is probably one of the most important books written. This is one of those books that changes history. Yes, this means I completely disagree with what Hitler said about books. He mentioned that books don't change history, but a good speaker/leader does. While this is very true, books usually exist in conjunction with this. I think you need both because the book is far more timeless than the speaker and often times a book precedes a major turning point for a movement. Look at texts like “The Bible”, “The Principia,” or Euclid's “The Thirteen Elements”. All these texts were turning points in history and changed the way we look at the world. “Mein Kampf” would forever change the way we looked at the world as well. It literally moved nations to act... in opposition of such a major power struggle.

I do not advocate Hitler's methodology in what he did, but I do acknowledge the profound impact it has left on the world and the major advancements we were all forced to make in realms such as technology. Now that this book is part of history you can't help but think of the “what if...” scenarios as I read through this massive text, I'll play into these concepts as I touch upon specific areas. Now I'm not a World War II or World War I historian by any means, so it was a hard book for me to read some of the more minute details Hitler referenced in this book. However, I read it more for the prospects in philosophy.

This particular edition is split into two different volumes with an excellent introduction by the translator. Volume I was printed in 1925 and then Volume II came out in the year 1926, so they were written very close together. The first was mostly philosophical and recounts his childhood growing up. The second was more a general history of the political party and how to deal with foreign nations. It's interesting that Hitler didn't put out any other books after these two and I assume it's because his involvement in politics took up much more of his time and no longer had the free time to write. However, they did find another book he was working on after the fall of the Reich and is now published as “Hitler's Second Book”. This edition is great because it compared the first printing with the second printing and footnotes the discrepancies. It also adds in details on the people Hitler named specifically in this book who would be relatively unknown to the rest of the world outside Nazi Germany and especially helpful to me because I haven't read that much about this period in history to know the extreme details. In Volume's I and II Hitler specifically references incidents in World War I that really helped shape the beliefs he has here.

Anyway the introduction that prefaces this edition is rather lengthy, but well worth the read. It adds more of the historical background into the text you are about to dig into. It has interesting anecdotes about Hitler's involvement with the party, like in the text he states he was the seventh member of the DAP, but later it was found out he was 555th and this was corroborated with an unsent letter from Drexler, one of the founders. In fact when historian's looked at the membership items that were left behind after the war they could see that Hitler's had been altered physically. Also the introduction has an excellent overview of the printing of this book. Such as how it is not allowed to be printed in certain countries. Luckily in my country no such restrictions apply to any printed document, so I am free to read and review whatever I wish, regardless of how inaccurate a printed document is. I'm definitely glad there was an introduction even though it added another twenty pages onto an already daunting read. The introduction also forewarns us that Hitler can have a tendency to ramble in forms that eventually make little sense. I'm glad this warning was stated because when reading this book it was quite clear when Hitler felt particularly passionate about the subject he started to go off on these ridiculous tangents and tirades, often times in run on sentence form.

In the spirit of this book, I will review Volume I separately from Volume II. So first we discuss Hitler's philosophy and growing up. Personally, I think Hitler should have stuck with the philosophical approach and left politics to the politicians (regardless of the fact this didn't mesh with his philosophy). Hitler's main point in doing the things he believed in was to change society for the better. It's very clear that he truly thought he would be saving the world and putting Germany in the forefront of being that savior. Hitler's conclusion was that it would most easily be changed through moving into the political realm. He specifically outlined his plan for getting access to the political realm and the backing of the people through propaganda. He even spells out that the propaganda doesn't always have to be true; it just needs to draw a person's attention. Realistically, when we look back on what he was planning on doing and how he did it, none of the world should have been shocked that this is what would happen. He pretty clearly outlines where his prejudices are and why he has them.

Hitler starts his story as a young boy growing up and becoming disillusioned with the world around him. His father wouldn't let him do what he really wanted to do, which was art. He doesn't seem like the over confident Hitler that history portrays today. In fact I would say the movie “Max” starring Noah Taylor as Hitler did a pretty good portrayal of that possibility, only that movie was not about Hitler in his High School years, so it was a little unrealistic. When World War I started Hitler joined the military and I think this is where his confidence in himself really started to take root. This is also where he became convinced that propaganda was the key to winning the war because upon viewing the enemy's propaganda it was better than what Germany was putting out. It would appear his assumption was correct; since via propaganda he got many crowds gathered to listen to him speak.

Probably the most well known facet of his beliefs is the anti-Semitism that brought on the Holocaust. He eventually ended up in Vienna and I think this is where his prejudice became firm. You can see where his theory turns into some sort of paranoid dementia, because before you knew it he was calling everyone on the street a Jew in disgust. This was mostly based on looking at the person and guessing. He believed they had penetrated the newspaper industry and were completely lying to everyone in the world. As Volume I continues you find that eventually this belief grows into him thinking that they also controlled the governments. I think a lot of this stemmed from one other text, which he mentions in this book “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This is a hoax that has existed for a while and first started getting published in 1897. I believe the global conspiracy outlined in that book only solidified what Hitler suspected with his newspaper theory. I was surprised that Hitler had originally wanted to start out as an artist and actually held a few gallery viewings of his work. I wonder at this point if there is any Hitler original art around. If I remember correctly I heard actually wasn't a very good artist. It's interesting to note that as Hitler continues with his tirades I this book, you can tell he has a special soft spot for art because he wants more of that industries presence in Germany.

Overall I was surprised at how little anti-Semitism there was in the book in comparison to the length of the text. I was actually expecting a lot more. Don't mistake me, he took jabs wherever he possibly could and there was an entire chapter dedicated to the subject. However, I felt like in the first volume he spent more time criticizing the Slavs and the Austrians as being a much more immediate problem. It's almost as if the first and foremost problem was his own government and Austria; the issue of the Jewish population was a more of a global problem and probably seemed to be less immediate. You get a wholly different feel by the time we reach Volume II though.

I was also very surprised at the countries he referenced as being respectable, specifically England and America. He must have been greatly disappointed in England when they refused to side with him during World War II and he must have felt doubly wrong about his initial assessment of America when we funded a lot of his enemies. Being an American I found some of his comments curious since it seems he felt we had a dominant German aspect of our country. I found this odd since it was essentially founded by England and France mostly. I couldn't help but think that Hitler was misinterpreting his history or the books he was reading were just plain wrong.

For the most part Hitler is a pretty good writer. I found that he appears very intelligent and very well read, also very arrogant. He has sections that discuss the part of his life where he was looking into the political arena and when he came across the German Workers' Party. He doesn't hesitate to point out how superior his ideas were or how much better things worked when done his way. From the point of view of a leader, this seems counter to what you would want. Since his ability to elevate his own status seems to be his main underlying motive rather than helping his people, despite what he actually says. There is one instance when he was recounting the first speeches given for the party and how the first speaker was rather boring, but when he spoke the crowd became excited and into the words, they stood up and cheered even. History recounts Hitler as a very excellent speaker and I have no doubt this is true, but it's curious to see that he puts himself over his own party members constantly in this book. There were also sections where he got very passionate about a topic that became very confusing, as I explained above. I don't think this speaks to his inability to write, but rather his inability to write clearly when he is really trying to get his point across on a topic he believes as a core problem.

Either way you looked at it, I couldn't help but think by the end of Volume I that Hitler would have been one of the world's most celebrated leaders if he had just put his prejudice aside. This was the case... at least until I read Volume II. Through Volume I he seems to genuinely want to help his people and the world around him. The one major crux in his argument is that he believed in some overly prejudice driven conspiracy. I think Hitler really had to start struggling in the end when it was becoming even clearer that the Jews weren't as well off in Germany as he believed they were, especially during the great depression. I was surprised at his focus on helping the middle class and a seemingly focal point on intelligence and action. It appeared his main push to change the nation was centered on elevating the knowledge of the German peoples as well as moving them to the desire for action to help their nation. I think this is a great point and he's most certainly not wrong about it being needed. However, my interpretation of this concept would be dashed by Volume II...

Volume II made it incredibly clear to me that Hitler had no place in becoming a leader and especially no place on deciding education reform. Shortly into Volume II he has a lengthy chapter on what he plans to do with education to bolster a more national spirit for young Germans and to create what he refers to as a “folkish state”. The concept of the “folkish state” is discussed in great length throughout Volume II and seems to be the main focus. One of the first things he was going to do was decrease the amount of time in classrooms and increase the amount of time for exercise. Following this he would decrease the amount of subjects being taught in school. This completely conflicts with his desire for an intelligent Germany, and he also discusses at length how the intelligentsia of the area are all weaklings and spineless. He notes that many students learn quite a bit of frivolous subjects in High School, which is true, but I personally believe that being a well rounded student is far better. I do agree that people need more exercise, this is painfully clear to me living in America, but to sacrifice the access to knowledge is not a viable solution! He complains at length that too many people complain about certain political actions, but being spineless professors they never actually do anything about it. Hitler sought to change this and part of this included that right after High School the population (men) would go directly into the military. Hitler being a Veteran clearly thought his experience taught him strength, so he thought that what was good for him would be good for everyone else. If only such things were true, this is clearly something that cannot be put into practice. A lot of these crazy ideas may have seemed plausible on paper, but realistically they are a fool's errand... an errand Hitler was intent on running! After a citizens completion of Army service they were then allowed into the community to pursue whatever higher level career they saw fit to pursue. His purpose in High School was to expose the students to enough generalities for them to make a choice, which is a good idea, but his plan of execution was fairly far fetched and unrealistic. Personally, in 2008, I don't think High Schools are teaching students enough to prepare them for college or to perform in the working world. So it would seem less education on academics is not the answer, but the world really does need to find some kind of a balance on this subject, even Hitler recognized that and he lived in a vastly different era from our own.

Volume II also takes a drastic turn in terms of anti-Semitism and his foreign relations outlook. England seems to have been demoted into a nation that they could possibly not ally with due to the financial control of the Jewish empire. The United States was also seen as a victim of this disease, but his knowledge of American finance seems to have been quite limited. Granted there were some major firms in the U.S. that were founded by German Jews, namely Goldman Sachs, but what about firms like J.P. Morgan? In terms of the major American firms there was a balance and in the 1930's Goldman Sachs nearly went out of business in the Great Depression, so clearly this racial favoring of economic power was quite unfounded. I think Hitler spoke on these foreign nations rather out of turn because it was pretty clear he didn't know all that much about the nations and had gotten all of his knowledge from books, which may have been biased. For he terms Ford as one of the only free American business men, but in the second printing he no longer names Ford specifically, I felt this was curious. This was a drastic change from my perspective after reading Volume I, where he praised America. So even within his own book he is very contradictory. Also the focal point of being against the Slavs and Austrians has been replaced by Germany's mortal enemy... France. This sort of came out of nowhere, since in Volume I they were not “mortal enemies” just the regular kind. Hitler must have read a lot more on the subject and decided the French were far worse than they once appeared. I find all this curious because he prefaces Volume II, with saying that it's going to be about the party history and formation. The above topics have nothing to do with the party history or its formation, rather Hitler's own pet peeves about the problems that he saw after World War I.

Most of this Volume is spent complaining about current (1920's) Bourgeoisie decision making and discussing what Hitler plans to do to fix that. I personally wasn't buying it, but then again, his book is so long that I doubt many of the general workers ever actually read what he wrote. He did spell out in Volume I that he was essentially going to dupe the masses into following him by creating the best propaganda to get people to go to the meetings. At that point he probably understood the concept of mob madness and let that do the rest for him. He recounts his early involvement with the party as becoming the head of propaganda, which is what he wanted because he believed propaganda, first and foremost, was the fulcrum to a party's success. Hitler even points out that it doesn't matter if the party is well organized at that time if the propaganda doesn't bring the masses in, they will have nothing to organize in the first place. He also discusses at length the rarity of a man who can organize and lead well; I couldn't help but feel that he thought himself to be such a man. He was a brilliant strategist and acutely aware of the power of the threat of violence on the general populace, especially after a major war that was still fresh in peoples memories. One of his main points was that he believed that it didn't matter what the people knew as long as an intelligent leader was looking out for them, and it's clear he believed that he was the person that could truly help the most and should be leader. This is regardless of the violence he would have to inflict; besides he only wanted strong people to be German anyway, so a show of strength went a long way with him.

It's interesting to also note that he clearly wanted to rewrite some of the annals of history to favor the German people. In his long winded explanation of the Folkish State he points out that he believes the Aryan's are the only ones who could ever develop culture. No, he wasn't referring to the peoples belonging to the nation of India, but rather the Germanic peoples. See, the term Aryan comes from India, and I have no idea if Hitler knew this or not, but that's its origin. Indians clearly wouldn't have been high on his list, and certainly didn't qualify as those being able to create culture despite their history of creating that vast nation. Rather, it appears the legend and concept of the Aryan survived and came down to Hitler as the superior race. For some reason he equated that with the Germanic peoples. His whole concept of the white population being the only force intelligent enough to create culture is clearly unfounded. He gets even more contradictory in this concept since he was well aware that Germany was vastly tribal up until the Roman invasions. He states the reason was that “we were a young people”. This is just foolishness because it was trade in technology that eventually brought what we call “civilization” today to the Germanic tribes. It has nothing to do with them being the only creative force in the world. He completely ignores the fact that Egypt existed long before as a civilization. I question whether he knew of the Arab city-states of Sumer, but it doesn't explain Egypt. I think Hitler merely viewed them as “uncivilized” or “not a cultured” or whatever other twisted elaboration he wanted to thrust upon them. Either way, he does not explain his reasoning in detail, and just states matter of factly that only Aryans harbor the creative force to develop culture and no one else.

Overall I walked away with reading a superb book, in my opinion. At times it was very hard to read and I will be the first to admit that not everyone will struggle through this thing. There are too many sections of rambling that don't drive home the main points. It all sounds very smart at first glance, but when you sit down and analyze what he's saying inherent contradictions come to the surface. Then it occurs to the reader that most of his language use is merely superfluous for the sake of sounding intelligent (much like this sentence). No one wants an incredibly inconsistent leader. Despite the racial hatred, I am glad I read this book, it gives me a great historical perspective and I now understand w

First, I must commend Amazon for making this book available for purchase. I don't know too many other places I would have been able to acquire it. It's nice to see that bookstores are willing to offer any kind of work regardless of their controversial nature. However, I will say that I'm fairly surprised that this is the version that's being offered and kind of explains the statement Amazon issued about offering this particular text.

I am aware that this text has been proven to be a fraud, but in the actual printing of it I was expecting that to be definitively laid out for the reader. Unfortunately the authors and translators presenting the text appear to believe it. So, for those historically inclined, you may want to seek out some other supplementary texts that go into the history and the hoax of the document itself. You can't trust this version at face value because of the way it's presented. Books like “The Lie that Wouldn't Die” have more background on the history of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. I have not read that text yet, but I do have it, so all in good time. There are multiple books published on the lie itself, that book is merely one that I happen to own. I will probably acquire various versions and review them individually, when I find the best copy I will update this review and present it here. Either way, from some other reviews I see, there are still people that support this so the question as to whether this is a hoax or not appears to still be out there for some people.

I first heard about this book when I was reading “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” because they had mentioned it originated in medieval times in Russia. Unfortunately reading this book didn't really back up that claim, so I will have to find that elsewhere in my research. The translator of this text reports that it was first published in 1897 in Russia from someone's private collection to be distributed amongst friends, but nothing about how it ended up in his private collection. So this global Jewish conspiracy concept wasn't widely published at first. After that more copies were published in the early 1900's that had wider distribution. The translator, Marsden, opens the book with quotes from well respected men, such as Henry Ford from 1921 saying that he thought the Protocol's fit the world. So, essentially adding weight to the assumption these “Protocols” were actually correct because learned and successful men acknowledged them.

The real pinnacle of this books renown was probably culminated when Hitler became influenced by it. He even references the book in “Mein Kampf” and later he also references Henry Ford as one of the few free men in the United States. I have no doubt it's because Hitler thought he supported the book. In fact a lot of people supported this as truth before it was proven to be a hoax. Of course there are still groups of people who say this is all factually true, but you get that with any conspiracy theory. I, on the other hand, will remain skeptical unless presented with definitive and hard evidence. A single “supposed” conversation of some elite Jews at the turn of the 20th century is not enough to persuade me.

Okay, on to the text itself. This is what you can term a “perfect conspiracy”. In the sense that whatever you use it for it can support your beliefs. For example, if I were to say Hitler was actually in the employ of the Jews and only supporting them through his actions, I would be correct and supported by this document. If you read Protocol XII section 3, at the end it says “I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us...” I could cry conspiracy of World War II to reestablish an Israeli state using this book. Just as you can use the allied response in the war to support the accuracy of this book. Usually when conspiracies enter this caliber something is quite wrong, any logical outlook should tell you that.

One thing that sort of drives me crazy about some of the accusations in this book and supported by others is the conspiracy theory that our financial institutions are controlled by the Jews. This seriously blows me away because when you look at banking and financial institutions there aren't enough that deem it as full global control. Goldman Sachs has roots in Jewish founding, but does J.P. Morgan? Not at all, J.P. Morgan's fortune was rooted through a man named George Peabody who has roots in a Puritan family. Last time I checked they were Christian. Likewise Bank of America has no tracings. I'd venture to say State Street Corporation doesn't have any, but I can't find out who founded that bank. And how about Softbank from Japan? Rothschild, one of the more famous financial institutions does have Jewish roots, but that doesn't mean a bank like BNP Paribas does. Or how about Icici Bank, the largest in India? The accusations just don't stack up. However, some might say the people were probably members of the Masons, which this book does list as one of their controlling elements. Unfortunately, I don't think it lends that much credence to the conspiracy because there are about a thousand other conspiracies involving the Masons that have nothing to do with this Jewish conspiracy as well.

Another part of this book that I found fairly annoying is that it looks like someone went in and added newer comments into the book. Like after a particular protocol section is being discussed we'll see a notation in parenthesis, probably the most annoying and disruptive way to add these notes, but they use these as proof of actions in the world. Specifically they are generated towards the United States as proof of that government under Zions control, no doubt. You'll see great comments like “Now we know the purpose of the Federal Reserve Bank Corporation”. This note was found in a particular protocol about the control of money supply. I must confess that it doesn't appear this person really knows the history of the financial systems in the United States. One of the main reasons the Federal Reserve came about was because it wanted to alleviate any problems of there being a run on the banks like what happened in the Great Depression. Also it had to have special functions as we moved away from the Gold Standard. The commenter would have had more weight if he had placed this comment after the section on creating financial strife in the world. I have a very lengthy book on the functions of the Fed Reserve called “Secrets of the Temple” and I hope to learn more about its inner workings there. This financial function is also involved in many other conspiracy theories, but it holds far more weight when you talk about interest rate control and reactions to inflation. But this works in contradiction to the Protocols at times, because it states that Gold will be the method they control the world finances. The governments moving away from a gold standard must have put a little kink into that especially since Gold prices crashed in the 1980's and are just rising in the year 2000. Say what you want about this conspiracy theory, but it just doesn't hold water all the way through. Anyway, I found the added conspiratorial commentary fairly annoying. There's even one that states it was the reason JFK was assassinated. While I think there is some serious merit to the second gunman hypothesis, I really don't think the Jews were completely behind that.

On a historical level I definitely enjoyed reading this book and think it definitely has some serious merit for anyone interested in it. However, I would urge a better version, with more historical proof that this is not reality. Like all conspiracies some points fit the mold, but just because A' and B' go in conjunction doesn't always lead you to solution `F' with nothing in between. However, that's how most conspiracy theories work, there's a lot of faith you have to put into them because there is no supporting evidence, there are only assumptions and loose patterns to put the puzzle together. I sort of bear the tenet that people can believe whatever they want, but under that line you need to be able to put up with your beliefs being scrutinized by others. Needless to say this book did not turn me into a believer by the end.

I can't say that I'm the biggest Star Trek fan by any means. By that, I only really enjoyed “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Maybe it's because I was born in the early 80's, but for some reason I really can't get into Classic Trek, and I had a hard time really getting into “Deep Space Nine.” Therefore, for me it's all about “The Next Generation.” Seriously, I have all the episodes on DVD, I own all the comic books and now I've delved into the novels! I guess I'm a pretty big “The Next Generation” fan at the very least. I'm also big on details, as anyone can tell who have read my reviews.

As many other reviews have pointed out about “Ghost Ship” is that the story concept is pretty good, but the characters are all wrong. A few characters here and there seem to have been developed correctly, but it seems like that's all by chance. I did see someone mention somewhere that the author may not have even been able to see an episode of this new series before writing the book. I don't understand this, but when you analyze the release dates that kind of makes sense. The episode “Encounter at Farpoint” which was the first episode for “The Next Generation” came out in September, 1987 and the last episode aired on May, 1988. “Ghost Ship” was promptly released in June, 1988. This is way too soon to have been written after the season had finished being aired and would explain why nobody really acts like anybody on the show.

Here's my theory, you can take it or leave it. I think that Diane Carey only had character profiles available to her, pictures of the characters, a layout of the ship, and maybe the script for “Encounter at Farpoint”. Either that or written into the character profiles were hints at what their future would be in terms of development. When she was commissioned to write the book she was given these things wrote the book and then the publishing house held it to be released promptly after the last episode aired. That's my theory; it's the only reason I can think why a writer could so drastically screw up the main characters of the show! In another review I saw that someone mentioned not to judge this author by this book, furthering my belief in my theory. Because this story is quite good and pretty original and if it wasn't a Star Trek book it wouldn't be so hard to read.

That being said, I struggled through this book. The characters were so inaccurate. The book was slow to get into, recounting some prequel that happened to a Russian ship in 1995. This was about twenty pages long before we ever got to hear from the crew of the Enterprise. This wasn't the greatest idea for the first novel to kick off this series. Mainly because I was starting to wonder if I was reading something in the Star Trek universe at all. Anyway, I'll go over the general plot and then critique the character flaws. Basically this alien ship/entity attacked a Russian ship in 1995 and somehow kept the souls/essences of those on board. The starship Enterprise encounters the same entity years later and now they are in danger of suffering the same fate. The entity is much more powerful than the starship and it almost seems like the Enterprise is doomed to share the same fate. The essences of the Russian crew begin to appear on the Enterprise, which is why we get the title “Ghost Ship”. The Russian crew can talk to Troi, sort of, and the greater entity that is flying around the universe seems to be able to communicate with Data to a degree. This leaves the Captain and his crew in a sort of a quandary as to whether or not they should try to destroy the entity with all the “souls” on board. It's kind of an interesting premise and I will say, it's the only reason I finished reading the book. In terms of a time frame when this book takes place, I've narrowed down based on some given information. Since Wesley is an acting ensign and Tasha is still alive, then that means it takes place between episodes “Where No One has Gone Before” and “Skin of Evil,” which is a good chunk of the season. Therefore we can all already figure out that the Enterprise survives in this book given that time constraint because this book was after the first season.

Okay, now that everyone knows what the book is about, those who would like to know what's wrong in detail can read further. I'll start off with Commander Riker. His character is probably the most flawed of the whole bunch. As I mentioned above the book is taking place after Wesley had become an acting ensign so we're about four to five episodes into the show at this point. Anyone who has seen Season One knows that the characters had already been pretty well developed at this point. Riker in “Ghost Ship” is like a bumbling fool. He constantly questions if he's good enough and seems unsure of his decisions. He constantly juggles with the purpose of a first officer on the ship; this is clearly not the Riker we know. He's overly prejudiced against Data and at one point blows up and starts yelling at Data about how he's not human. This sends Data into all these questions about himself ever desiring to try and emulate humans (more on this thought later). It's as if Carey latched on to one conversation Riker had with Data on the holodeck about being nervous on Data being a machine in the pilot episode. She really grasped at a straw that went nowhere, because by the time we got to the episodes where Wesley was an acting ensign Data and Riker were fast friends. There's literally no malice between the two. Riker also spends a lot of his time in this book angering the rest of the crew and making Geordi feel sad (more on that later). The only time I felt like I was reading about the real Will Riker was when he had a personal conversation with Troi near the beginning of the book, when he tells a story about his first assignment as first officer. It was a funny story and told in the very same manner Riker would tell it.

Picard was probably the second worst portrayed character in this book. Seriously if you get the first and second officers on the ship wrong, and they're pretty much the main characters then the book is already doomed. Here we see a Picard, like Riker, that really isn't sure of himself and questions his command decisions and questions his motives. This became painfully clear during Picard's introspective look at his decision to promote Wesley to an acting ensign. If Carey had known the circumstances of Wesley's promotion this question would have never come about! Picard goes on and on about how Wesley is inexperienced and the ability to do calculations aren't enough for such a fast promotion. When, if you had seen Wesley's self sacrifice and ability to make decisions, it would've been very obvious that Wesley's knowledge of the ship more than qualified him, which was the whole point! In another scene we see Riker pull Picard out of the way of harm and then Picard berates him for it. We see an overbearing captain pushing his crew around and a crew nervous to say anything to him with fear of disappointing their captain. This is not the Captain Picard we know! He's a great captain that cares deeply for his crew and he engenders such trust and confidence in his crew that they wouldn't hesitate to tell him anything! It was so frustrating watching the crew bumble around hesitating to tell Picard any of the information he needed for a command decision. To put the final icing on the cake at the end Picard makes the most hare-brained decision I could possibly think of. During the crisis he removes himself for fourteen hours to go into a sensory deprivation tank to help him make a better decision. Seriously, even if the end results were a more informed decision he would not remove himself from command of the enterprise when it was in danger. There's no way Captain Picard would cease commanding the ship for some sort of “experiment”. He'd order someone else to do it and then listen to their report if it was really that necessary. I know the book was trying to set up a situation where it was only the captain's decision, but this was way too far reaching for me to get behind the logic.

On the note of Wesley, I may as well discuss that now. Here we don't see the child genius we got to know in the show. We see the genius that doesn't actually know how to work the ship nearly as well as he proves he can in the actual show. He clearly displays knowledge on how to configure the warp engines in “Where No One has Gone Before” and even during his first experience touring the bridge he displayed knowledge of the command seat and its functions. Therefore, in this book when Wesley asks commander Riker what the difference between a passive and active scan are, I can't help but slap my forehead. We're talking about a boy who managed to turn the ships tractor beam into a repulsor beam. How can he not know the difference between something that seems so elementary? Later in the book he is found working on an experiment with the antimatter, and seriously he displays knowledge on par with Data. So why even have him ask stupid questions? Further on that experiment it's presented to the reader that Wesley's experiment could have killed the entire crew the way that he was doing it. Wesley doesn't break rules in this fashion, he's smarter than that and we all know it.

Next I'll go over the other big blunder we'll call LaForge. He's incredibly over emotional and subject to frequent outbursts, especially when Riker is being prejudiced against Data. While LaForge probably shows the most emotion in most of the episodes, he doesn't have the same kind of outbursts. He is frequently out of order on the bridge and I can't conceive of a Captain Picard that would allow this kind of conduct, especially one that is portrayed apparently being harsher. Also, Geordi complains how people are abusing him constantly, like when Riker and Picard ask him to tell them what he sees in an instance. I found this incredibly out of sorts for Geordi's character since it never comes up in the show and he seems quite happy to help in such times. In the episode with the Edo “Justice” he is happy to look at the ship that is orbiting that planet and we never see him complain. I think Carey was latching onto a scene in sick bay where Geordi was talking to crusher about getting headaches, and his visor was the cause. For some reason Carey conceived that this would cause him great stress and malice towards his commanding officers, thinking they were taking advantage of him. This is just plain unrealistic for the LaForge we know. Furthermore in one particular case Geordi yells out “Christ!” in a situation of stress, but if I'm quoting my Star Trek correctly, not once is there any mention or suggestion that any members of the crew follow an Earth based religion. And later something is referenced as being Biblical. I know it sounds like a minute error; it really stood out to me because it's something so common in our language use today that it seems out of place to never hear it. The most we see of a religion on a regular basis is Worf observing specific Klingon rituals.

Troi's character was actually decently presented. Though she seems her emotions were out of control, but the author goes at lengths to explain her stress at getting herself under control. This doesn't pan out in conjunction with how she appears on the show. Also, what felt like another oddity was that she kept referring to Commander Riker as “Bill” when everyone else called him “Will”. Strangely this actually appeared to be accurate. I revisited the first season because I really wanted proof that she called him Bill and in episode “The Naked Now” she does actually call him “Bill”. I think the show eventually gave up on this and it only shows up in the first season. Interestingly the book does explain the origin of this pet name, but the show never tells the answer. Also they discuss her clothing as being skirted and that was only in the very first episode. They changed that idea after the pilot episode, but in the book she still clearly wears that. This furthered my theory that the author didn't have much to go on.

Let's not forget Tasha Yar. Her character was decently accurate in her personality, but her history was an absolute mess. When they were trying to figure out what the Russian ship was, Yar piped in that she was Lithuanian and recognized the names. This makes absolutely no sense because she grew up on some other planet and was abandoned by her parents. Her knowledge of those languages wouldn't have been known to her! I submit as further proof that in an episode, Data references the French language as being obscure. If French is obscure by this time frame then surely Lithuanian would've never made it in to common language on a remote and chaotic colony. Nor would Tasha know the relation of her language to Russian in that case! Curiously later in the novel Carey curiously references the fact that Yar grew up on that other planet, but makes no further mention of her national heritage. It's as if she was submitting the chapters as they were finished and couldn't go back and correct the mistakes reasonably.

Data's comments and personality were pretty accurate at first. Unfortunately I was less and less convinced of Data actually being Data as the novel went on. As the novel went on Data was having stronger and stronger illogical/emotional reactions to things. After Riker yelled at him and told him he wasn't human, Data had, what seems to be, extreme depression where he doesn't see the point in his emulating humans anymore. They also use language that is far too human to describe Data. In one particular instance Riker is standing over Data and it says “the muscles on the back of his neck” referring to Data. This makes absolutely no sense. Data doesn't have muscles on the back of his neck. Furthermore there was a constant reference to Data's beating heart and his pulse, this happens at one instance in sick bay! You have got to be kidding me. This is just absurd. Another instance that was wrong to me is that they bring up the fact that Data had been deemed a living creature by Starfleet. This doesn't make sense to me because then an episode in Season 2 aired where Data's “life” was questioned and put on trial for a final decision on the matter. This wouldn't have been possible if Starfleet had already decided Data was alive. The absurdities careen off and culminate in the final move where Data tries to get the entities attention in the book by flying out there in a shuttle craft to shoot it. In this fiasco Data's hand start shaking when he tries to disobey orders because his programming won't let him. Data wasn't made by Starfleet, and in other episodes he disobeys orders with quite a bit of ease when he feels it is a logical conclusion. Also his “heart” starts racing when faced with these decisions that conflict with orders. We all know Data isn't really designed this way where he gets nervous about breaking rules. For the final impossibility the creature does take Data's life essence. This is seriously impossible; it left behind a functioning machine husk with no personality. I really just don't think this is even remotely possible, I know the message is to walk away thinking Data is alive, but it doesn't hold up.

Dr. Crusher and Worf seemed to be the most accurate characters in here. Granted my feeling of this towards Worf's character is probably due to the fact that he doesn't have a major presence in this book. Crusher's character had the usual amount of emotional outbursts I typically expect from her in the show. Given how incredibly wrong she was in describing the other characters it feels more like these were slightly accurate by mere circumstance.

As you can see the story wasn't bad, but it was the development of the main characters that was incredibly false. Thus the book was nearly impossible for me to get into. This will be the case for any Star Trek fan I believe. We simply can't get into a crew that is bumbling and stumbling over each other at every turn. The bridge crew was so out of sorts that I wouldn't have trusted them to be in Starfleet let alone command the Federations flagship. This may have been the first book that launched nearly a hundred others in this ongoing novel series, but this is seriously the one fans and readers should skip. It's sad to say this and I wish I didn't have to, but I seriously must. The book is far too inaccurate to get behind and endorse.

It really seems only fitting that a video game about books would have a series of books published in its name. For some reason when such books were first coming out I was sort of skeptical about their quality. I truly am glad I overcame this and decided to pick up the Myst books. I was an early enough adopter to be able to get all the hardcover texts and they are all beautifully designed. It's strange that a lot of books don't adopt this kind of method, because it really is eye catching and I'm glad the makers of Myst picked up on that. In terms of binding, it technically is rather cheaply done to support the mass market interest in this series. Rather than have a truly older styled binding, they have the typical style with embossed paper wrapped over the hard cover. The paper is of excellent quality and is embossed in sections, which adds a tinge of making it feel artificially handmade. I've had mine for many years now and there is barely any wear on it. However, when one inspects the design you can tell it is merely paper glued over the normal hardcover pressing and it is merely there for aesthetic appeal. The books in the game have a very old styled feel, which they should since they're all handmade books, but the makers wanted to keep that atmosphere alive with printing these books. Despite my inspection of the edition, I must say it was a great marketing idea and wish more publishers would do this rather than just adopt the typical dust jacket. That being said, the current editions more readily available to readers are the regular paperback and now the collected edition which was recently printed.

I wasn't sure what to really expect from this book when I first got it. I had beaten the game “Myst” and the game was pretty well written. However, the game had a lot of unknown elements in its story, and I'm sad to report that “The Book of Atrus” doesn't fill in all the gaps. It certainly fills in quite a bit, but not everything. This book acts as both a prequel to “Myst” and a bridge to “Riven”. It's an interesting story in that regard because it tells about Atrus' childhood and goes into why the age of Riven is in dire need of our help!

At the end of Myst we find Atrus sitting at a desk in a deep cavern in place known as D'ni. We are transported there with him once we escape the island of Myst, but we are never told why he is there; just that he needs to make a decision concerning his sons. This is all well and good, but there are so many holes and questions, thus the novelization seeks to explain them. At one time Atrus lived with his grandmother, Ana, in a desert region. “The Book of Atrus” goes into detail about his life and learning there. It's almost an ideal childhood until one day his father, Gehn, returns and seeks to take him back to D'ni. See they are from a race of people who lived underground until they were all of a sudden destroyed. Ana, Gehn, and Atrus are the only decedents we are made aware of from this great society. So when Gehn was old enough he returned to the world of D'ni in search of its secrets, to see if he could find it and possibly rebuild it. Needless to say he sort of succeeded.

Gehn understands how to write in the books and knows the secret D'ni language to make different ages to create portal links between his world and others. However, he does not wield this power intelligently, but he doesn't want the knowledge to die with him, so he seeks out his son. He teaches Atrus everything, but Atrus has a keener mind for creating ages. Most of Gehn's worlds are unstable and if a world has inhabitants Gehn insists on be treated as a God. Needless to say Atrus' kindly nature has the better of him and he seeks to change this.

In this we get to see the bridge to Riven's story line. Riven had been an age linked to by Gehn, but the world was vastly unstable. So he and Atrus sought to fix it if they could. Gehn, being the overbearing man that he is, did not think most of Atrus' ideas were good ones. However, one thing would change Atrus' life forever when he got to Riven, he met Catherine there. Yes, the girl he references frequently in the first “Myst” game. Eventually she would bear his two sons Sirrus and Akenar, so as you can tell, I knew Atrus would succeed even during reading this, so I don't feel I am giving anything away. The book doesn't go into detail about the two sons growing up, so you never really know how everything started with them. Anyway, there is a solution to Atrus' problem, but I'll let the readers find that out for themselves. When we get to “Riven”, the video game, there are further complications based around this story... I'll leave these mysteries to be discovered for yourself.

I don't feel I am spoiling very much of the book because it is riveting in itself. Most people who read this will undoubtedly have played the video games and already know the stories' outcomes before reading this. As any Myst player knows the interesting factor is in the details, I have left every part of these out. The book is a fascinating page turner and I really couldn't put it down at all. This book leaves a lot more mystery to the reader in the end and left us looking forward to the follow up text, “The Book of Ti'ana.” I especially recommend this to any Myst fan who wants to delve deeper into the story line and world of Myst. I don't think many people would pick up Myst if they didn't already enjoy reading books to find out what new worlds they would be brought to. In that spirit these books are clearly written!

This will be a quick review for this. I originally got into this card game long after it was originally released. I really fell in love with the Planescape setting with the superb video game, which resulted in me tracking down everything Planescape related! When I got a stack of the cards on Ebay, they came with this manual because there weren't any of the starter set instructions. Later on I managed to pick up some starter sets with the regular manual and I must say this adds onto to that greatly. It gives you more in depth rules and answers some situational questions that could come up to players. It also had a section on new ways to play the Bloodwars card game! The other part I found to be useful was the card list at the end where it shows you every card that was printed for the Bloodwars series so you can see which ones your missing and what they do. Overall a decent product if you're a die-hard Planescape fan. Unfortunately this card game wasn't very popular and it wasn't overly well designed. It's a pretty complex game, but if you and your friends switch the rules around a little it could be a lot more fun. Personally, I wanted to use the cards in a Planescape campaign for the PC's to hold onto and so on.

Alright, I tend to steer away from MTV products, but this one intrigued me. I barely paid attention to MTV when I was a teenager, and I would say I was the venerable outcast in High School. I think this book is designed to try to get you to identify with at least one of the characters. I was not part of that “party scene” that is talked about, not only here, but in books & movies concerning college. I was the kid that most people only saw at school, because I typically stayed home, played guitar, read books, and played video games. That was my life. I did have a girlfriend and a few friends that would come over, but that's about it. So I'm not some sex crazed whacked out druggy alcoholic that can reminisce about scenes in this book, nor was I tempted to be one of these people as most of the “outcast” kids are portrayed in this book.

While I can't personally relate to the “party scene” in this book, I thought it was an interesting read overall. Is this the reality of the situation this book tries to portray? Well, not every High School will be like this, not every teenager will do these things. On the other side, there ARE some teenagers that do this and there ARE High Schools that have these problems. Not everyone has parents who don't care about them. Not all of these statistics are 100% accurate. I'm a Financial Analyst and math is kind of my thing. And anyone who knows anything about Probability & Statistics knows that you can easily lie or misconstrue the truth with them. So I take stats with a grain of salt, but I did find them interesting. I also found the way they worked into the book a very creative and unique idea (and yes, a good idea as well). I also thought it was a very interesting and good idea for the author to have little personal stories between the chapters.

I think the books message overall is a good one, but I don't think everything is a major problem and it's not just an “America” issue like some people think. Throughout history there have ALWAYS been people that fall into this category and roles (i.e. the sex crazed party maniac). I mean there are ancient rulers that had harems, it's not like this group sex concept is totally new and revolutionary. I think the more disturbing part is that people find this “shocking” as if it's never happened before. I think the books message of being a general wake-up call IS the point. People do need to wake up. I think this points out that the lack of parenting in some cases is becoming a problem. My parents are both High School teachers and I, too often, here stupid stories of uneducated parents trying to point the finger someplace else for their childs misdeeds. The parents are usually the first ones to say it's the schools fault, when if the parent had been around more then maybe something wouldn't have happened. This is also a societal problem, because the parents aren't around just becuase they don't want to be (all the time), in a lot of cases they are at work. Society now demands the work of TWO parents in a household a lot of times. Being a stay at home mom or dad is not that easy anymore. And no, this isn't just an American problem, it's going to be Global as the third world more and more joins the forces of our growing economy.

I think, in the end, maybe the book was a little over the top in it's portrayal of sex scenes, but a lot of times you need to go to extremes to get people to pay attention these days (within logical reason of course). I think he wrote an engrossing story with characters people can get into, even though just about all of them are tragic characters. The book was not very long so character development was sort of minimal, but I think the point there was to get our ADHD plagued society to sit still for an hour to read a book that might mean something to them. I'm sorry but “To Kill a Mocking Bird” didn't really speak to me generationally when I was in High School and I doubt it does now even though some may enjoy the story.

Being a man, I certainly enjoyed this book. I have visited Maddox's website for a long time and his articles never cease to be awesome. Frankly, the book can't really compete with the website in terms of content, but that wasn't the point of the book. The book was published so Maddox could make money, which in turn would fund the website... the end. This is the greatest idea for extortion ever, tell people you are writing a book simply to make money and have them buy it whether it's good or not. I thought it was a pretty good book regardless and I am not ashamed to have it in my collection (anyone who is... probably isn't a man anyway).

The book is fairly short, and has Maddox influenced art all over (courtesy of some guest artists), so it's a pretty quick read. Most people can probably finish it in a single afternoon. It's just long enough. I think if Maddox had tried to stretch out this content any further he would have risked losing the audience because then it would be unfunny and boring, but Maddox is a smart man and he knows to give people just enough to want more. This will hopefully easily fund his website for quite sometime, which is now legendary!

I must say, one particularly excellent topic that was brought up was urinal etiquette. More people need to understand this. Nothing pisses me off more than when there are clearly three urinals, I take the one closest to the wall and some fool takes the one right next to me. Next time this happens, thanks to this book, I will summarily kick the crap out of the person, resulting in me actually having a semi-good day for once.

If you are a man and you have a sense of humor, you will like this book. Otherwise... if you don't like this book... you should seek execution or something, because clearly your stay on this planet isn't amounting to very much.

The original Doom is a rather mindless and repetitive game, so to see this novelized was quite the curiosity. To further my resolve to read this, my friend went so far as to tell me the novel was actually very good. Based on this, I thought it was time to give this a try!

People expecting some grandiose literary work with a fully in depth story should probably look elsewhere. This book is written in the spirit of the game! Those complaining about the books sequence where the characters, mainly Flynn, go from room to room killing creatures have clearly never played this video game. Since I am writing this in 2008, Doom 3 has already come out, and I was appalled to see some reviewers comparing this story to that of Doom 3. This book came out long before Doom 3 was released AND it is based on the original Doom! How someone can sit here and attempt to make that logical comparison is absolutely beyond me.

Doom is a very straight forward game, you have no idea what's going on, but you clearly have to shoot these creatures and get out. The book plays off this concept and the largest edition you get is a developed character who actually has the goal of finding his friend. Otherwise this book captures the essence of Doom perfectly, it's also done very jokingly, which is great. It keeps the book moving with the cynical character and I found myself chuckling from time to time at the sheer absurdity of it! When Doom was originally created there was basically no story-line and the main object of the game was to “get out.” While the objective remained the same for Doom 3, Doom 3 had a much more developed story, just don't expect that kind of treatment with these books.

If you're looking for an excellent adaptation in the spirit of the first Doom, then this is an absolutely must read. If you like dark and cynical sci-fi, this is also a must read. If you were looking for something serious, with detailed explanations about Doom and its background, or something scary... yeah stop whining about it and look someplace else. Enjoy this book for what it is; I sure did, and I consider myself to have a good sense of humor!