Too bad, it's a beautiful book
926449
Someone not Japanese is singing songs.  Can't learn real Japanese sound from this.  They really should have used Japanese singer for Japanese part.  I was planning to give this to my grandchild to be familiar with Japanese sound, but I can't give this to them.  Too bad, it's a beautiful book.  I want to return this.
492932
The Mirrorstone is a visually stunning book.  The moody imagery, rich and finely detailed and with the addition of "holographic" images evokes a wonderful, eerie world of fantasy and promises a chilling, exciting story.

It's a pity the story can't keep that promise.

Paul, a young boy of indeterminate 'modern' times (mickey mouse comb and all) is at the local pool, drying off from his play.  He glances into the mirror and is shocked to see not himself, but another boy.

"For the face he saw looking back at him was not his own.  It wasn't very different, but something was wrong.  The hair was a bit longer, the cheeks were a bit thinner."

This happens several times over the next few days until finally, Paul is drawn into the mirror and off on a weird adventure in a strange land.  The adventure, sadly, is sketchy in comparison to the elaborate and intricate drawings, and the use of language is clumsy in comparison to the elegant and refined art work.

The story isn't terrible, but one gets the impression that a very talented artist had a concept and was left to fend for himself for the story.

If you're looking for a gorgeous, visually compelling coffee table book, this is a fantastic find.

If you're looking for a story to share with a child, this may not be your best bet.  You might prefer&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Dinotopia/dp/0060530642/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Dinotopia</a>, another deeply visual fantasy in which the story is told only briefly, but rather more competently.
1818759
I ditto Lawrance's review...well said.  I picked this book up on a whim at a book sale.  Sat down one evening to read it to my children (ages 7 and 8), we enjoyed the wedding, the feast and the BEAUTIFUL illustrations, but the book takes a dramatic sad turn...which neither me nor my children were ready for!  :(  Poor Cock Robin.
1527838
Saw one of these in the hands of my fashion photography mentor, years ago. Beautiful work coming from one of the most fascinating Spanish photographers, and the only one covering his fashion pictures. With serious binding problems, though.

After some months of research trying hopelessly to get a new copy of the book, I agreed to pay some serious buck for a used one - that came with the same problem. The good side of it is that the binding is so bad that it seems easy to redo from scratch. Re-sewing the pages together with some more tension and using glue of better quality should solve the problem.

The editing and printing are absolutely beautiful, so are the Mara Vela Zanetti texts, precise and thoughtful. As the publisher says, the book "charts the creative restlessness of a true artist".

Buy one if you can, it's awesome, but buy also thread, needle and glue.
3597400
Theres this moment you have when you start a book that you believe will be an amazing and life-altering piece of literature. And then one of two things can happen. 1) It is devastatingly disappointing and forces me never to trust what I know again or 2) It is heart-wrenchingly beautiful and forces me to never trust the author with my heart again because it will be destroyed by his/her words and will probably drag me through the cobbled streets semi-conscious while doing so. Luckily, two fit A CONJURING OF LIGHT.

I regretted not getting into the SHADES OF MAGIC trilogy when it first started. When I finally did, I devoured both A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC and A GATHERING OF SHADOWS in a matter of days and was left with the largest book hangover I had ever had. I fell in love with the Londons that Schwab built and the characters that she grew from the beginning.

Even as I write this review, I feel the unsettling emotional turmoil over realizing that this arc of Schwab's world is over. At least for now. There were a few loose ends in A CONJURING OF LIGHT that cannot be left undone and I hope the return to it is soon. I know that she has a few series that she wants to progress, but goodness, I really really want something else out of this universe!

Every single page of this book was beautifully written. Even new moments (*coughssteamyonescoughs*) that I'm not used to reading in her writing that kept me going to reread after I finished the book.

I fell madly in love with the ginger-haired, black/blue-eyed Antari, the crossdressing knife-wielding pickpocket, the charming and devoted Red London prince, the troubled and tragic White London Antari, and the charismatic and strong privateer. I fell in love with them all over again. The development was beautiful and the growth in every single relationship was perfect and moving and made me want more. I want books upon books written about their everyday lives until they are old and gray. I don't care if they're sitting and having tea. I want to read about them.

I had the delightful opportunity to go to one of V.E. Schwab's events and I don't think it's a mystery that she's said again and again that she loves to write for Holland and I will specifically point him out in this review. He devastated me. The way that you watch a scene that unfolds in a movie and you find your nose stuffing up, your eyes stinging, and then your tears welling up. You don't realize that you are crying until the tears have falling and you feel them on your cheeks, your chin, your neck. It's only when you go to wipe your face that you feel the hot tears turn cold on your hand. He had one of the most wonderful arcs and stories of growth that I have ever read and I fell more in love with his personality as the books progressed. His ending in A CONJURING OF LIGHT left a hole in me, but I could not imagine his resolution being anything else.

KILL ME, KELL AND LILA. I am so happy that there has never been a real threat of a love triangle because this was not a series to put that in. At least with Kell and Lila, of course. I found their relationship so freakin' pure and witty and fun and DAMN, that scene. You know what scene I'm talking about. That scene on the boat...

The ending. Oh my gosh. I remember when I was finishing it and it was late into the night/early into morning that I read that last word - Anoshe. I remember the air being knocked out of me. The way that Kell waved to Rhys. I saw it coming, but it came out of nowhere and knocked me out. Had I not been laying down I would have desperately needed something to sit on and grab something tightly as I processed that it was over. That it was so beautifully written that I was rendered speechless and my heart shook.

I don't think it's a mystery on how I feel about this book. If you need affirmation, please let me know and I'll tell you how I wish there was a legitimate 10-star rating system so that I could give it a 100.
1146096
A Top Timeline book of  World History. A beautifully designed coffee table book;  and an impressive one it is; and one you can pick up to INDULGE IN--, anytime. However you register with THIS  story of HUMANKIND, it IS rather depressing, especially when one discovers that yes, INDEED, HISTORY DOES repeat itself--READING THE ENTIRE book at one's own pace can be an excitingly informative adventure for sure, but to recall any of it later would be a miracle in itself, because all stories here are just as short as a volume of this SIZE COULD PERMIT....TO CONTAIN any MORE would make it TOO HEAVY to hold! It seems like an endless trek THROUGH FACTS AND NAMES-- AND DATES AND COUNTRIES .  This is MORE THAN A TIMELINE, IT IS A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL BOOK, and a treasure for anybody who has an interest in World History.
3115935
The annotations, that is, not Emma. Although I confess the first time I tried to read Emma, I didn't get beyond the first few chapters because I thought she was indeed gorgeous but shallow. Happily, I gave it another go and Emma the novel is now my second-favorite Jane Austen and Emma the character is among my favorite literary characters ever.

I really wanted to love this edition. I am a huge fan of Jane Austen. I own no fewer than five editions of Pride and Prejudice, at least a couple editions of most of her other works, including the juvenilia and unfinished latter novels, several biographies and miscellanea about Austen and her writing, and at least one movie version of each.

And this book is truly beautiful. It looks elegant and old-fashioned. The pages are heavy and rich to the touch and eyes. There are plenty of illustrations and full-color photographs--it's clear the publisher did not stint, and in that sense, this book is a bargain for the price.

But alas, like many beautiful things, it is shallow. The annotations themselves do not live up to the book's beauty. At times they are sparse and spare--several pages go by with no annotations at all, or just one or two very brief definitions. At times, they are dense, difficult, and only tangentially related to the text (see e.g. page 409, which leads to a four-column footnote on the use of landscape in literature that only barely mentions Austen). At times, the style of the footnotes is difficult to read, mainly with the longer, denser footnotes--they often spill over a page or two, and the text of the footnote may or may not be located on the page where the number appears in the book. This makes for a lot of flipping back and forth and losing my place. If this was anything other than a Jane Austen book, I'd give it two stars for the annotations alone, but I just can't bring myself to do that.

I also own the other annotations by this publisher and they have many of the same flaws, but Emma is the worst offender. I'll buy the editions for the remaining books from this publisher if and when they come out, because I'm a sucker that way and these really are gorgeous books, especially for the price. But the annotations by David Shapard are more useful and user-friendly.
2769992
The book is beautiful...however, the art is overpowering and makes text near impossible to read for over 50 eyes, even with readers. I'll continue to try and read, but it's very difficult.
4187600
This book and its designs are gorgeous.
Loved the book but my eyesight isn't good enough for the fine details. If yours is, I recommend it because it's beautiful.
4018148
It was very hard to assign a star rating to this book. There are thingss I like very much, and others I definitely do not.

On the good side, it is a very attractive presentation of the beautiful patterns appearing in the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence. It is not quite as heavy on the mathematics as Dunlap's or Vajda's books (which may make it an easier read for those whose math isn't as strong as mine!) but what it does, it does very nicely, using tables and pictures to make the patterns very clear.

On the bad side, I wish the authors would not accept so credulously such myths as the one of Greek architect Phidias' using the golden section in his design (this has already been debunked by Livio) or the numerological nonsense promulgated by people who try to spread the idea that the Fibonacci sequence can be used to predict the stock market. People following such misguided ideas are likely to lose their shirts, so this sort of credulous myth-spreading is dangerous, not just bad judgment.

So how do you rate a book with so much good and so much bad in it? I've given it 4 stars because the good parts are so good. If the authors had spared us the myths, I would have given it 5.
2848989
The pictures in this book are beautiful, but I will probably be reselling it on Amazon because it is just like looking at a coffee table book. Once through, and you're done. There are so few really good polymer clay books (The Art of Polymer Clay being one of them), and this one is not one of them. The photography is impressive, the designs are beautiful and innovative, but if you're looking for a book that teaches you something - forget it. This isn't it!
4482238
If I could, I would give the following title to this book: the missing secrets of the plants. The book is beautiful, full of poetry and quotation. But, but and but. You can buy it to reading at the airport, with long lines... If you are, like me, looking for the secret teachings of the plants, feeling the soul of it when you read it, you can not find here.
223253
The photo of the author is so gorgeous, I haven't been able to move past the cover often enough to actually read much of the book.  And, when I do move beyond the cover, I find any encouragement to feel better about myself as a gay man is useless because I am still visualizing the cover in my mind's eye, compare myself and feel like crap.  The book's goal would be more easily realized if the author had been ugly.  Damn those Italians (but thank the Goddess for them at the same time.)
2190520
The illustrations are absolutely beautiful. The poems and literary quotations are also very nice. However, the frame story does not make good reading. I suppose it might make a good teaching tool nevertheless, IF you happen to hold this very specific set of beliefs about angels--their hierarchies, names and responsibilities, etc.--AND the influence of the Zodiac. (Which I don't happen to.) Check this one out from your local library and see what you think of it before you buy it. You may decide that the illustrations alone are worth the price of admission and the text isn't a problem. Or not.
3297072
I bought this on a whim, heavily discounted and read it in bits and pieces as time permitted. It's a sad but beautiful book centering on only a few characters: two humans rediscovering what it means to be human in a failed utopia and one robot making godlike decisions with a flawed suicidal mind.  Do yourself a favor and read this one.
923245
I sincerely wish I could rate this higher, as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are unquestionably two of my all-time favorite books. But The Silmarillion is neither of those. As a background source of detail concerning Tolkien's invented universe, it is of great value; I do not contest that. But as something to, well, just read, it falls short - very much so.

It starts out promising enough. The first two sections, the Ainulindale and the Valaquenta, are magnificent. Pure poetry, although written in prose. The creation account is soaked in Wisdom and for this section alone, the entire book is worth reading. The Valaquenta is just plain beautiful, and it's a shame the remainder of the book was not more like these opening parts.

But alas, they are not. The huge central section, the Quenta Silmarillion, is one giant, muddled mess. I could never, no matter how hard I tried, keep all the characters and place names straight. It sadly lacks any of the gorgeous descriptive passages in Tolkien's more famous works, and (fatal flaw) we are all too often simply told something or other is so, rather than letting us find out through the story.

I did appreciate the final two sections, mainly for the additional detail fleshing out the often sketchy accounts of these events found in The Lord of the Rings.

All in all, worth the read, but it will never be listed amongst my favorites.

Oh, and the 1951 Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Milton Waldman, included in the paperback version, is Pure Gold. Five enthusiastic stars for the letter!
1292271
This is a beautiful book, physically and emotionally.  The technical quality of the book itself is unusually nice with the doubled pages.  The photography was technically beautiful and emotionally stunning ... literally stunning.  We are endlessly offended and surprised by loss and death -- the Hesse poem and the transition of the tulips reminds us that we are trying to hide from the truth that birth is the start of death -- this book is a reminder that we are all dying at every moment, that it is natural and to be expected -- and when we really understand that reality in ourselves and in the people around us, we can only become more compassionate and more mindful of how we spend our time.  Our time is our life.