This was the textbook for the Residential Architectural Drafting
course that I took at Vancouver Community College. This is what
I would call a dull read. If you are planning to build a house, this
is a very useful book. If not, it isn't likely to be of interest.
When I was young, someone in my family owned this book (as odd
as it may seem, I think my dad bought it). I read the comics in
the book over and over throughout my youth, but never actually read any
of the main text regarding the history of comics. I don't know
what happened to that old book, but one day, while looking for something
to read at the New Westminster Public Library, there it was on the shelf.
It was time to read it completely. This is an excellent look
at the history of comics from their very early days to the beginning of the
70's. The chapter regarding the Comics Code Controversy was particularly
interesting. Worth reading if you enjoy comic books.
I have never really been a big fan of Spider-man comics. I
have on the other hand been a huge fan of Peter Bagge's work., especially
Hate published by Fantagraphics Books. This comic does
not disappoint. This portrayal of Spider-man is very funny.
The very best thing about Wizard Of The Coast's introduction of
Dungeons And Dragons 3rd edition is the D20 Open Game License. This
allows anybody to publish material for the wonderful game. The downside?
Well, the market can be saturated with low quality material. Fortunately,
Atlas Games seems to be doing things right. Thieves In The Forest
is a 1st level adventure that I plan to use in an unpcoming campaign.
The plot and writing are very straightforward, making it an easy
adventure to run. In reading through this adventure, I found a number
of typos, which doesn't say much for Atlas Games' editing department.
Despite this, I enjoyed reading this.
When I first picked up Faun & Games off the shelf, I did not
think that I had read it before. In fact it wasn't until about
chapter 3 that I realized that the story was indeed familiar. As
I read through the rest of the book, I could not remember what was to
come, but was familiar with the content as I went along. I think
this pretty much describes this novel. Not very memorable. When
I first started reading Xanth, I thought it was the most brilliant fantasy
series that I had ever read. Books like A Spell For Chameleon, The
Source Of Magic, Centaur Aisle, Nightmare, and Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn
were a lot of fun to read. Now twenty-something books later, they
are not so fun to read. Why do I still read them? It is more
because of tradition than anything else. Sure, occasionally (maybe
1 in 3) the novels still have some redeeming story elements, but for the
most part, they are a chore to read. Piers Anthony's insistence on
loading the books with reader's pun submissions is the worst thing about
Xanth. When the series started, these "puns" would be sprinkled about
the story, and you would enjoy coming upon these little bits of cleverness.
At least the story took precedence in these books. Now the puns
spew forth endlessly to the point of annoyance. I own two more Xanth
novels, and there are a couple more beyond that. I will read them,
because I'm a completionist (is that a word?). I just hope that Mr.
Anthony either goes back to the style of Xanth's heyday, or stops writing
these books altogether. I must re-read those first 9 or so novels,
to remind myself why I started reading Xanth in the first place.
Back in the 80's, Bloom County was my very favourite newspaper
comic strip. I read it in the papers every day, and bought several
Bloom County books. When Berkeley Breathed ended the Bloom County
series I thought it was a sad thing. There were just not any strips
as good in the papers. Mr. Breathed started his new strip, Outland,
featuring many of the same characters. To me, the end seemed just
that. I never read any of the outland material. Recently, I
found this book at the New Westminster Public Library. It is full
of Outland strips, with a special section at the end featuring classic
Bloom County. Now I think that maybe I should have read Outland.
I like civil drafting, but that certainly doesn't mean that I need
to like this book. The basics that this book teaches are good, but
they are not expressed in a way that keeps you interested in learning.
A pet peave that I had with this book is its almost exclusive focus
on the imperial system of measurement. This book is published in the
US, so that may not be surprising, but as a learning tool in Canada, a metric
edition is necessary. It is good to understand both systems, but a
lot of civil work in Canada is done in metric.
Way back in the early 80's I bought my first couple of Endless Quest
books. One was Revenge Of The Rainbow Dragons, and I can't recall
which the other one was. Back in those days, as I do now, I enjoyed
the Dungeons & Dragons game. The Endless Quest format was fun
to read. You could read a fantasy "novel" where your decide the
direction the story goes by making key decisions as you go (Yes, it is
the same as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure). Those original Endless Quest
books disappeared long ago. A few years ago I decided to collect
the series. Unfortunately, these books are long out of print and
hard to find. I was fortunate to find a dozen or so of these books
at a used book store recently. The oldest of these was Endless Quest
Book #3: Pillars Of Pentegarn, based in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy
setting. These books are written for a young audience. Despite
this, I found Pillars Of Pentegarn to be fun to read. It brought me
back to my younger days when I read stuff like this. I followed every
possible path possible in this book and found it satisfying. I will
certainly read another soon.
Having collected comics and played Dungeons & Dragons for over
two decades, a D&D comic book was sure to be something I would like.
Kenzer & Company are the latest company to be licensed to publish
Dungeons & Dragons comics. Their first title out of the gate
is not at all disappointing. Jay Donovan's story is an epic tale
as any D&D story should be. His characters are so interesting,
you don't want to stop finding out what they will do next. The story
contained some unexpected twists and was not at all predictable. This
8 issue series is a very worthwhile read.
After reading In The Shadow Of Dragons, I really looked forward to
more D&D comics. Tempest's Gate is Kenzer's second title in
their Dungeon's & Dragons line. Unfortunately, this title was
a disappointment. The story in this four issue series did not flow
well at all. It was difficult to follow at times, and many sequences
in the story seemed to lack an ending cutting to another scene prematurely.
OK. I thought I'd like this book, but not as much as I actually
did. This is the first in a series of novels based on classic Dungeons
& Dragons game adventures based in the world of Greyhawk. This
book had a lot of death and destruction, much like you would have found
in the original Against The Giants modules. The story around this
D&D (Death & Destruction, rather than Dungeons & Dragons) is
well executed. I'll have to keep my eyes open for more of Ru Emerson's
writing. I'm glad I picked this book up.
When I started collecting comics in the late 70's, they were all Marvel
titles. The first was Star Wars, but I soon got into the super-hero
books. Over the years I have liked certain heros, and not liked others.
One of the most interesting is Adam Warlock, who I first read about
in Warlock And The Infinity Watch. When Infinity Abyss came out, I
had been out of the Marvel hero scene for a while. I thought that the
6 issue series would be a good way to get back into the Marvel Universe and
see what's going on. I was not disappointed. Infinity Abyss
has an all-star cast that includes Warlock, Spider-man, Thanos, Captain Marvel,
Sr. Strange, Moondragon, Gamora, Pip The Troll, The Hulk, Silver Surfer,
and Namor, the Submariner. The story is a great tale that reminded me
of what I liked about these titles all those years ago. Now that I've
read these, I need more.
When I was younger I occasionally read Archie, and thought it wasn't
too bad, but I was never a big fan. Well, the second Free Comic
Book Day was here in May, and I got this for free, so I thought I'd give
it a read. Well, this was even worse than your average Archie story,
which isn't saying much. I'm glad it didn't take long to read. I
will now pop it back into its bag and put it away forever. Blah.
This, the third Dungeons and Dragons title published by Kenzer, is a
good book. It was a fine story, with great black and white art. The
end of the tale was bittersweet, which is a nice thing.
Alan Dean Foster is a great narrative storyteller. I decided that
I wanted to read a science fiction novel and found this in a bin of used
books at Safeway (sold for charity) for 2 bucks. This was $2 well spent.
I absolutely did not want to put this book down. I think that
this book would easily adapt into a movie screenplay. Apparently,
Foster wrote more books set in the same universe as this novel several years
after the release of this book. I'll have to dig them up.
Marvel published the best superhero comics. My favourite hero was
the Thing. I enjoyed reading this four issue series. It had the
Thing, some Freaks, the Kree and some Skrulls. Ben Grimm is again unhappy
to be the Thing, but as usual manages to use his abilities to save someone,
in this case a baby Watcher. It's Clobberin' Time!
Back in the early 80's a company called Infocom created a game called
Zork. This text based adventure game spawned many more like it. I
was a huge fan of these games, and despite the huge advances in technology
which have allowed for fancy 3-D games that need super fast processors to
run, I still like the Infocom classics. I never thought that there were
any books based in the Zork setting. Then I found this little gem in
a used book store. It may not be the best cut gem in the world, but
it still is a gem. This book is a choose-your-own-adventure style story
written for a younger audience. The best thing about this book is
that the story has many of the locations and items that can be found in
the original Zork game. The bad thing about the book is that the story
is just not very good. Despite the lack of good storytelling, it was
a nice read down memory lane.
This book was another that I got for free on Free Comic Book Day in May.
I had not heard of this title before and had not even read anything
by the publisher. The cover art did make it look interesting. I
was very impressed with this book. It was kind of dark and very interesting.
Free Comic Book Day is a great way to discover titles that you may
have never considered looking at otherwise. I think the promotion may
have worked in this case as I would like to read more of this series now.
Normally I wouldn't review a game of this kind here. I would
hardly classify the rules of games like Heroclix, Mage Knight, and other Wizkids
games as books. In the case of Crimson Skies, the rules of the two
games (Air Action and Aces) have a lot of content. In addition to that,
the rules for each game feature a comic, and as you may know, I have been
reviewing comics on this page as books (which they are). Having said
that, it is important to realize that this review is based on reading the
content provided, and not on having played the game (which at this point I
have not done). I couldn't resist buying this rules pack, having played
and enjoyed the original Crimson Skies game and also being a fan of WizKids
Heroclix, I figured the marriage of the two would work well. It seems
that I am correct. The rules are straight forward and read well. I
really look forward to the Air Combat game. The Aces game looks like
it will be pretty much like the Heroclix game, and I am not quite as enthusiastic
about playing that one. I was quite impressed with the background information
and statistics provided for the planes, pilots, squadrons and nations in
the Shattered States of North America. This type of information makes
it so much easier to immerse yourself in the story of the game, rather than
just playing the game mechanics. The biggest dissapointment with the
Rules Pack were the two comics, written by Michael Stackpole and Eric S.
Trautman. Given the rich history that is provided with the game, I
would have expected more out of stories based in the world of Crimson Skies.
The stories were somewhat bland. It is true that they were on
11 or 12 pages each, but that should have been enough to get the reader excited
about reading more. I was not. Despite this, and as I said before,
this game looks good, and I am looking forward to playing it (hopefully soon).
I liked the Avangers as a kid. I read a whole lot of Avengers material
when The Vision and The Scarlet Witch were an item. Recently getting
back to reading about some of these classic characters I picked up the new
4 issue series starring The Vision. I was kind of disappointed with
it. I think that my lack of knowledge as to the activities of The
Vision during the last several years has contributed to the fact that I just
couldn't get into this title. I think I just need to stay on top of
things in the world of Marvel.
This is the second in the series of novels that TSR published based on classic
Dungeons & Dragons modules. After reading Against The Giants, I
was looking forward to this book. White Plume Mountain features a new
set of characters. The main adventurers consist of a serious ranger,
a sentient hell hound pelt, a wise cracking pixie, and a talkative teamster.
Until these characters actually reached White Plume Mountain, about
two-thirds of the way through the novel, I was enjoying this book a lot. The
characters were well developed, and the story had a good blend of adventure,
mystery and comic relief. Once in White Plume Mountain, it started
to get to me. The comic relief was getting too much. Certain "scenes",
such as the encounters with the Sphinx and the Kelpies reminded me a little
too much of interactions in Piers Anthony's Xanth (if you read my previous
review of Faun & Games, you'll find out where I stand on that). These
particular interactions don't work well in this story. After such a
good buildup, this story fell hard. I still gave it a pretty good rating,
but am worried about the next book in this series also authored by Paul Kidd,
as it features the same characters. I'll read it soon and hope it is
better than this.
Now, this is not the kind of book you'll pick up to read cover to cover just
for the sake of a good story. If you play D&D in the Forgotten
Realms, though, this is a valuable resource. The Sword Coast is described
here in great detail. All of its cities, towns and villages, with their
most important buildings and individuals are detailed in this volume. If
your adventures take place in the Sword Coast region, you'll want this book
close at hand.
Though I've always been a fan of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, I
have never read any of Salvatore's works. This 5 issue series takes
place in the Demon Wars world created by Salvatore. After reading this
series, I am wanting to read about these characters in Salvatore's novels.
Good setting, good story, and good art make this book worthwhile.
Right off the bat this book had me worried. The painful onslaught
of "puns" began in the first chapter. After that it let up a bit, though,
and reading became easier. Generally, this story is much better than
that of Faun & Games (which I reviewed earlier), and the "puns" in this
book tend to be concenttrated in smaller areas, so they aren't constantly
in your face. I cringed whenever a Comic Strip was mentioned as these
are just a pathetic excuse to overload readers with the annoying "puns".
I found this book to be better than the last, but it still is nothing
compared to the original Xanth classics.
I was given this book for Christmas 1999. I started to
read it then but didn't really get into the book until this year. This
is a great novel by the author of The World According To Garp. An
excellent novel.
This classic novel is a must read for everyone. The classic
prequel to the Lord Of The rings is an amazing work of writing. Tolkien
was a genius with the pen. This book is easy to find everywhere
so pick it up and start reading.
This is the newest version of the classic science fiction role
playing game, Metamorphosis Alpha. I've always thought that this
game, by the author of the Gamma World RPG, was intriguing. When
I heard that a new version of the game was to be released I made sure I
ordered it. I find that the game system looks pretty good and the
background information is adequate. Unfortunately, the basic game
is not very detailed and the book isn't really all that well written.
Despite this, I am looking forward to future supplements as I would
like to play this game at some point.
This collection of 16 stories was a worthwhile read. Not
all of the stories were gems. Some were dry reading, and I was
happy to be on to the next one. Certain stories stand out, though,
such as The Rats In The Walls, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Dunwich Horror,
The Whisperer In Darkness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
This sourcebook is designed for use in the Star Wars Roleplaying
Game. That does not mean that the book will not be interesting
to non-gamers. This book goes through the era of Star Wars that
was chronicled in the original Star Wars Trilogy. Divided into 5
chapters, A New Hope, A Dark Time, The Empire Strikes Back, Shadows Of
The Empire, and Return Of The Jedi, this book gives a history of events
that took place during and between these films. Much of the information
is stuff that happened in various Star Wars novels, so those that have
not read anything that wasn't told in the 3 classic films should find this
new information quite interesting. The "in between" chapters tie
the movies together well. For Star Wars gamers, the book is full of
game stats and adventure ideas. Worthwhile reading.