Good book with one flaw.
935215
I really enjoyed the characters and the plot twists in this book, but there is one flaw in the plot that niggles at me. I can't disclose it because it would spoil the book.
4363362
Its a good book with interpretations and armor (I get tired of hema groups that always assume everyone is unarmored and ignores everything but long swords). Anyway, my one complaint is that I thought it would go through the entirety of fiores manual (one of them anyway), even in brief. I especially was looking forward to the unarmed methods (such as contained in the first 16 plays of fiore). The book covers #1-4 then moves onto the next subject. That said, he explains and illustrates many things in detail and covering all the moves would have made it bigger and more expensive (maybe a book2?) but it didn't cover what I bought it for. It did however cover many other subjects though and is still worth buying. I don't even care about B&w pictures. If you're used to hema research, you should be used to even worse. Overall, nice book.
425142
This COULD be a great little book, as all the other reviewers have said; however, they all fail to mention the one thing that completely annoys me about this book: the author flips back and forth between past and present tense on each page! I cannot read it to my children this way. It just bothers me. So I change the present tense phrases to past tense on each page as I read, thus making it uniform throughout. I quite like it other than this one MAJOR flaw, and really wish the author and her editors would have caught this glaring error and corrected it throughout the book BEFORE it went to print.
3488461
I like this book and my 2 year old likes it when I read it to him. Yet their are a few problems that I have too correct as I'm reading each time. The word villages is spelled correct but in the way it is supposed to be used I think the author meant villagers. Also I don't know if this is just a flaw in the digital book format, but every other picture is missing. I have redownloaded the book a few times to see if this would fix the trouble but not.
1235204
I thought it was a very good book.  I found it very enjoyable to read.  I also thought that it provides a lot to think about.

However, I didn't give it 4 or even 5 stars, because it has major flaws.

For one thing, at least in the Kindle edition, the author doesn't cite any references.

More seriously, a lot of the author's statements are just wrong.

For example:

In chapter 10 'The Darwin Wars', it's stated,  "Chris Organ from Harvard University and his colleagues carried out the first successful extraction of DNA from a 65 million year old Tyrannosaurus rex ..."  Well, no actually, it was collagen protein.  DNA is so fragile that around 100,000 years remains its limit for recovery.  The only reference to dinosaur DNA and Chris Organ I can find is his observation that the lacunae in fossil T rex bone (which previously contained the bone cells, osteocytes, are smaller, so therefore the osteocytes were smaller, so therefore the nuclei were smaller, so therefore the genomes were smaller (with less 'junk' DNA)-like contemporary birds (there might be one or two 'therefores' too many).

In the very same chapter, it's stated, discussing Kennewick Man the 9,000 year old remains found in Washington state,  "There is now compelling evidence to suggest that the earliest inhabitants of North America did in fact come from Europe (the vicinity of Spain, as it happens)" sometime around 20,000 years ago".  Again no; extraordinary claims (humans managed to cross the Atlantic, in a glaciation, and then crossed the entire North American continent?) need extraordinary proof.  The alternate interpretation that Kennewick Man more closely resembles the Ainu of northern Japan and came from there is more plausible.

In chapter 5 'The Ancestors That Still Haunt Us', in a discussion about Indo-European languages, it's stated " ...  Finnish and Hungarian, both of which derive from the invasions by Mongolian peoples, the latter most famously associated with Attila the Hun and his chums".  Again no;  Hungarian (and Finnish and Estonian) are derived from an Ugric language of western Siberia 3,000 years ago.  Nomads, but not Mongolian.

The book would have been considerably improved if someone else had read it before publication and checked the 'facts'.  The errors don't damage the authors arguments seriously, but I'd advise that I'd check any 'facts' proffered before using them, particularly if they seem difficult to believe.
2284775
The book is good, and detailed.....but.......there are just enough grammatical errors to annoy anyone who reads it. The book is short, about 24 pages, and a quick read, (8 minutes), and it DOES deliver a lot of useful information. There is one non-working link at the end of the book, for the review, but that is forgivable........the end of the book made me realize that I recognized the author.....he uses  a picture of two (his?) dogs to hold signs that say "THANK YOU".....that is a cute ploy. With a second or third re-write, I would give this book 5 stars.  I do recommend it, even in its current form.
4465881
This book is excellent except for 1 serious blunder...the author is enamored with the "ellipsis" and it is sometimes very difficult to tell just what he means with respect to addition of code to existing pages. He should be MUCH more specific when placing added or modified code within his examples. The myriad (partial) code examples at the rear of the book would be of much more benefit if he showed a bit more detail.
1981996
Overall, Water to Burn is a good book. The characters are interesting and the story is entertaining and held my attention.

The issues I had with the book are minor, but were enough to be annoying. First, the author continues to point out how very, very thin Nola is, and how she needs to eat more, and whenever Nola puts something in her mouth it's preceded by thoughts of how many calories it has. Either that, or she makes a point of saying it's a salad when everyone else is eating pizza. Occasionally we do get to hear that everyone else thinks Nola is too thin, and she gets asked awkward questions (such as a little girl at a party asking if she has worms)/told off for it, but really, we get it. Nola is really, really thin. Nola's bones jut out. Nola needs to eat more. It gets tiring after a while.

The other thing is the constant attention to her clothes. Such as the teal sweater/teal blouse that she keeps wearing over and over and over and over. My mental image of the character is now a sickeningly thin woman who wears a lot of teal.

I know Katharine Kerr is an excellent writer. I loved her fantasy series and never found fault in her writing there, so I wonder if it's just her adjusting to a different genre. All the same, I wish she'd just ease up a little on some of her repeated descriptions and the constant focus on the main character's weight. Otherwise, it's an engaging story and I will read the next book.
956478
Overall it's a good book. Many useful lessons about how to avoid positional bargaining and concentrate on objective standards. There is a lot to learn here. However I was disappointed that the few times they did bring up the middlle east conflict (one of the major conflicts in our world and a good potential teaching example), they always framed it in terms of the "good" Israelis and the "terrorists" in countries like Egypt, Iran, Beirut, etc (the Islamic people). Now I think that in this huge battle betweenn Israel and Palestine would not have gone on for years if both sides were not culpable in some way. So why did this book have to present it in such a biased way?  Israel has done plenty to provoke and harrass the Palestinians, depriving them of water and farmland, burdening them with checkpoints, forcing them into deplorable ghettos in Gaza. But that stuff never gets mentioned in books like this, it's just "good" Israel and "bad" Muslims, business as usual. So that was a disappolntnment. Otherwise it was a good book.
50256
I really like these books but there is one thing that I find really annoying.  When a switch to a different scene begins some type of division from the two needs to be inserted. A new chapter would be nice or just a * between the two.  I never know who we're talking about.
1959800
Nice book overall. For each kanji, there are example words, demonstrating how the kanji is used in combination with other kanjis to form words. Each kanji is illustrated with a cartoon for easier memorization. Includes a CD-ROM with flash cards that can be printed.
However, there is one major problem with the book: while the stroke order is indicated, the stroke directions are NOT. Of course, in many cases this is obvious, but sometimes it is not, especially for a beginner. It is a mystery how such an essential information could be omitted in a book aimed at beginners. So only 4 stars.
4767570
This is a great book. But the author need rewrite at least one part and correct one error.(As far as I know). If you are lucky to see my note, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR--make corrections below.
1) page 85 Table4-4  change  the 11th line from bottom into:
  tr  '[A-Z]'  '[N-ZA-M]'
2)read page  240-245 carefully, misleading there.  Here the author talking about  "Exported Variables".  The author's concept is wrong in this  topic.  Actually, when you test codes from page 243 and 244, it makes no  difference for two "vartest4".  I'd like you correct the 4th  line from bottom at page 243 into " y = 5 " instead of " y =  10 "
 Any way, this is a very good book for beginner.  If you can  find error, you get progress.  Good Luck!
1466438
I liked the book. It kept my interest. I am deducting one star though because if you write a time travel book, you kind of need to tie up the loose ends at the end of the book. If you go back in the past and change things, then of course the future will be different. Without wanting to give away the ending I don't want to say too much, but it would have been nice for her to explain the differences in the "new" present day, especially what happened with her mother. Just one more chapter could have made this into a 5 star book instead of a 4 star.
1647549
This is a good book and I enjoyed it. What held me back from giving it 5 stars was the editing. It wasn't horrible, in fact it was better than a lot of ebooks. There were just a few sentences were the wrong character was named.  For example, in one chapter told from Holly's perspective, Elizabeth is speaking to her, and therefore should be speaking about Natalie, the third woman, rather than Holly. The errors aren't real irritating, but they do break immersion somewhat.
2793353
Great book, although I found a rather major flaw in one of early chapters -- the Minangkabau is an Asian tribe, not an African one.
Referring to this snippet from the book:
'This alternative explanation is borne out by their later experiment with an African tribe, the Minangkabau of West Sumatra. These volunteers had less understanding of Western emotions and did not show the same physical changes as Western test subjects; they also reported feeling the expected emotion much less frequently than the Western subjects did.'
1436367
Barring a few grammatical errors (misuse of the word they're when their was supposed to have been used) the story is well put together. The only issue I have with the book, is why have levels of they don't mean anything? The level of the MC vs many of the enemies he fights is quite a disparate number. He's level 7 and taking out something 3x his level, and then the main boss is nearly 6x his level. This isn't the first book I've read where the idea of how power is used is more important than the level of that power, but someone doesn't get to level 22 or 67 without knowing how to use that power. It makes the suspension of disbelief a little harder.
4284697
This is a really good book with only one flaw, (which I'll tell you in a second). It has hundreds of very good drawings, some which are in full color. It has examples from all different kinds of anime comics, but they're missing one thing......
HOW TO DRAW THE DARN THING!!!!!!! This book has like 2 step by step instructions in the entire book. I recommend this book to experts and people who just want to look at a book. Not a beginner like me.