Adam

As one of the introductory authors mentioned “that those who read know of Sade, but very few ever actually read Sade.” I was this person until I finally read this book. My one complaint is that prior to this I had never read Sade, so reading the introduction was a bit daunting. I didn't fully understand their references, those from his literature or historical. So if this is actually your first book of Sade's, or any of the others from this publisher, skip the introduction and read it at the end. The introductory essays seem to be written from the perspective of someone that expects their readers to be fairly well versed in Sade, a terrible thing if you never read Sade until now. So read them at the end and it won't ruin anything for you, rather they will enhance the work for you upon reading them in the end.

I will say this about the introductory material though, the section with the historical time-line was superb. I found it very interesting as well as useful. I have a couple other editions of De Sade's works and this one appears to be the best by far, aside from the fact it's not very friendly from a portable stand-point, but the writing/translations seem better than some others I've come across.

I would still say Sade is quite the controversial author and I've been getting into books of that nature as of late. As I am also currently reading Mein Kampf as I write this. I think a vast amount of people have opinions on these kinds of authors, but have never read their works. De Sade, for example, I think is typically unjustly demonized by a great many people. Hitler is a little more justified in being demonized, but I still think people should read his book before they start to exult some opinion on the person in detail. Sade, on the other hand, is little more complex and less obvious. His main problem is that he wrote Justine and in 18th century thinking, that is a grave enough sin in itself. Not so in the 20th century, though I don't think sadistic pleasure has fully outdone Sade yet, because he set a pretty strong precedent. Though, if he was going around doing the things he wrote about to women in “Justine,” his demonization would be far more justified. As it is, he was involved with one girl, that was apparently willing at first, but changed her mind later. However, what was done is nothing compared to what he writes about or what is done to people nowadays, of course in that era, it was probably seen as far worse and shocking.

Either way, the French government went through lengths to try and destroy his works, but thankfully for those astute readers they are here for us to enjoy, or be reviled by, as it is up to the reader to decide. I stress that it is up to the reader, opinions on works not being read are useless in my point of view, all you can merely say at that point is that “it is not something that interests me,” but one should not delve into a conversation about the work in question!

The first text is “Philsophy in the Bedroom,” and what an interesting work that is. It is a mixture of philosophy, politics, and gratuitous sex. I will admit the homosexuality brought up in the writing caught me off guard at first, for it was unexpected. I typically do not go after that sort of writing, but the philosophical aspect is what kept me turning the pages. Though I must admit my own general deviancy, because some of the scenes were quite well done when the characters were not philsophizing. The part I struggled with though were the political discussions, I'm not an avid follower of politics in the 20th & 21st century, so I know quite a bit less about historical politics, unfortunately. I think a lot of the political discussions taking place between the characters focused on politics of that era (and are very specific to France), so any student of historical politics will likely find this vastly fascinating. The discusions on philosophy, such as the philosophy of crime leading to true freedom is quite a bit more interesting to me as I am more interested in philosophy in general. (Not that Sade has truly convinced me to go out and commit criminal acts by any means.) It shows that Sade was very well thought out in his writings because he makes fairly convincing arguments, though in terms of liberation, I believe it is up to the person. If you choose to live by such societal restrictions and your inner inhibitions coincide with the populace then you are free by your own point of view. If you find these things extremely limiting, then you are not free. I suspect Sade found societal normalcy a trapping that he sought to escape, thus he had a far different view on criminal acts.

The next two sections were relatively short, especially the discussion between a Priest and a Dying Man, which is essentially a satirical work. It clearly shows the lack of love Sade has for the church. Since I essentially agree with this sentiment, I had no problems with this, but those people out there who are religious may have an issue with this. However, I can't see the devoutly religious enjoying Sade's work and sexual vulgarity in the least to begin with. Next we have “Marie du Franval”, also known as “Incest” from another publisher. This story is quite different than some of his other works, it's not nearly as explicit, but it does cross one of the more extreme taboo lines between father and daughter. Interestingly it does have a fairly unhappy ending for his main character who ends up losing what he loves most. A curious ending for Sade, since Sade preaches full liberty in most of his stories (regardless of who it would hurt). Perhaps this was merely written creatively to switch up his usual works, a break from the norm and to show, as an author, he can work outside of his comfort zone (so to speak).

The final part of this collection is the great apex of Sade's works. This is one of his most well known works and flows in conjunction, to a degree, with “Juliette.” Here we have “Justine” the work that was Sade's undoing and got him put in prison, but made his works live on in infamy. This was, personally, my favorite tale in this entire collected works. That opinion, of course, may change as I read more, but so far I am summarily impressed. Justine has the greatest story and best blend of demented sex and philosophy in all the book. I can see why they saved this until the end. Justine is a lost child who seeks to guard her virtue above all other things. However, she is thrust through a sequence of very unfortunate circumstances and is debauched in some of the worst ways imaginable. However, all of her captors seem to be more than just a lout who is merely exacting pleasure for no reason. No, these characters a typically well educated, some are wealthy, and think about the philosophy and motivations of their particular desires. Not only do they think about their internal motivations, they are also happy to expound on this at length to their captives! The pinnacle of this is by far when she is taken captive by the monks, and I won't ruin it for anyone, but I'm sure this particular section is what did Sade in. Justine can never seem to “get saved” but rather goes from clutches to clutches of various captors, when all she wants is to live a wholesome life that she can be proud of. This will never be the case for her, and she is very disillusioned with life by the end. In the end the reader feels it is a very tragic tale over all. However, we'll see a wholly different perspective with her sister Juliette.

A lot of people see the sadism and the lascivous sex as the trademark of Sade's work, others walk away having a different perspective on life in general. I feel I am one of the latter, because I had never particularly thought of the philosophy of commiting crimes. While some of the sexual deviancy is very strong, I felt I could stomach them better because they were written (of course doing a lot of this stuff in real life is very illegal, and some would likely kill a person), but if you are particularly weak hearted then this may be a text to avoid. All some people want to read are the sex scenes and they want to skip the philosophy, this is probably a lot easier to pull off. I would say the works are typically about half and half in terms of philosophy versus sex, and I found the mixture is really what kept me turning the pages. I always wanted to find out what the next antogonist of vices had in store for me next, and how would Justine react to that particular philosopher! All in all, I would recommend this great work, but I realize that this is surely not a work for everyone, so if what I've said appeals to you, read it, if not, don't read it.

I am a few years out of college and most people are shocked to find out that I have never read “Fahrenheit 451.” Given how much of an avid reader I am, it is rather shocking that I had never read this. I was never assigned this in High School, though in retrospect I would have rather read this than the books I read in High School, such as John Steinbeck novels, my arch nemesis. I was also shocked to see that as I'm writing this 79 people gave this book a rating of one star. Clearly these people do not know what is out there; this book is not that bad. Granted I have some misgivings about the book, but it brings up some excellent concepts and I can't help but feel these people lack the education level to go beyond what the book is about. Maybe I am simply thinking on this level because I am older and can no longer truly identify with the High School mentality, but I don't think I ever did. There is this factor and the fact that their reviews were quite poorly written for the most part, so they clearly lacked literary prowess and their reviews do not hold much weight.

Either way you look at it this book is now considered quite the classic. It is usually lumped together with Orwell's “1984” and I do agree with others that “1984” was the better story. Orwell created a much more vibrant and tangible world, Bradbury on the other hand did not succeed nearly as well. I can't help but think that Bradbury likely had read “1984” and thought of a slightly different worldview and thus did not feel the need to flesh his ideas out nearly as much. Whatever was the motivation for this, it was not a great move. This book starts off fairly slowly and ends on a rather sour note making the reader want to know what happened after.

Essentially the reader is thrust into a futuristic world where it is illegal to read or own books. Thus most of the population is borderline mentally challenged and gets most of its information through news blips on their television screens or these radio earbud things. (Strangely we have earbud headphones now that are quite popular.) During this technological advancement they also made houses fireproof and thus no longer needed firemen, but they eventually developed a new job for them... burning books. Guy Montag, a fireman, is our protagonist throughout the story and after meeting a young girl that sends his mind reeling he ends up unconsciously working against this perverted society. He starts to slowly figure out that his wife is essentially a zombie to this society and she doesn't have any substance to her person. The book focuses more on his emotional responses to learning all of these things, and thus in heightened emotional states he doesn't make very great decisions. Although, his Fire Chief, Beatty, is the main antagonist and pursues Montag after he figures out what is really going on with his employee. Beatty was probably one of my favorite characters because he was so eloquently spoken. Unfortunately Montag was no real match for such a man's intellect and there was never a real battle of wits between them. Eventually Montag's disgust for society grows to paramount levels and he naturally becomes the outlaw of the land. Naturally, I couldn't help but see the parallel to 1984's characters. A great fugitive chase takes place and his chased by a robot dog, which is pretty much the only major weak part of this futuristic world, mostly due to the fact it's a goofy idea. Anyway, Montag covers his scent, though I can't help but think this is unrealistic even for this novel knowing what I do about genetics, pheromones and computer systems. Technically a robot dog primarily used for its olfactory sense should be able to detect him no matter what, because on a molecular level you still emit your scent.

I don't want to give too much away, but suffice to say the book eventually abruptly ends. I felt like it was rather lacking at this point because I wanted to know what happened afterwards. I can't really give away the ending of the book because there really wasn't an ending. Of which, I left a ton of stuff out here and never even explained what actually happened in full, so don't feel cheated out of the adventure of the book. Once you get into this book the middle section is great and moves along quite briskly, but it trails off eventually.

The book is important from a literary perspective because it really shows some of the major dangers in censorship. It even outlines things that are done now. How about the part of this book that points out that it all started off catering to the minorities... how often is that done today. We need to accommodate the small groups so that everyone is happy, it doesn't matter if it's wrong? This is happening more and more in the world today, like if a child has problems learning then it's not the parents fault, it's the schools fault, or it's some obscure genetic related fault, thus it is no the child's responsibility to learn anything anymore. How about making books abridged today to bolster a High Schoolers interest in getting to read a classic? Snip off a few words here, a few words there. Obviously they wouldn't find these books interesting so we have to dumb them down to their intellectual level. Naturally this will help progress society?

That's how it all starts, and then people start to wonder why they need the full text at all, why not a paragraph summary? Why not a single sentence? Bradbury spells it out plainly for us in this book that that is exactly what happened in his imagined future. How long before simplicity replaces completeness in our society? Now we learn today that blurbs mean everything and people get a major amount of information from quick blurbs to feed our fast paced society, so they just write clever headlines and people think they have the news. It's progressively happening more and more. People don't want to take the time to read, so they get Cliff Notes. They don't desire to comprehend on their own half the time, so they watch a movie about it where there is less internal struggle to see from the characters. People who think that the problems this novel portrays aren't happening today aren't living in the same world the rest of the intellectual community is living. Those people are living in Orwell's world, in Bradbury's world. And pretty soon they will be the ones making decisions for everyone else in this world when they are the ones who eventually come into power because they are the best at writing clever headlines for two bit readers.

Alright, I will confess, this is really the first book I've read purely in the genre of Erotic Literature. My first experience with something similar was “Justine” by the Marquise de Sade, and maybe this sort of spoiled me and set this genre up to fail in my eyes. Or maybe I'm just not this genres target audience (if in fact this book represents it) and they are after people who aren't nearly as much of an avid reader as myself. However, I do notice that this genre has very poor reviews in describing what the book is about or contains. Maybe there are certain limitations that I don't know about? Be that as it may, I'm going to do an in depth analysis.

I must admit I did not find this book the least bit erotic. It did not play to my specific fantasies, however, I surely cannot give this book a rating of one star based on its lack of arousing me. De Sade didn't really fully arouse me either and I gave that a five. Unfortunately I found the writing in this book to be very inconsistent. Most of the situations the characters are thrust in are stated as a mere matter of fact. You don't really get inside the characters heads to really learn their motivations, so that was a bit of a black mark.

This book focuses mainly on stockings, taking from behind and caning. This was sort of a surprise to me because by the title I rather assumed it would have to do with a whole lingerie outfit of sorts, not domination (though I assumed this from the cover) and punishment. However, throughout the book most girls are not clothed except for garters and stockings, regardless of where they are. This book sort of plays to every possible fantasy, but those three are the top focus throughout the book. It seems like everyone in this fantasy world does these three things. I should warn some that there are scenes involving toilet humiliation, but it stays away from going into coprophagia, which isn't in the book at all. The punishment sequences have all the same tone with the girl being strung up then whipped. Sometimes this happens with a cane or with various kinds of leather whips. Either way, by the end of the book the whipping sequence becomes quite tiresome and not very creative at all. There is also a lot catered to girl on girl, but male on male scenes are steered away from. I did like that the author remained mostly heterosexual, as same sex scenes do not portray my particular interests. There are also no she-male types in this book, though they do have mutants toward the end, which was another very absurd part of this book and I had a hard time following why it would be erotic.

The world the characters are thrust into is almost far too ambitious to be told in a short novel. This is really the whole reason I gave the book two stars rather than just one. The setting seems to be post apocalyptic where nuclear war destroyed our current day civilization and forced humans to flee what they once new. The humans in this setting no longer know much of anything. They don't read books, they don't have cars, they barely know how to make clothes, except for some reason they know how to weave silk. I'm speaking from the general populace level, because the leaders of the areas know quite a bit more. Strangely though, none of this is explained, the reader is just thrust into this bizarre world and told to accept it. I would be happy to accept these abnormalities if it took place on another planet, but this takes place in Madagascar. Maybe there is a previous book by the author that explains this, but the publisher does not make any note of this being a sequel. It would seem global warming has made Antarctica a viable location to live, because that's where our main character, Sindi, is from. However, nothing about this is explained. So she's a princess from Antarctica (or Antarctique in the book) and gets captured and enslaved by this guy in Madagascar. Sounds tragic right? Apparently not, because all girls secretly desire to be enslaved and done by their masters... according to the book at least.

This is where I had major misgivings in the language use, because the author repeatedly uses terms like “vile” or “stench” to describe things which have negative connotations, then a few seconds after the characters are in love with them. This whole universe is driven by this incensed nymphomaniac purpose. The book goes from bizarre to even weirder as it goes on. For some reason juicing a girl has become a regularity for seasoning meals. There's a great focus on food in this book, but what the characters eat is almost repulsive and I wonder why this is an erotic novel. For example, the characters will often suck live eels from “inside” a girl and exclaim how great it is. I'm not sure about most people... but eating an eel raw doesn't sound great. In another instance a girl is consuming a lobster and eats the claw whole... shell and all. People have clearly gone nuts. Maybe this was the whole point of the book, I actually couldn't tell because the language use falls into this vague double standard where I'm unsure of if the characters are supposed to like or dislike it.

One other area that really threw me off was the fact that this book has vampires in it. I'm not even sure why they are included in the story. They're not even a traditional vampire and you can turn a girl into one with special training. This training seems to involve eating animals raw... and that's about it. After a little while her skin turns a very pale white, her hair turns black, and then her tongue becomes furry. Now why a furry tongue is a by product of vampirism is way beyond me. This made the least amount of sense in the whole book. Like everything else... there's no background. No explanation. I'm left wondering why something is all the time in this book and that made it very frustrating to read. Towards the end of this I was left wondering if the author could even answer these “why” questions on her own.

However, the economics of the world was pretty interesting and it's really the only part I enjoyed reading because it was interesting but made sense (sort of). Society has redeveloped into a sort of slave society, however, unlike the slavery most people here grow up with (especially in America), it seems just about everyone is a slave in some respect. Predominantly, though, women are sold as slaves and men are the owners. So a lot of the scenes involve male domination. Although, there is a balance and there are many scenes that involve female domination. This is usually female on female and there are very few involving a female on a male, but they are there. Regardless, girls are sold at public auctions and the basis for their purchase is dictated to how well a girl can take a beating. The girls are then sold to the males and they are used for pleasure, cooking, hard labor, and just about everything else. In one section of the land the slave girls make up the army (this seems like a foolish idea). Also it is pointed out for the army training, they are trained not to have camaraderie with their fellow soldiers... again, that makes no sense. A slave's station is apparent because they are not clothed and especially not wearing stockings, for stockings are a sign of status. However, and this is where I had a major logic break down, when a girl is going to be punished and beaten she will have to don stockings. Now why a slave would have to dress like royalty to be shamed is beyond me. I mean maybe there's a perfectly good reason for this, but it's never outlined so the reader never knows why.

Once Sindi is captured she seems to be taken from master to master. At first it is Prince Een, then the Rubber Lord sends Loleelo to steal her, then Gunn the outlaw captures her, then she falls into the hands of Peter the German, then to the Bookbinder, then to Ogpan, and then finally to the Bookbinder again. Each of these captures has the same penchant for punishment and by the time I got to the scenes with Ogpan I was summarily bored with them. Interestingly the stocking commerce, discussed throughout these adventures, was fairly fascinating because the trade between the lands was pretty intricate and each nation produced one essential product. Books did exist, but very few could read them and even less could actually make them.

The weirdest part in the story is when she is in the clutches of Peter the German, who appears to know something about genetics and he is obsessed with books. He wants to take over the Rubber Lords domain so that he may acquire his books. Anyway, Peter also has an interest in creating mutants (Misshapes) and just generally deforming humans. This is probably the more disgusting sequence in the book. People with rotten arms, two heads, double “organs” and so forth. He also creates and controls the silkworms, which are humans who have silk for skin and they shed it regularly. Obviously he makes the stockings. The worst part is by far when Sindi is captured by the Misshapes that were exiled and she is forced to pleasure the heavily warted area on the female leader. This is where I nearly gave up on the book altogether.

I will admit that the end of the novel, when it eventually came, was rather interesting. Sindi falls in lieu with the Bookbinder and decides to follow him because he is clearly the strongest. He mounts an army of girls to take over all of Madagascar, which he does, but it's a shame that this is just in the last twenty pages of the book. You have no idea that this is even happening and then out of the blue Sindi fulfills this prophecy to be Queen of the region. However, the underlying message in this section is pretty interesting. Basically it tells the reader that physical power isn't everything, and the person with knowledge (presumably from books) can have more power than anyone else. See, the Bookbinder had all the books and therefore the most knowledge, so he was truly the most powerful.

Well, that's all I have to say on this particular novel. This was my first foray into this genre, and I thought it was an interesting experience. While I did not enjoy this book thoroughly I'm not going to condemn an entire genre and I plan on reading more of these types of books. Who knows, I may find an author I really enjoy at some point. I realize that people enjoy a vast array of different fantasies and more, so I won't rate it based on the content because someone out there may love this, I am just merely reporting what I read and the problems I found within the book. Remember, knowledge is power.

I picked this book up at a used book store for about a dollar. It got lost on my bookshelf for a few years and I finally read it recently. It is certainly not what I expected. It's sort of a “coming of age” story, which I normally am not a very big fan of because I think it's an overdone concept in books. However, the world that is presented is VERY different, and that's what really impressed me.

I will admit that at first I had some misgivings about this book. The first twenty or so pages took me a long time to read because they seemed to go nowhere and have no real purpose. Once I got beyond this point the book really started to pick up. Maybe the tedium of this introductory section was so long because it is actually part of a trilogy. You really don't understand the full purpose of this introduction until you get much further in the book.

This book blends a lot of myths about religion together to create it's own universe as a plausible “truth”, in terms of a fantasy realm of course. The essential premise is that angels have returned to the Earth and they are going through the process of combining their Heaven with our planet. It takes place far in the future after a great war has taken place and forced mankind backwards into a world similar to medieval times. Every now and again diggers will come upon ancient artifacts like revolvers and the ilk. Technologically speaking this world is in the dark ages though.

The story is about a boy who appears to be overly average and really wants to be an artist. However, like a good dictator, people are forbidden to do such things unless given special permission (angelic orders). This is obviously to keep mankind's knowledge at a bare minimum. Magical knowledge is also forbidden to the land, again, angelic orders. The boy works with his family in the “hotel” service, we're talking old inn style work; similar to what you find in Role Playing Games. Eventually something happens and the boy needs to leave and he embarks on a great journey with an angelic guide. It's an intriguing story in it's own right, however this book is probably the least original in the trilogy and you really get to see how wonderfully original this is as the story goes on. “Ways of Magic” is merely an introductory piece to a greater tale, but it moves the story along as needed to bring the boy's story into culmination of his full journey.

For fantasy lovers, this is a must read. However, if you found this book to be a little slow, you need to keep reading. It really begins to take off in the next book. For me, this book really pulled me in and I really wanted to read the next book. I definitely highly recommend this very original series.

I really liked S.D. Perry's Aliens novels, so when I saw Resident Evil was being worked on as well... I figured it was a good bet to pick these up as well. This is one of the better video game adaptations to novel I've encountered. I will always like Jill Valentine's character and having her be a farily focal part of the novel made this very enjoyable.

Perry expertly captured the atmosphere of the Resident Evil realm and really draws the readers in. I read this book fairly quickly because I simply couldn't put it down, nor did I want to. I think the Resident Evil franchise made a good decision in having their games novelized, and it was interesting to see it follow the game story line specifically. A few other video game to novels don't really do that, Halo and Diablo come to mind. At this point it is safe to say I am looking forward to reading the second installment of this series.

I really don't have too much more to say on this book other than it's highly enjoyable and if you enjoy the Resident Evil universe, or sci-fi/horror this is definitely a must read. If you've read Perry's other books, this one is no exception, it's just as good and entertaining as the others.

I gave this one star because the Author took this 100% seriously. I, on the other hand, don't take anything on this anti-evolutionary propaganda seriously. In fact, I read these books as comedy and I laughed myself silly page after page.

This book is only about 95 pages long; the other 95 pages are the appendix. You'd think with an appendix that long the book would have been a lot longer. I must quote another reviewer at this juncture: “I'm sure glad this non-historian wrote this book”... to teach me about history. I don't think I've read a book that has more flawed research in my entire life. The author even goes so far as to quote his previous book as proof to back up what he's saying in this one. Was he sitting there typing this up and saying to himself; “oh man, I was so right about this!” I mean really, what kind of a scholar logically would do this? If you're going to reference your own book, reference it in the main body, not in the appendix as if it's some hard fact discovery. It's not; it's your little pet theory.

I should give Ham credit in one regard that this book does have facts that are dead on in terms of dinosaurs. And he does display some sound logic at parts, such as the average size of the animals on the ark. Even though that average works out to be about the size of a sheep, doesn't discount the fact that dinosaurs are huge and actually working out space is a problem. Although he did provide a plausible theory that they could have had baby dinosaurs on board instead of full grown. I actually agreed with that, if I were to support the dinosaurs on the ark theory in the first place. At least he had a plausible explanation if dinosaurs existed during Noah's time.

I'm honestly not sure what's crazier, that this book was written, or that people actually take it as being fully correct. I looked up the part where Ham references the existing tissue in fossilized bone to support his theory. He says that this would be impossible. However, if you look up the person who discovered this you will find that she doesn't support the creationism theory. In fact, she's not a leading expert on dinosaurs, her field is genetics. So when you read these books and people say “scientists don't have a response to this” is because it's too soon in their research. And the scientist in question has said in an interview that she thinks this will help us learn more about the fossilization process, not prove that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago. Fossilization isn't an exact science and the variance of materials involved DOES matter. Unlike what Ham would want you to believe.

The part that really killed me in his proof against evolutionary theory is that he says its possible dinosaurs may have evolved after they got off the ark. Genius! There's nothing like supporting a part of one theory to support your own. This book has endless quotable parts for humorous discussions!

If you're looking to read an excellent “scientific” comedy, then this is surely the book for you. However, keep in mind the author thinks this is all totally real and is even funding his own “dinosaur park”.

I've read this story before... it was in Robert Doherty's “Area 51” series. Wait that's a Science Fiction novel and this is the truth... I don't think so. Every time I write a bad review, I get responses like “but they're good people” or “but they're nice.” It really doesn't matter if they release a heavily flawed product, in my opinion.

I love reading history books and I even go to the lengths that I really like reading about the occult. I will even be open minded enough to entertain some of the possible Alien theories in relation to technological advancements of the early humans or even an Atlantis theory. But seriously, this book is ridiculous in its assumptions. I initially picked this book up in hopes to read more about the Nephilim and was hoping to find a new connection between them and Egypt; I must say I was quite disappointed.

The grandiose culmination of this research results in some far off extrapolated theory that Satan is an alien that built the pyramids because he wanted to mock Heaven. I mean, I can't honestly think of another reason you can't prove. This is almost as bad as the book I read about Atlantis where the author's main proof of the history came from a psychic who communicated with the Atlantean people... through his mind. The author takes parts of the Bible then suppositions them into other areas that “may” prove what he's talking about and couples them with other myths. This is the same kind of cookie cutter logic that Christians present me with in arguments about Jesus' validity as the son of God, rather than being based on conjectures and hearsay.

Researchers seriously need to consider the passages as a whole, rather than a single word here that refers to this other passage a thousand years later and therefore that earlier passage is a prophecy! Oh my god! I would think a person with their doctorate would not support this limited view of thinking, but for some reason it's considered “revolutionary” and helps to find hidden secrets. All it does is blow out of proportion the interpretation. It gives researchers and followers limitless ability to interpret anything the way they want; hence there are now millions of books on such subjects.

As Craig Hines has already pointed out, the word Lucifer is not Hebrew and yes, he referenced the correct Hebrew. However, Hines could've gone a little more in depth with his commentary on this; and the fact that he didn't bring it up makes me wary of his book. However, I do intend to read it and review it as I have read this one, Hines at least appears to have done his research far more correctly. Lucifer's origins date back to Roman times; from the research I've followed on this, it was the name of Venus. Venus is the “morning star”. The translation of the passage in Isaiah that references “Lucifer” in post-Christian translations pulls this name from Latin. It's possibly a proper-noun in Hebrew, but I have found no evidence to support this in the original passage. And if you read the whole passage that this verse is found in, it is in reference the king of Babylon. So it's no secret as to who this “Satan” or “Lucifer” is... it's the king of Babylon. It's an analogy of someone falling from a very high point, because it's in reference to the fall of Babylon. I don't consider myself a genius, so it does not take a genius to figure this out. I have the updated edition of this book... this error is at least still in there. This is what happens when mistranslations take place in ancient history. People go berserk with “hidden wisdom”.

I found the Biblical research to be the shoddiest part of this book; it's as if the author has never read any Hebrew commentary before. I would recommend the author pick up a copy of the Etz Hayim, at the very least, to start delving into what some of these things mean. I'm not going to go on a long dissertation about the minutiae errors, on top of what has already been mentioned. I am merely illustrating one point that really stood out to me.

For those seeking true insight into the Hebrew legend of the Nephilim... don't read this book. It really offers nothing for you. If you want to read about far reaching figments that may or may not involve a grand alien conspiracy, then this book is surely something you should read.

I must confess that at the time I am writing this I am only halfway through the book. If my opinion drastically changes by the end of the book, then I will update this review, however, I doubt it will.

When I initially purchased this book it was on clearance for five dollars at Barnes & Noble, and having a passing interest in religious history I thought it was worth it. While I seriously believe it was well worth my money, especially a hardcover at that price. This book is not at all what I had initially expected. I was expecting a book on what was IN the archives of the Vatican, but rather this is a book about the history of the archives itself. It's a fairly interesting book overall because you get to see where the archives developed and then how they were managed during the middle ages. The parts I found most interesting were the inception of the archives before Christianity was a legal religion in Rome and the archives during the Great Schism when there were two Pope's and thus, two archives.

Unfortunately for me, my historical knowledge of specific events and peoples during these time frames is somewhat limited. My historical research focuses more on Egypt, Persia, Israel, and Sumer. I have a decent general working knowledge of the time frames in question, but not nearly the depth the author seems to assume her readers will have. That is probably the single failing of this book from a readers perspective, the author appears to assume you know quite a bit about the people involved and what was happening in the world during that time-frame. This makes the book unecessarily difficult to read, which is why I chose to review it now while I have the free time. This is the kind of book that I read a few chapters, then stop and read a few books, then go back to this one for a few more chapters.

Don't misunderstand me, this book is very well researched for what it is. Packing in this much history in about 300 pages must've been quite a challenge. While her approach was somewhat unique and it does include quotes from documents she has viewed in the archives to engage the reader a bit more, she doesn't really explain the documents as much as I would like, or the history of the people. On that level though you're talking about writing volumes for a single history, and that simply can't be the case for this book.

I am left wanting more depth on the archival history and more about what is in the actual archives. This book is merely okay for what it is from my perspective. It didn't really enthrall me, nor did I hate it by any means. I am merely felt wanting more and will need to go elsewhere to get further information.

This was an okay read in this genre. I must confess that the cover really caught my eye and is one of the few books in this genre that seems to have a cover that complements the story. So that being said, I was actually really looking forward to this book upon reading the description on the back. Unfortunately this doesn't totally feel true to form of a Middle Eastern/Egyptian styled fantasy. I believe it takes place in that kind of a region, since it does feature a man named Sarne who is titled as the Prince of Persia. However, no specific location is really given for the story's locale.

The main character in the story is a princess named Sahria and she's quite clearly a sadistic character who likes to dominate all her male lovers. This is the case until Prince Sarne comes to her country asking for her hand in marriage. Sahria has really met her competition in the overly well endowed Prince who manages to receive Sahria's ire by denying her desire for him. He was correct in observing that denial is the greatest dominance for someone like her. Sahria vowed that she would get the Prince one day.

Unfortunately... or fortunately depending on how you look at it; Sahria's dreams would not come true exactly how she planned. Prince Sarne did return, but as a conqueror of Sahria's kingdom. Her father was driven off and Sarne was bent on taming the wild princess to his whims. From there things simply turn into a very modern feeling bondage and training session. I think it would've been a little better if it was written more in the ancient era, rather than giving it a very modern feel. It just ended up feeling like a standard erotica novel. I felt the story that was supposed to hold all the scenes together was pretty weak and I never actually cared about what happened next in that regard. This book is purely geared towards the erotic scenes and what happens next to Sahria and her friend Calema. Albeit they are highly detailed which is wonderful and I think most people will enjoy in that regard. One of the main reasons this didn't feel like an ancient period erotica is because of the clothing that was available to Sahria and Calema. Calema highly favored being in tight rubber garments, which didn't make sense for the time frame (but it really is a hot thought), not to mention Sahria seemed to enjoy high heeled leather boots that went up to your thighs. I think this kind of threw off the period feel for me that was semi-established at the beginning of the book. It's definitely a fantasy in its own right, but it just felt typical with these elements and no greater story really holding it together to draw the reader deeper into the world.

If you're interested in reading about a girl's journey into learning how to love pain then this is definitely something you're looking for. There is a great degree of spanking and beating bottoms with other implements as well. Taking a girl from behind is given special attention as well, but is not the primary action. Tying and restraining is also heavily present. One thing I did like and hadn't encountered as much in these novels is covering a girl in certain fluids... I think you catch my meaning. The only part that I wasn't personally into was the fisting stuff, but that was pretty minimal in this book. One thing that I find strange about a lot of these books, especially since these are written by females, is how the girls are presented in the sense that they don't want to be degraded or beaten... however, by the end they love it and really need it. Maybe I just find it a bit strange, but a lot of the main characters say “no” to a lot of things at first then are forced to do them anyway, but love it. Then they try to come to terms with loving it later on... maybe it's just me, but I figure this would send the wrong message to people concerning when a girl says “no”. I can certainly see that being an aspect of a fantasy once in a while, but I've actually encountered this kind of a thing in multiple books thus far. Maybe I'm just not 100% in touch with the domination fantasy yet?

I think this is, quite possibly, one of the best books I've read on the fourth dimension. For those saying “but the fourth dimension is time”, all I have to say is, no, not in this case. We're discussing four spatial dimensions, which we can only really represent with mathematics in our three dimensional world. Naturally this is written by a mathematician and he did quite an exquisite job at explaining the nature of this utterly foreign dimension.

Now readers won't walk away being able to picture four dimensional beings or structures, but one will be able to grasp a fairly general understanding of what it would be like for a four dimensional being or object to exist and interact with our dimension. Naturally Rucker does this by explaining the relations between the dimensions by changing our perspective and having us think two dimensionally. For this he relies heavily on a book written by Edwin Abbott called “Flatland”. I highly recommend you read “Flatland” before you attempt to tackle Rucker's book, as he constantly quotes “Flatland”, almost to his books detriment. He also quotes other texts like “Spaceland” (which Rucker also wrote) or “Flatterland” here and there, but the one he relies upon most is “Flatland”. “Flatland” is a natural and easy introduction to learning how to think from the perspective of a different dimension and helps the reader to fully grasp Rucker's analogy as he projects the relationship from the second and third dimensions to a relationship between the third and the fourth dimension. Naturally he points out that some of these points are mere conjecture as we cannot observe fourth dimensional objects in our reality... yet. “The 4th Dimension” is also illustrated with all kinds of silly cartoons to give the book a much lighter feel to its fairly heavy topic. The illustrations will certainly help anyone who really needs to see a drawing of some of the concepts Rucker talks about.

I was originally introduced to some of these concepts via Michio Kaku's book “Hyperspace”. While he did a pretty good job explaining four spatial dimensions, I think this book really delves into it a lot deeper. The reader walks away with a much fuller understanding of the concepts concerning this different dimension. Not only will you learn about this, Rucker also goes through a very interesting history concerning humanity's fascination with things beyond our own dimension. He delves into metaphysics and explanations for ghosts as well as recounting the mathematical history (which is the real mainstay of this book). The spiritual aspects of this book are more anecdotal to help give the reader some historical or philosophical perspective in lieu of the mathematics.

If you're really curious about the possibility of other spatial dimensions then this book is a great read. The physics and universe research may be a little outdated by this point since the book originally came out in the 1980's, but it's application in helping a person think of how the fourth dimensional being would react is still applicable. While I'm pretty sure it's agreed that there are more than three spatial dimensions in existence, this book still treats that aspect as if there's still a major debate going on about it. After finding absolute proof of Black Holes in the universe, I think the multi-dimensional universe (or multiverse) concept is pretty realistic, since if the Black Hole singularity transcends our space and time... it has to go somewhere! Anyway, don't forget to read “Flatland” before you pick this up and I think people will find this a fun and informative read.

I hadn't read this book in many years, but I recently decided to revisit it because I couldn't remember anything from it. It's also been so many years since I played the game that I figured it warranted a replay while I read the book to see how well they integrated. For the most part “Hard Crash” does a pretty decent job of adding onto the game. However, some of the same flaws I found in the game worked their way into the novel as well.

This book goes in tandem with the game in the sense that the main human character is from the prisoner transport ship we find ourselves on at the beginning of the game. In the game you wander around an empty ship and wonder if anyone else made it off, well apparently they did because “Hard Crash” is about three humans that made it off that ship and lived to tell the tale. Zofia, Gerick, and Boris (you actually find Boris' journal on the ship when you begin) wandered around the wilderness of Na Pali and apparently captured one of the native Nali named Melnori. One of the problems I have with this particular part is that there isn't too much background; all of a sudden they have a Nali prisoner? The reader doesn't really know what happened and it just feels a little incomplete at times. The book is written in a form where you're already well aware that the Skaarj have come to this planet and taken over. They have enslaved the Nali and use them to mine an element called Tarydium. The Skaarj basically look just like a Predator, so the novel plays up the hunter/warrior society concept with its Skaarj characters. I know, not exactly the most creative thing in the world. Anyway, Melnori ends up basically convincing his captors that he's not a threat and they end up joining in to destroy the Skaarj. Not much of a stretch there since the Skaarj seemed just as eager to kill the humans as they were the Nali. However, since the Nali are essentially a race of pacifists they're somewhat ill equipped to truly fight a revolt.

Okay, I'm going to possibly ruin something about this book because I think it's actually essential to a reader's enjoyment of it. In fact without knowing this the book can get very confusing and make almost no sense until the very end! There are two stories that sort of work in conjunction in this book and each chapter is either about the "First Occupation" or the "Second Occupation." I suppose this seems extremely self explanatory after the fact, but it didn't feel as clear when I was reading through this. "First Occupation" actually happened a few centuries before the Unreal video game takes place. It's the story of a Nali named Haute who is considered to be the Prophet by his people. He prophesizes the end of the Skaarj occupation in his time, but also says the Skaarj will be back centuries in the future. The game and the "Second Occupation" are taking place in the future, where there are actually thousands of Skaarj on Nali. The "First Occupation" deals with a crashed Skaarj ship that only has a couple hundred on board. I don't quite know why I didn't pick up on this while reading it through, but the way it's written I thought they were in the same time frame, just different locations. Oh well, possibly a really stupid mistake on my behalf, but just in case no one else quite got it till the end. I think if it was a lot clearer in the beginning I would've enjoyed the book a lot more and felt less confused in some sequences.

One other issue I had with this novel, and maybe this stems from Unreal itself, is that none of the alien species really seem to be all that alien. They feel, they talk, and they interact with each other in very human ways. They just seem like an everyday human being, nothing interesting. I never felt like I was really interacting with a non-human species other than a couple comments Melnori would make when he interacted with the humans. Such as when they came up with battle strategies that the Nali just couldn't think of because in their pacifistic society it had just never occurred to them. A lot of this might stem from the game because in the game you stumble upon all kinds of journals from the various kinds of beings and they all have a very human tone of voice. The only element that seemed kind of lacking was the Nali's very religious convictions. They were there, but they felt more downplayed in comparison to what we saw in the game. Not to mention the Nali castles don't look any different from our castles from medieval times. Furthermore I have to ask the question of why the Nali have castles since castles were usually built to defend from attackers. If they're such pacifists what do they need the castles to defend? I'm sure there could be some answer, but we're never presented with one. It feels more like a story of “what if an advanced alien species landed on a medieval level society”. Another issue that others may have with this book is that there is very little mention of other monsters or species from the Unreal game outside of the humans, Nali, and Skaarj. Other than that there are a couple mentions of the Kraal, but they never even play a role, they're just killed on the way by the humans. So, the book is disappointing in that regard because we never learn about any other species or how they've gotten involved.

Overall this was an okay book. I really tore through it pretty quickly, mostly because it's an incredibly easy read. I would warn some people that this isn't a kids novel. The video game, after all, is rated M, so you can expect to find profanity, lots of violence, and even some pretty gruesome scenes. Despite its obvious influences, I still enjoyed the world of Unreal. The concept story is somewhat tiresome and overdone to death... you know the whole oppressed society revolting against its rulers. You see this happen a lot, Star Wars, U.S. Revolution, Hebrews leaving Egypt, 1984, etc. Once you accept these things the novel is very fast paced and action packed. I think the fact that there was so much action was what really saved this book from being terrible. It didn't spend an undue amount of time working on being a literary master piece, instead the author was well aware this was about a fast paced First Person Shooter and gave the readers that kind of feeling throughout the book. If you're a fan of the original Unreal video game then I would say this is worth reading, but it doesn't have a lot of long lasting value in terms of video game novels.

I'll admit, writing a book about nothing and making it exciting is probably a challenging thing to do. This is going to be a rather odd thing to bring up at the start of the review, but I have to ask did people read a different book than I did? Seriously, I read through just about every negative review and the points made against the book are barely in the book I read. If anything, they focus in on a minor detail, interpret it wrong, and then give the book a one star. I digress, let me get to the review and then I may go over some points to refute.

This book focuses on the history of Zero for the most part. In there it touches upon historical moments in mathematics and later in physics as it gets to the modern scientific era. I personally found the research on the early history quite on point and very fun to read (there's a lengthy bibliography at the end if you feel the need to see his words backed up). The sensational writing didn't bother me at all, because I realize the relationship between the title and the style. Seife is trying to make nothing exciting! If you didn't get that point or got annoyed with that style then you missed out on a really fun read. The author tried to include fairly random historical anecdotes about the people discussed to lighten the mood in the book. I thought these were fun additions and interesting to read as well.

Overall the book is written in decently easy to understand language. I have a fairly decent mathematical background and I didn't feel I really needed to know everything to read the first half of the book. However, when Seife starts delving into concepts like Calculus and Set Theory I think knowing how to do calculus was definitely a help in understanding this section. If you're more of a lay reader and more interested in the history than the math then this book really might be a bad choice. The first part is absolutely fascinating, but it does get confusing towards the end, especially when he starts delving into Quantum Theory and Particle Physics.

One aspect on the section of early history that I found particularly fascinating was the relation of zero to philosophy. The ancients were heavily influenced by beliefs and philosophy so it's not much of a stretch to think this influence stretched beyond just those subjects and into math and science. So when Pythagoras and Aristotle reject notions of the void philosophically it's reasonable to assume they would find such notions nonsense mathematically. For a long time, and still today, Math is merely a representation of the world we see and observe. They didn't observe voids or vacuum's during Aristotle's time so naturally they wouldn't exactly latch onto it as a real possibility. One thing that really fascinated me was the possible hindrance philosophy and belief (or religion) had in holding back mankind's ability to progress mathematically. The main reason that zero didn't make it into the western world probably had more to do with the stranglehold the Romans put on the people than with their unwilling to believe in the void or infinity, which is also why it was trade that finally used zero. However, there were intellectuals alive and breathing during the Dark Ages and a lot of their hindrance to accept concepts like zero was philosophical. The Church had adopted Aristotle's model of the universe and it was blatantly wrong. (This book does not say Aristotle is at fault for holding back people philosophically, it merely says his view/model, that the Earth is the center of the universe, is wrong. Which it is.) However, the rising power of the Catholic Church adopted his explanation and said it was a fact and back then their word was law. Once mathematics and science came across discrepancies in that proof then Church asserted its power and only tried to tighten its grip on those communities until people revolted against it. I'm not saying zero is the reason we got out of the Dark Ages, but it didn't hurt us any! It probably helped us a lot more in the long run. My point in bringing this up is that things like belief and philosophy can hinder progress in fields like the sciences. (These are not beliefs, as in making assumptions about testable criteria by the way.) It seems to make more sense, that if you must derive some divine notion, you would interpret the data, not try to fit the data into a preconceived belief. Thus belief would interpret the math and math would not interpret the belief. The ancients had this backwards for a long time, which I think that's a major factor and this book touches upon that.

As I mentioned above the book can change gears into something very complicated. I think this is kind of the downfall of this book for some people because the confusing explanations at the end leave them on a low note. As the book progressed and got beyond my mathematical understanding I found the explanations a lot more confusing. When it finally got out of the confusing areas I think it picked up again during the sections on the expansion of the universe. I enjoyed the parts of Zero Point energy, but I'm not entirely sure it's written in a fashion that is easily understood. Seife makes comments in a very historical manner and I think that really confuses people at times. Such as one reviewer complained that the books information is outdated on Vacuums and concepts like limitless energy. However, this book does touch on that subject during its discussion of Zero Point energy, maybe it was merely presented in a way that confused readers? I'm not entirely sure; I didn't personally feel confused until he started talking about Set Theory, which I clearly need to brush up on.

In the end I simply loved this book. I tore through it in a mere three days and I'm a pretty slow reader. I personally didn't mind the sensationalizing of zero to fairly emphatic levels. This is a book about nothing after all and you might as well make it sound really exciting! Maybe there should've been more exclamation points so we can see how impressive the author's thoughts really are! Anyway I had fun with this book, but I wouldn't recommend it to people that haven't made it beyond calculus or else the second half might get a little confusing. Previously understanding Einstein's work would be a bonus to getting through this book as well. Other than that the first half is absolutely fascinating and I feel I walked away with more knowledge than I went in even if the book repeated a lot of things I already knew.

I saw the movie long before I even knew it was a book. Strange how time will do that to things like this. In a round about way I discovered this via the book “I am Legend”, not the film starring Robin Williams. A co-worker of mine let me borrow the book since he thought it was up my alley. After reading “I am Legend” I had some concerns about reading another book by Richard Matheson. I really didn't find that book as enjoyable as I thought I would and the short stories at the end were simply mind numbing and terrible. Granted there is quite a bit of time between the release of “I am Legend” and “What Dreams May Come” (1950's vs. 1970's). I still went in expecting the worst.

I'm pleased to report that I ended up enjoying this book quite a bit in the end. The books development is certainly interesting in itself. Matheson researched a lot about the afterlife, psychics, mediums, and near death experiences in order to write this book. He even includes a lengthy bibliography at the end of the book for those interested in further reading. The only unfortunate aspect is that I would be concerned that some books he read might be a little outdated by 2008. I'm not really one to talk on this subject too much for I am not that well read on the afterlife. I merely dabble here and there as a passing interest. Anyway, I'll get on with the review.

“What Dreams May Come” is a very unique story told from a very unique perspective that simply defies the odds in the name of love. If you're expecting some relation to the film, I should stop you now. The film was merely inspired by the book, not a book to film. Both stories, while maintaining the same general concept, are drastically different. Main character has a different job, different amount of children etc. You get the point. In this case Chris (the main character) is a writer who's married to the love of his life and has four children with her. Unfortunately Chris dies and passes on to the afterlife. The book is written as an “after the fact” perspective in which Chris communicated to a psychic medium what transpired to him in the afterlife. He then has the psychic deliver the transcript to his brother Robert and from there is how we get to read the story of Chris and what happened to him after death. Chris wasn't what we would call a “ghost” because ghosts tend to be stuck on this material plane of existence, instead he managed to move on and transcend to a higher realm of existence. From there he communicated to a very powerful medium what happened to him there. This perspective is essential in understanding the story. I don't want to delve too much deeper into the tale because I think the basics are best to understand if you're going to go on this adventure and let the rest be a surprise!

When I first started this book, I was sort of worried. I didn't like the book very much at first, mostly because it was concepts that I understood. I wanted him to move on and get to the other realm instead of staying in ours, but for sixty pages I had to deal with this. I was almost ready to give up after a while... but honestly if you're like me it's worth the wait! Once Chris' character transcends the novel picks up instantly, especially if you're the type of person that thirsts for this kind of stuff. Once he transcended he met his guide, what ancient people and people today erroneously call guardian angels. Once this takes place we get to really see the world of the afterlife. Some of the explanations and concepts get technical, but I loved this. I found these more interesting to read than the story half the time! It's very akin to my own perspective on religion, afterlife, and personal development. You could say I found a bit of a kindred spirit in what this book explains. One aspect that I truly loved, but many others may be put off by, is that the book heavily downplays the importance of religions in general. In this case if you are generally a good and moral person you'll transcend after death. Even atheists transcend. However, what happens to people that believe too hard in their religions is they perpetuate the cycle in the afterlife. Now this isn't exactly a punishment because it's what they actually want to do, it's just the fact that there is more to life and the afterlife than just following a religion. I've always felt this perspective was correct, not just by reading this book, but it's just something I've always known. So if you're curious about this kind of thing then this book is an excellent medium to transfer that knowledge and I would expect that if you want to back up a fictional novel then you should flip through his bibliography and read some of those books.

Personally, I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you hold to some general tenets like me where you hold knowledge of anything and everything to be very important for progressing in life. The book never really touches upon the darker side or grayer aspects of the world, like those who live good lives, but have a generally dark outlook on things and are at home in such worlds. In this book heaven is the generally accepted beautiful. However, there are a number of people that humbly reject this requirement, so I wonder if there is a place where these people exist in their own kind of “heaven”. I wonder this because this afterlife Matheson paints for us has general rules. Science and mathematics still govern certain aspects. If one delves deep into those realms you can get pretty chaotic and some people like that... I am always curious of other perspectives and concepts of that nature, especially when they defy the norm and are not common. As you can see, this novel makes you think about the world around you! That's kind of its purpose.

Dark Horse seems pretty driven to novelize all their Aliens comics. I'm a pretty big Aliens fan, so I'm pretty motivated to read through all these books at some point as well as all the comics. Like the comics, after the first three books they sort of turn into a stand alone series that have self contained stories. “Music of the Spears” is just one of those stories and strangely I didn't think the comic was all that outstanding. It was definitely a very unique idea and it was fun to read, but there was just something about it that was merely okay rather than outstanding. Yvonne Navarro adapts Chet Williamson's comic script two years after the issues were published. I have to say that Yvonne did an excellent job. Honestly the comics didn't engage in this much depth of character and I think that's why I felt this wasn't a very outstanding series initially.

The story centers around a musician named Damon Eddington. He's signed to a fairly large record label named SynSound, but his music isn't exactly breaking the charts. You could say he's sort of the low man on SynSound's list of artists. Eddington feels very disenchanted by the music industry because the top artists are these android rock bands that aren't even human. He can't stand this hypocrisy in the degenerated future. His magnum opus is going to break into different musical boundaries and capture the pure essence in his “Symphony of Hate”. There's one key element to his master piece, he needs an Alien so he can record it in the studio. SynSound is quite intrigued at this proposition and tries to figure out a way to provide Damon with his request. All this is introduced in the first couple of chapters and from there a very interesting tale is weaved. A lot of problems occur when Damon can't just get what he wants and getting the beast to cooperate is a much more daunting task than he perceived.

It certainly seems like a strange concept, and not all that exciting. Honestly, the comic really wasn't, but for some reason Navarro makes it work very well. Williamson's script wasn't terrible, by any means, but I just think it lacked the depth Navarro brought us into with the characters. She explains a bit more about the music industry and the fans. We also get a deeper look into Damon's psyche and I think that's what really drove the intrigue for me in this novel. Another element that I think is vastly interesting that shows up in other Aliens tales is the use of the Queen's jelly to create a sort of hallucinogenic drug called “Royal Jelly”. After the Aliens existence is well known by society it becomes a huge problem in society. I don't know why, but I just found that alternate story element very interesting and how it's used in a climactic way.

Overall it's a very interesting story. There isn't very much action in this tale and it's more suspenseful than anything else. It's more true to form of the original Alien movie rather than Aliens. The way it integrates into the future Earth society is more of the norm from Aliens and it combines the Alien aspect of suspense very well. It's a strange concept and I'm not sure a large amount of people will really embrace this story or its novel adaptation, but I felt the novel added a lot more than the comic series. If you liked the comic series you will likely love the novel a lot more.

I was expecting a book more on certain people's ability to do mathematics better than others, but instead I got a very interesting thesis on how everyone has this ability. I actually found this to be a rather inspiring read as I am also thinking about tackling a degree in applied mathematics. Instead this book goes into an in depth study on the development of language and finally ends with his conclusion based on his evidence.

Devlin makes a very convincing argument about how mathematics is like gossip and he has definitely convinced me to agree with him on this subject. However, the only thing I think would make his argument stronger is if he didn't dismiss some language experts' studies as being wrong. Don't get me wrong, the studies and their relations could be wrong and Devlin could be right, but Devlin could also be wrong. Personally I thought his argument about interpersonal relationships and the vast amount of data we can remember about these things was the best he made. Basically doing mathematics is removing the “real” world people and assigning agreed upon variables to a wholly different society of mathematics. I'm not entirely sure how much of a fulcrum the development of language is for his point about gossip or his thesis overall, given that analogy. However, by the end, given some very important points, I happened to agree with him quite a bit.

One thing we happened to disagree upon was his opinion on how mathematics education should be conducted. I should say, I agree with him to a point, without flat out disagreeing. He suggested that we reform the current mathematics education to remove all the repetitive memorization exercises (please note arithmetic and mathematics are separate and we are not talking about arithmetic reform). This way the class can focus more upon the principles and what the subject is about rather than the absolute practice of the subject. Theoretically students should understand what is studied in that topic and won't feel the strain of having to actually put it into practice on a rigorous level. While this sounds like a novel idea, all I have to ask is what if a High School student wants to become a mathematician? Isn't just learning the “concepts” of a subject like Trigonometry, rather than practicing them, more of a detriment to this student. You can even make this same case for an engineer or any other major with a heavy mathematics background. Sure this will favor your non-mathematics majors greatly, but it will hurt the others, in my opinion. Also, I seriously think that in today's society students, at the bare minimum, should understand how to solve algebraic problems. Unfortunately Devlin doesn't really delve into any aspects to truly back up his point or answer my questions. This wasn't the purpose of this book, but they were some important questions I came up with when he was going over his opinion on this topic.

Naturally there's no such thing as a math “gene” that genetically predisposes one person over another to be better at math, so don't pick this up thinking this will explain anything on a genetic level. Instead if you're at all curious about how language and society's development could likely enable humans to do complex mathematics, then this book provides a very convincing theory to explain that.

I just got into playing Warhammer 40k so I can't really compare this edition between any earlier editions. However, I have read many rule books, in both the Role Playing and the Miniatures Wargaming world. I have to say that in terms of content I got my moneys worth. This book gives you everything you need to do in order to play the game and then help you get deeper into the world.

If all you care about is getting the miniatures and learning the rules then I highly recommend you pick up the “Assault on Black Reach” box set for about the same price. It comes with all the rules to play the game and is exactly the same you find in this book, but it also gives you over fifty miniatures so you can start playing right away. So at this point, I suppose some people will be asking “why should I get this book?” Well I picked this book up just to see what was different about the rules in “Assault on Black Reach” and was surprised to see that the first 95 pages are the same as the 95 page mini book you get in that box set. After that it brings you deeper into the Warhammer 40k universe. It gives you a brief overview of all the races you'll be encountering on the battlefield. If you want to learn even deeper about these varying factions then you'll have to get the various Codexes to learn the real nitty gritty on each of them. The book is also beautifully illustrated and includes a lot of photos of in-game battles with the miniatures.

After that it gives you helpful hints on developing some games to play and even runs through some possible campaign scenarios. It also gives you tips on painting your miniatures, as well as collecting them in general. It also shows you pictures of every miniature army available in the Games Workshop line of miniatures as of the books writing. Each army is beautifully painted and really inspires one to get an army and learn how to paint. The book even goes to lengths to talk about building terrain and things like that. It also points the reader in the direction of a couple expansion areas called “City Fight” and “Apocalypse” for those who want to delve into even more epic and larger games. At the end of the book it gives you helpful hints on getting engaged with the war gaming community in general and a brief overview of how tournaments work and are setup.

I've played through a few bouts with a friend of mine and I have to say the game is incredibly fun; however the rules seem to be overly complex at times. If you're a beginner, like me, I'd recommend ignoring some of the more complicated rules and start out small and then build up to using all the complexity in something like the “City Fight” setting. One of the greatest features of this book is that the authors outright tell you use things the way you think is best. If you find it's more fun to play the game with a modified rule then that's up to you. It feels very different from reading something like the D&D manual where it feels a lot more rigorous. However, if you expect to tournament with Warhammer 40k, then you should definitely learn the agreed upon rules, which are enclosed in this book. I've already chosen my army to be the Tyranids and I've picked up the 1500 point “Assault Brood” to start my army off. Which army will you choose after reading this?

I really wanted to like this book. Honestly, I did. I can see why the story of “I am Legend” has some serious appeal. I, at least, loved the ending, but it just couldn't make up for the disdain I had for the earlier parts. Coupled with the fact that this book is 312 pages and the story of “I am Legend” ends on page 159 means that this entire book isn't “I am Legend”. Considering I wasn't a huge fan of “I am Legend”, this might sound like a good thing, but the latter half of the book is filled with some incredibly bad short stories. I have no idea what this publisher was thinking by doing this.

Naturally “I am Legend” is the more famous story in this book and it is definitely the best one by a long shot. It's the story of Robert Neville a man who believes he is the last man on Earth after a plague has wiped out most of humanity and changing some into horrific vampire/undead beings. This is the story of Neville trying to overcome his plight and facing these creatures on a daily basis. Now let me just say that I can understand why people find the book so good. It's written very vividly and you can really feel the ordeal Robert Neville is going through. My problem was that I just plain didn't like Robert Neville. He flew off the handle with frustration far too much and he just did stupid things that a collected person wouldn't make. I realize that's part of who he was as a character. It's really hard to like this book when you don't like the main character since this is the sort of story that deals with isolation where the only character you really get to interact with is the main character. The world Matheson constructed was very interesting to read about and I do like what he did with it. I even ended up liking the explanation for why certain Vampire legends worked, that's what really saved this book for me.

I'll admit, I saw the movie starring Will Smith before I read this. I'm sort of torn, in a way, because I did like the movie a little better than the book, but that's solely because Will Smith played a rational and very smart Robert Neville. He didn't fly off the handle in crazy tirades. A friend of mine put it best “if I were stuck in this situation, I would want to be with the Neville from the movie, not the book”. I think that aptly displays why I had a hard time liking this book. As far as the book versus the movie, it's nothing but confusing. I have no idea why they titled the movie “I am Legend”. It doesn't have nearly the same creatures as in the book and it doesn't have the same ending. The lack of that ending completely invalidates the title of the movie, because the book simply ended on a brilliant note that actually fully explains the title, the movie does not.

Now these other short stories we have to suffer through at the end is just atrocious. Yes, I read every single one of them... simply so I could say I have and that my review is fully based on my experience. There is one story called “Witch War” in which Matheson goes into detail about these underage girls who display magical abilities. For whatever reason they're in a military compound and they mentally fight troops with magic before they can even engage their target. It's just a stupid story. It makes almost no sense. “Dress of White Silk” drove me insane because it made no sense at the end. I have a general idea of what happened, but I really don't know for sure. It has to do with a little girl who is obsessed with her mother, but she's dead. Then it goes off in some tangent of killing a friend. I had my girlfriend read it and she couldn't figure out what happened either, so I guess it's not just me. Then the most infuriating is “Mad House”. It's a concept that this guy who is angry all the time is transmitting that anger into the things around him until the house eventually attacks him. This would have been alright if it was only a few pages, but it's a twenty plus page story with excruciating detail that I didn't care to read. The best one is probably “Person to Person” though, which was written well after the others. That's about a man who is hearing a telephone ring in his head and he eventually answers it and speaks to a voice on the other end. You eventually figure out who the voice is and it's sort of cliché, but it wasn't a bad read overall. This isn't all of them, but the others were also terrible. Having one decent story in that mix didn't help rating this book any.

Overall “I am Legend” was a pretty solid story, but the novel ended on such a bad note with the other stories. “I am Legend” is definitely an excellent tale given it's time frame, but I just couldn't fully get into it as I explained above. I hope people will understand my reasoning.

Rating for “I am Legend”: 3 out of 5
Rating for Various Stories: 1 out of 5

This is my first experience on reading a novel in the Battletech universe. I will probably go back and delve into the original series at some point, but to start at the beginning of that series seemed almost too daunting to me. Of course it was only after the fact that I remember there was a short series simply entitled Mechwarrior that came out before the “Dark Age” sequence. I'll probably go back and read those before I continue down the path of the “Dark Age”. Regardless, the reason I'm reviewing this now is because this was just such a good book to me. A friend of mine who is into Battletech far more than I am mentioned that Stackpole is by far the best author of Battletech novels. I guess I lucked out with this being my first novel in this series!

I was a little worried I wouldn't really understand what was going on because Battletech is such a VAST universe with a very deep political structure and long history. I think Stackpole did a great job bringing me up to speed on the general gist of what's happening in this realm with the clans and so forth. I knew a little bit about the history behind it thanks to conversations with my friend, but I don't think you need to know everything about what has happened. You'll have to take Stackpole's history at face value and if you really want to know the why behind your questions you'll just have to visit the original series.

Anyway, “Ghost War” was awesome! It was simply a lot of fun for me to read. When you first start tackling this novel you wonder what it even has to do with Mechwarrior. It starts of with Sam, a Forestry Mech operator, and you spend most of your time wondering where the novel is going to go. Even though this question looms I immediately liked Sam. He's so cynical it's just enjoyable for me to read, being a fairly cynical person myself, I couldn't help but identify. Needless to say, I didn't really have long to wait before the intrigue started up with underground terrorist groups and high grade spies called “ghosts” from the internal government that's policing the territories. I simply tore through this book once it really picked up. I seriously don't want to say anything else because it would ruin the surprise and atmosphere. I tend to love things I have a hard time predicting for their direction and this is one of the best things I've come across.

Overall I would definitely recommend this novel. It's intense and a lot of fun to read! He captured the main character so perfectly to me, and maybe I'm just biased because I identified with this character so much, but I just can't help it. If you're worried that there's no way you can catch up, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Think of it this way, it's kind of like reading a novel from the 1800's and you know there's a lot of history before then, but the novel works in it's own right. “Ghost War” is very similar to that. So if you enjoy high stakes espionage and major Mech battles, this is definitely a novel for you!

This is definitely a highlight to the erotica genre and Penny Birch is one of the finer authors that I've certainly come across. It's written entirely in the first person, but it doesn't really feel like you are reading a diary log about her experiences. It feels every bit of a novelized adventure in the first person, since I rarely see this executed very well, her skill at conveying the tale caught me by surprise. “Penny in Harness” brings us on a delightful romp through the country side with a girl discovering a very interesting form of sex play called the “Pony Girl”.

“Penny in Harness” was prefaced with the fact that the author Penny Birch is actually a practicing pony girl, so the things written are likely taken from experience. This is precisely the kind of novel I was looking for. While I don't personally practice the things covered in this book, I find different tastes of this nature incredibly fascinating. Penny Birch exquisitely explains what it feels like for her and does a novel job at trying to get at the heart of the fetish. I found this incredibly inspiring in order to grasp the desire for the differing fetishes out there and I think it does the fetish justice when a great writer is found that can aptly explain what makes the person tick. This is so much better than just laying out a scene and going through the motions, I find this doesn't really capture the passion or the joy that those participating feel. There are even passages where Penny pauses to reflect upon her experiences and give them careful consideration. While I loved reading about the scenes, I find I wanted a little bit more of this reflection to really get inside her head and see what specifically makes her tick. As this is her first novel, maybe we'll be treated to more of this inside look as she grows into writing for this genre.

I'm not sure how much this is drawn from actual experience, but it is written in a very fluid and real manner focused on Penny's exploration into the realm of Pony Girls. She herself is initially brought in to be a Pony Girl, which is the submissive, and is harnessed, just like a horse to a cart, and then pulls the driver around. We get to see her change roles every now and again as the novel progresses so we get to see the delight of some people as they change from a submissive role to a dominant one, then change back. She points out how enjoyable this role reversal can be for those participating. While the main focus of this book is on the Pony Girl fetish, there are some other aspects in this book that touch on other areas. Naturally there is a lot of spanking in this novel as we can expect and it certainly wouldn't feel complete without it. We're treated to lesbian stories and heterosexual relationships primarily, as I find typical with Nexus novels they are specifically for these crowds and do not cater to the gay. However, there is mention of the existence of Pony Boys with male drivers with the brief introduction to Mr. Novak. Although we are never brought into his world, which I am thankful for because I have no interest in that; as it is not my preference. There is a brief display as Penny takes the form of a new fetish concept called “Piggy Girl”. If you enjoy the thought of girls being messy and covered in mud, I believe you will quite enjoy the end of this novel as it peaks with quite an erotic display in a Pony Girl competition. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is an erotica enthusiast or is interested on getting a bit of an inside look on this fetish world.

I always find it interesting whenever I come across an author I enjoy reading in this genre. Maybe I'm still too new, but I always get surprised when I find a good one! Well I'm happy to say that I found Lisette Ashton to be a good author so far. I couldn't find the book she printed before this, so this is where my experience with her will begin and I believe this is her second effort.

“Slave Auction” takes place in modern times, but essentially playing into a very interesting fantasy life style. With that we get to meet the main characters Frankie and Simon. They are joint owners of a castle on a small island. I assume it's off the coast of England. Being so far removed from modern society has its advantages for Frankie and Simon since they are both dominatrices and possess a decent contingent of very willing slaves. From there we get brought into a whole underground society of slaves and slave owners. These aren't slaves in the normal sense, these people are willing slaves and it is entirely their choice to live this life style. Anyway, Lisette Ashton manages to weave a story amidst all the uncouth encounters between slaves and masters and this is what made me realize it was well written. Apparently the owners of the castle won the place from a man named McGivern in a bet and Simon has invited him back to the island to purchase something else from him. Unbeknownst to Simon or Frankie McGivern had his own underhanded plans all along and he's even setup a slave auction to be held on the island while he is there. This is where things get very interesting because now Simon has multiple problems, a major one being he didn't tell Frankie her most hated foe McGivern was coming. I must say I did enjoy the way Ashton set up the conflict in this novel.

Based on what I kind of expect out of my books I am somewhat surprised I liked this book as much as I did in terms of its format. This book is heavily geared towards the sex scenes, meaning that they take up far more of a chapter than any real story developments. Ashton describes her scenes in great detail and I think most readers will enjoy that so they can really get inside the authors head. Now normally I enjoy a lot more story in my erotica, but I have to hand it to Ashton she blended them together so well that I rarely noticed. There was only a couple times where I wanted to intimate scenes to move on so I could find out what happened next, but that's not because the scenes were bad, it's because she left parts on a cliffhanger. Personally I love when authors do this between chapters, because it always makes you want to keep going and start the next one! Sometimes scenes will be interrupted by people that move the story along and I found this creates some wonderful sexual tension for the reader so you really feel what the characters have to deal with in this instance. While I'm on this topic I might as well delve into what that includes. For the most part this book is very heavy on the bondage kind of domination and heavily blended with spanking scenarios. There is only one scene that briefly touches on something m/m and doesn't go more than a paragraph. There is large a mount f/f scenes in this, so if you really like that sort of thing you'll enjoy that. For the finale there is only one scene that goes into extreme humiliation with a girl wetting herself. Other than that it's pretty standard stuff for this kind of genre. While I'm not into all of those things listed above the story and writing of the book made it worthwhile.

Overall I actually enjoyed this book quite a bit. I'm not easily grossed out about stuff, probably due to the fact that I have read far more extreme stuff in the past. However, if you heavily dislike even the single scenes I mentioned above at least you know about them now before you commit to a purchase. This being a work of fiction authors get to break a lot of rules that most people would consider unbreakable. Such as sexual humiliation against someone's will. That kind of stuff does happen in this book even though most of the characters are willing submissives. I can overlook this for the pure fact that those kinds of unwilling conflicts are what heavily moved the background story. No one was severely injured and this book doesn't play into that kind of brutality, but it was merely being humiliated. Maybe that's no excuse for some people, but like I said, it's a work of fiction and I fully realize that whenever I open these books.

A friend of mine had recommended this book to me, and I wouldn't say I am a die hard fan of the zombie story sequence, since they all appear to be of a similar nature from my perspective. However, I looked this book up on Amazon and saw the overwhelming response and high rating. I am merely writing this review to further that momentum because after reading this book it worked it's way into, probably, part of my top ten books I've ever read, and I'm a fairly avid reader.

I even made sure to read the reviews that were more negative on here and some of them do bear merit, but where they found disjointed work, I found uniqueness. Their points are dead on, in the sense that this is not a story that flows through the book and has memorable characters throughout. This book holds none of that for the reader, so if that is what you are looking for, I highly recommend you give this a chance and if you don't like the format give up on it.

Most zombie related story lines seem to have a very similar theme. Like I am Legend, 28 Days Later, or Resident Evil, the stories all focus on a predominantly single area. About a small group of characters and their single resilience to survive against insurmountable odds. World War Z doesn't really have that. The format of the story is one of the more unique I have come across. It is written in interview format (granted they're all fictional, of course), but that format didn't bother me. Rather it intrigued me! I found it to be a very engrossing book from start to finish in this format. The names of the characters are not memorable, but I do not think they are supposed to be, the world and it's plight are memorable and that's what the reader should focus on. Where those other story lines I referenced above focus on a single group, World War Z is exactly what it's title says, “World”. This is one of the first Zombie scenarios I've encountered that was practically a full Global onslaught. Maybe I haven't read enough in the zombie genre, but this is the first I've encountered that tried to cover all the bases.

That's where this book becomes fully engrossing, it's interesting to see how different areas of the world fought against the plight. Such as it goes into detail about the Redeker plan that started to turn the tide. I found this absolutely fascinating in concept. I think this bears more similarity to a collection of short stories, but the stories all tell a part of the same global story. I honestly can't think of a better way to give the reader that full global feel. The other part fans may expect, and others have complained about, is the horror factor. This book isn't exactly a “scary” novel, it's not even a thriller or suspenseful most of the time. It's an account, and it's written in a recollected manner. I think the fact that the threat has already passed is what takes away from the real “scare” factor. I, for one, didn't find this to be a detriment to the books format, but others might.

Ultimately, this is one of the most unique books I've ever read. It takes you through interviews from specific time frames as the threat of the zombies grew, became all out war, and then as the tides turned; mankind had to pull together and clean up the mess. This book is a global effort at it's best and anyone interested in reading something in a very different format, with quite a unique twist on this kind of a tale will find this immensly enjoyable.

Many of the stories could be fleshed out to become their own tale. I think one of the best mediums to present this would be in comic book or graphic novel format. I think in that format you'd get the necessary cinematic feel that the stories would require. Something for the author to consider in the future, should he ever stumble upon my review.

The main reason I couldn't get into this book was that I hated the main character. I really couldn't get into her intense introversion and there were scenes that I just sat and read and said to myself “go and do something damnit!!!”. But she never did. I realize the point of the story was that she was supposed to learn to overcome her failings and cope with them, but the book was hugely introspective on her part. I found her inhibitions more annoying than endearing. Though, I must give credit to the author for presenting this kind of character, it truly felt I was reading from her personal experience and transporting herself into the realm of the island. While that is a major credit to the author, I personally could not get behind this character, but that is my own failings, not the authors fault as a writer because it is pretty well written.

The best part of this book was Faith's flash backs to her past. Those are what really kept me turning the pages. Even though the past tale was pretty annoying at time's because Faith was supposed to be pretty intelligent, but she missed such obvious things. Maybe I read things too much, so I kind of suspected something was up, but being able to predict things very early on was kind of a let down. It consisted of her getting involved with some environmental activist group, because she met a boy she liked that was involved (I don't want to give away TOO much). Things kept getting more extreme as her past is revealed. I realize the character probably wouldn't have noticed it, because her socialization skills seem to be very sub par, but being able to predict the ending very early on was rather annoying to me. However, it kept me going because I kept thinking “maybe it won't be obvious.” But it was... and in the end it was still the most entertaining piece of the book.

The island's tale was lackluster at best and the main Lost stars had minimal involvement. The other character, George, she had interacting with Faith was also very annoying to me, so to have two characters that frustrate you didn't make for a good tale. But I kept reading because of that past tale. The other thing that kept me going was that this was only 200 pages, if it was more than this, like a normal 300+ page book, I think it would've been too tedious for me.

In the end, this makes me see why the other 40 or so people don't have major roles or tales on the island. I know that wasn't the intention of the book, but I'm trying to tie it in with the story. For the person that complained about no hatch and no Dharma Initiative, this book takes place in about the first three days the people were on the island. So they would have barely found anything yet. The book feels like it spans a lot more of that time frame, but I don't think so.

I'm pretty big on 24, I wouldn't say I'm an ultra die-hard fan that needs a 24 fix between seasons. Hell I don't even watch the show on a regular basis, I wait till the DVD's come out and watch it all at once. My mom actually picked this up for me as a joke because my friends and I talk about Jack Bauer being so extreme.

So, needless to say, I didn't go into this book having high expectations. This book definitely met, then blew away my expectations. I couldn't put this thing down! The book is about a situation that happened well before Season 1, so I was sort of glad that it wasn't playing into the shows story-line specifically. The smartest thing this author did was have it take place outside of L.A, instead it was in New York City. By the time I was reading this, it was around Season 3 or so, so I was pretty tired of adventures in L.A. and it was great to see Jack outside of his realm.

It is written in pure 24 fashion with the the clock ticking away, except for the “prologue” part, which was really cool to see used because that definitely helped set up the action in the book. The story was fairly well developed and had all the random encounters that Jack always seems to get into, such as the case with the Bar Fight scenario. The book didn't let up it's intensity in the least, and I even found it more intense than some of the later seasons! This would have made an incredible season and it would've been great to see this. I don't want to discuss the story too much because, like 24, giving away too much ruins it for people.

If you want a very exciting read then I would definitely recommend this. The only problem Cerasini has at this point as an author is topping this novel in the next installments! Though I will always hold out hopes for a movie or a book series involving Jack's work with the CIA. I will say they brought Operation Nightfall into reality in comic book form, which was alright, but I want something bigger! However, at this point, I do look forward to reading the next novel!

I just finished this book last week. After reading the first two, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this story. The part that really interested me was the theological aspects that were greatly intertwined within the story, especially the part of the Nephilim (Edyrem). I must say that I did not predict this ending to the story, I sort of suspected it because of the story-line in the video games, but I had no idea it would be like this.

This conclusion is much more profound and far more action packed than the previous two. There is still a fair degree of intrigue, especially when they're in Khejan, so Knaak keeps that writing style up pretty consistently.

I was honestly half expecting him to play up more of the religious end and draw more from historical theology, such as he did with Angels. He sort of included the hierarchical structure of Heaven with the Angiris council at the end, but I half expected a true form of a Seraph to show up.

The part I most enjoyed in this series was the development of the Necromancer character. My philosophies identified most with Trag'oul and his teachings, so I really got into that character. The way this tale is written it seems the author also seems to agree the most with that philosophy. I was also surprised to see the author take this stance in a widley read series. He essentially teaches that any extreme of good or evil is a very bad thing and only results in a circular war with no real victor. Considering how much this country, the U.S., takes it's politically correct diatribes, I'm surprised there weren't any outspoken people towards this. At least I haven't encountered any, yet. I suppose the demographic of people reading Diablo don't really pertain to such extremists. But the extremists tend to get into everything these days and there seems to be an obvious split, which can probably be reconicled with balance.

Solid 4.5 at the end, dips to the 3 range a couple times.This was one of my all time favorite book series from Middle/High School. I haven't read this book in over thirty years and I doubt my fourteen old review would do this much justice beyond “dragons are cool!” The other issue that it has been so long that I rather forgot a huge portion of this book and I'm trying to go back and review all the books I've read and didn't review to help me better remember them, especially a book like Dragons of Autumn Twilight since I have held it in such high esteem for so many years. I'm also a much more seasoned reader of fantasy at this point, so I can probably write a more meaningful assessment of the book in the end. I've even gone ahead and read up on a bit of the books history and I think this explains some of the haphazard parts in the book.Firstly, we all need to realize the era in which this book was written, this book was released in 1984, so it is staunchly a product of the 80's. Dungeons & Dragons had become a pretty well established game by this point and prior to the launch of Dragonlance there weren't very many game tie-in novels. The novels set in the realm of Greyhawk starting with [b:City of Hawks 235750 City of Hawks (Greyhawk Gord the Rogue, #3) E. Gary Gygax https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389197212l/235750.SY75.jpg 228347] was one of the first ever written. From there [a:Gary Gygax 22517671 Gary Gygax https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] spun off and created the Gord the Rogue series. The only other tie-in was [b:Quag Keep 662286 Quag Keep Andre Norton https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312025916l/662286.SX50.jpg 648356], which also had multiple novels by Andre Norton in that little series. (Full discloser, I hated Quag Keep and it's one of the few books I've ever DNF'ed.) If there were any other game tie-in novels in these eras I don't know about them, or they're pretty obscure. Now, let's fast forward to the 1980's and TSR is looking to generate a new campaign setting that has some focus on dragons. Tracy Hickman at the time was on the game design team and they also wanted to publish a novel to go with the new game. Hickman basically story boarded everything out and they were going to hire an author to write the story. Unfortunately, the initial attempts to put all this together fell apart and with deadlines looming Hickman and an editor at TSR, Margaret Weis, didn't want to just abandon the project. So, Weis took it upon herself to put together the novel from Hickman's main story construction and in the end we've got the classic high fantasy tale of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. The thing to keep in mind is that this is really the first novel from either of these authors, so if some things feel a little off at times, that's probably why. I can forgive this to a degree, especially if I find the overall adventure really fun to read.It seemed like after this novel was published it opened the floodgates and game tie-in novels have been a long, time honored tradition for all kinds of products. Shortly after this another major gaming system BattleTech would launch it's novels and that series would continue into the current era. We've had all kinds of video game tie-in novels, to the point where it's become strange for a best selling game not to have any tie-in novels, or at the very least tie-in comic books! In some ways I'd think other companies had the idea to create these types of novels, but TSR just beat them to the punch at the time. While re-reading this brought back all kinds of nostalgic feelings, I don't think I really appreciated the history behind this book and the buzz of the scene we've had as a result of this.TSR wasn't sure how well the new novel would do in the grand scheme of things, but needless to say they've needed to repress this particular novel many times over and it spawned over a hundred more novels set in the Dragonlance world of Krynn. This novel also single handedly launched Weis and Hickman's writing careers and in two years time they were able to become full time writers! It's interesting to note that a similar story would unfold for [a:R.A. Salvatore 1023510 R.A. Salvatore https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1671730815p2/1023510.jpg] writing in another new campaign setting called Forgotten Realms.Okay, with all that historical setting out of the way, let's dive into the novel. Now, one of the big gripes people tend to have with high fantasy novels like this is they find it rather inescapable to comparing them all with Lord of the Rings. In some respects, I suppose this is a fair criticism, but the problem with fantasy is they all have the same issues. They're basically locked into a medieval setting with no fancy technology and they have a magical system. Now, some magical systems can vary quite a bit, but at the end of the day, most of the magic you'll want characters to be able to do is going to be pretty similar to so many other settings with wizards and medieval magic. So, it's less of a Lord of the Rings issue, and more of a, this is what the medieval world was like and this is what they thought magic was etc. Even Tolkien didn't really stray too hard away from general concepts and parameters. Because of this, it didn't seem to matter what fantasy novel I read, they all had the same general feel and, honestly, I had to take quite a bit of a break from fantasy for a long time and I wound up diving far more into sci-fi, which, to me, has more varied options, despite some of the repetitive concepts that wind it's way through that genre as well.All that being said, remember, this is based on a Dungeons & Dragon campaign and the authors of this book actually played within the Dragonlance campaign setting and some of the things that happened during those games wound up being important parts of this novel. Now the general events of the module were already created, so the novel was already story boarded and it isn't entirely based on someone's D&D game. As with any good Dungeons & Dragons game, we need a rag tag group of companions that meet in a tavern. This is such an overused trope at this point, it's just sad, but I have to wonder... was it back in 1984? Quag Keep doesn't really start this way, mind you, so I have no idea how overused this was for a campaign beginning. When you play the game of D&D, you want to have a rather well rounded party, so that you can overcome a lot of different challenges. In the book we have all of this, Tanis is a half-elf rogue, Caramon is a human fighter, Raistlin is the wizard, Sturm is a Paladin, Tas is a Kender thief, Flint is a Dwarf fighter, Goldmoon is a cleric, and Riverwind is a barbarian fighter, which makes an excellent adventure party. Sometimes, I liked to guess who was really a player character, because this is a lot of characters for a D&D game, so I often wondered if Goldmoon and Riverwind were actually controlled by the Dungeon Master, due to their story being rather stuck in a single minded direction.Now, I think people have to realize that due to the deadline and the fact that this book was more about selling games than anything else, it is a bit short on character development. It's also designed to be more action packed as well, than overly dramatic. We only get to learn a little bit about the characters and Tanis probably has the most character development in the entire novel. Raistlin, the usual crowd favorite, is a dark and mysterious mage that seems to have some other goals compared to the overall party dynamic. This creates an interesting group dynamic where some members don't trust him. What a lot of reviewers outline as a major flaw in the book about having flat characters and just lots of action is kind of a feature of the book and it's designed to be a bit simple because the book is supposed to be able to be read by nearly any age group, save children. The other thing a lot of people don't seem to realize is that these characters depth is fleshed out over many novels over time. So, we get action packed novels, but the characters introduced here have deeper stories, they are just told in different books. The Chronicles Trilogy is more about introducing the world state of Krynn as dragons return and the conflict surrounding that event. I can understand why people would be put off by this, but that's really how this series is designed, so if you like it, there is a lot to read about in this world.Our story opens with all our adventurers returning to their home after being away from five years, apparently on a quest to find signs of the old gods. These adventures have been outlined in a spin-off series called Preludes starting with [b:Darkness and Light 92895 Darkness and Light (Dragonlance Preludes, #1) Paul B. Thompson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312041484l/92895.SY75.jpg 398104]. They've even gone so far as to write out the details of how these companions met in the Meetings Sextet series starting with [b:Kindred Spirits 668830 Kindred Spirits (Dragonlance Meetings Sextet, #1) Mark Anthony https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312023010l/668830.SY75.jpg 654872], so as you can see a lot of even minor histories have been fleshed out in great detail from this single novel. So, our companions all meet at the local tavern in their home of Solace, when a couple mysterious strangers appear. Naturally the strangers are being looked for and when they are found out our intrepid companions step in to rescue them and make a hasty escape. This sends our companions on a wildly epic journey that make high fantasy, essentially, what it is as they travel to unknown and forgotten lands on their quests! The mysterious strangers, Goldmoon and Riverwind may have physical proof of the old gods and after a five years search our companions may have finally found what they were looking for.To be perfectly honest, about the first quarter of the book isn't very good. It really does feel like a bit more than just an homage to Lord of the Rings with our main characters being pursued by evil forces and then wandering around a forest called the Darken Wood. When they suddenly run into a unicorn called the Forest Master, basically Tom Bombadil, of sorts. This whole sequence was just kind of stupid, to be honest. The Forest Master is never heard from again and I don't think the unicorn ever appears again in any Dragonlance novel. It's almost like they wanted to emphasize this was a fantasy setting, so uh... unicorn? I'd accuse them of watching Legend, but that came out in 1985, so I'll accuse them of watching the Last Unicorn! In any event, this scene made no sense. The only purpose was to have a bunch of pegasi show up and fly our heroes to some other part of the map. It's one of those things where the player characters are veering outside of the dungeon master's story so, they need to get put back on track... but doing this so early on was utterly ridiculous.Luckily we leave this haphazard nonsense behind in the next leg of the journey. For me, the novel really takes off with the arc where they are searching Xak Tsaroth. This whole sequence was awesome and pretty well written. It introduced us to some new races of the world of Krynn called the Gully Dwarves, who Flint has serious misgivings about, a story which is outlined in [b:Flint the King 57376 Flint the King (Dragonlance Preludes, #5; Preludes II, #2) Mary L. Kirchoff https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388257308l/57376.SY75.jpg 55903]. Here Raistlin puts a spell on the Gully Dwarves and enlists their help to find what they are looking for in this old buried city. This introduces a favorite character of almost everyone who reads this book, Bupu, who is extremely enamored with Raistlin. Despite Raistlin's dark demeanor, he seems to really go out of his way to help Bupu regardless of the spell she is under.The Xak Tsaroth sequence is pretty much a classic Dungeons and Dragons dungeon crawl campaign. It's exactly what you would expect out of the game module and I imagine it was quite a bit of fun to play out in the grand scheme of things. While Lord of the Rings have some “dungeon crawl” aspects, they don't feel like the same thing as we usually encounter in D&D. I feel like the real feature of Lord of the Rings was more the epic battles, not fighting through mysterious dungeons and ruins, which is more a staple of D&D and what changes up the overall feel of the two settings for me. One of the things Dragonlance sought to do was have a setting that had more dragons in it and Xak Tsaroth is our first real dragon encounter in the story. As far as Dragonlance goes, the dragons haven't been seen in Krynn for hundreds of years, so these creatures have fallen into the realms of legend. Very few living creatures remember them, elves do, but humans have forgotten, for example. The Chronicles trilogy starts the new history of Krynn with dragons returning, so when our companions encounter the black dragon at Xak Tsaroth it really is a big deal for them. I really liked the way the authors set this up, because it gives us just a taste of the dragons and we know pretty readily our companions are not strong enough to defeat these creatures yet, so they succeed in far more round about ways. In some cases when they “fool” dragons, I felt like the whole process was forced a bit and maybe they made dragons out to be too overpowered, but I find it hard to believe that the dragons would fall for such ploys sometimes. Some of the victories felt Dungeon Master influenced in the sense that the game had to keep moving, so our companions survived miraculously.Once this arc is completed, our companions move on towards the final conflict against the Dragon High Lord in Pax Tharkas. There's some mishaps along the way and we meet even more characters when our companions wind up in Qualinesti, elven lands. Qualinesti is in grave danger and in process of being evacuated because the Dragon Highlord is seeking to destroy the elves, since they can't be turned to the dark side, I mean, they can't be convinced the follow the Queen of Darkness whom he serves. In this arc we get some more background info on Tanis. Tanis is sort of designed to be a frustrating character to read about and while he seems a competent leader at times, he has these hang-ups and general anxiety about things that lead him to generally make bad decisions or make comments about personal things that alienate people. We get introduced to two other major character Gilthanis and Laurana, childhood friends of Tanis. Tanis was adopted by their family and grew up with these. It's made pretty clear throughout the book that Laurana is pretty much the hottest women in all of Krynn, even hotter than Goldmoon, apparently. Sometimes the constant fawning over Laurana gets annoying, it's like, we get it, she's super beautiful... let's move on.Once we leave the elven lands it's off to Pax Tharkas for the final encounter. Here we get some inside information on the inner workings of the Queens armies and servants. This is one of the more exciting parts of the entire story. Again, some of the dragon stuff is a bit far fetched within even the context of their world, but I actually really like the way they setup the situation. The authors made it so that it makes sense why the heroes can succeed against odds that should be overwhelmingly stacked against them.The only character I haven't talked about yet is Fizban. I want to devote a whole section to him. Fizban is presented as an old doddering wizard that gets lost easily and often forgets the spells he wants to cast. However, he is extremely powerful, and we get the impression that he is probably one of the most powerful mages in all of Krynn. That is, when he can remember his spells. The problem that I had with Fizban has more to do with the fact that he sort of felt like the “deus ex machina” character. Whenever the dungeon master needed something to happen or needed to save a particular character... Fizban. It reminded me of the old Dungeons and Dragon cartoon that came out prior to this novel. Fizban felt an awful like the character Dungeon Master from that cartoon. He was way over powered and felt like he was there to get the story moving in a particular direction that the DM wanted. Once you learn who Fizban is in later novels, a lot of this commentary will make more sense, but here it feels like he comes out of nowhere. One of the things about his character that I really enjoyed was his relationship with Tas. For some reason, I always remembered their arc and I always found it very entertaining when those two interact.This is a lengthy “review,” but I feel it is well deserving because there is a lot of history packed into this one novel. It also launched a whole new campaign setting and seemingly inspired the avalanche of game tie-in novels that exist today. As someone who enjoys those types of books, I felt some serious historical discussion was worth diving into for this book. Dragons of Autumn Twilight, while probably rather dated in terms of its overall story by today's standards, I would still consider majorly worth reading and not just because of its historical significance. Overall, it is a good story, and it's a must read introduction if you really want to dive into the realms of Dragonlance. One of the things the authors have said they regret is how episodic this trilogy felt when writing it. What they meant was that they were tying each novel in this trilogy to a pre-designed game module. Now, when they wrote their next trilogy, Legends, they planned out the whole thing from the beginning. This series is so much better, in my opinion, than Chronicles. I mean, now they are much more experienced writers and story crafters, so it's not surprise really, but you can't really read Legends without reading Chronicles. You can, but it will be a much deeper experience if you read Chronicles first. The same goes for a lot of the Dragonlance setting, so many books reference back to events that happen in this trilogy that it has kind of solidified itself as a must read for anyone delving into this setting.