An excellent INITIAL run, but.....
596013
Seasons 4-7 were very hard to work through. I'm guessing that the main reason for most people who weren't exactly keen on the show after Season 3 was the recasting of Carol Drinkwater with Lynda Bellingham. Terrible decision on the part of the show's producer. Lynda has none of the warmth that Carol brought to the role of Helen, and also has a complete and utter lack of any chemistry whatsoever with Christopher Timothy. Rumors have abounded over the years regarding Carol's reasons for deciding to leave the show, but I'll decide to stick with believing she left because Helen had been taken as far as she could go as a character and she wanted to pursue other projects. But boy did the casting department royally screw this one up.

But the biggest reasons I just could not get into the show after it returned to the air were both the fact that we saw less and less of Peter Davison, and, even MORE troubling, the almost the complete lack of any real character growth for Tristan. He was still being written as comic relief for the most part...a complete buffoon who is still grossly irresponsible and incapable most of the time, and still treated like an annoying insect by his overbearing older brother (especially when he tries to stand up for himself, something even James would laugh at him over). If anything it almost seems as if Tristan devolved, showing only a few short (and quickly forgotten by Siegfried) bursts of brilliance, ingenuity, compassion and imagination. Plus, as Peter himself mentioned on one of the episode commentaries, he found it somewhat embarrassing to be pushing 40 by the end of the show, and still chasing around girls in their 20's, if that! And I have to agree with him on that point, sometimes it was painful to watch.

As I said, the first 3 seasons were excellent, a grand mixture of witty comedy, deadly serious drama (especially in the 3rd season, with WWII growing ever closer), and a good deal of educational material. I found myself going on the net and looking up a lot of the diseases the various animals suffered from, to get a better understanding of just *how* bad a case we, the audience, were looking at through the eyes of the vets, farmers, and pet owners. And although it was good to see a number of familiar faces returning (what would the show be without Mrs. Pumphrey and Tricki Woo?) I felt that, with a few shining exceptions, there was really not much to get excited about, and the show became formulaic to the point of asking why they even bothered to bring it back.
3696784
Midnight Club 2 is a solid racer with great control and good graphics.  The racing action is very fast and intensely exciting, and many of the competitions are very challenging.  Also, there seems to be some behind-the-scenes handicapping going on so that you're never really out of any race - I've had horrible multi-mishap runs where the difference between first and last was only a second or two.  This keeps every run exciting to the finish.
Unfortunately, after a while, all of the competitions get repetitive.  Career mode should have been so much better, but it turns out to be very linear:  trail competitor-race competitor-win competitor's car-repeat.  When racing for pink slips, you put up nothing in the wager, so the heat's off you every time.  If you lose the first time, just keep trying until you take the poor guy's car.  It would have been better to have a dynamic wagering system where you build up a bank account and race primarily for agreed-upon amounts of money.  After all, in the "real world" of underground racing, no one would automatically accept the ultimate challenge so readily.  The wager system would make a race for slips a real event rather than just another notch on your belt.  But what good would the winnings be unless you could spend them on goodies for the car?  The cars in the game are all stock - you can't upgrade them or trick them out at all.  If you could use your money to do this, this would have given the game much more lasting appeal.  Hustling other online drivers out of their money in an Emu quietly souped up to perform like a Veloci would keep me coming back night after night.
All in all a fun game, but not the sure-fire rave that many other reviewers are making it out to be.  Recommendation - rent first buy second.
PROS
*  Exciting race action
*  Good car control
*  Online play capabilities (broadband only)
CONS
*  Lack of depth in career mode
*  Inability to modify cars
*  Some of the soundtrack (what's the only thing worse than Limp Bizkit?  A knock-off of Limp Bizkit made for a video game - if I have to hear that "Put Ya Top Down, Playa" track one more time. . . )
3450483
This game isn't perfect, but what game is? That being said, a lot of these 1 star ratings are extremely harsh. Yes there are bugs and some issues, ok, GLARING issues (cautions, online play, thin career mode), but a day after release isn't the time to bash...wait a little longer and after a few patches before coming to a conclusion. Let's also keep in mind that a small percentage of buyers are in actuality horrible at racing, only race 6-8 lap races (that's a heat not a race), do not know knowledge of the tracks, nor understand the concepts of "loose" and "tight", do not know how to handle stock cars in general, etc, so their opinion is certainly swayed by ignorance.

Positives:

I use the Logitech Driving Force GT wheel and it works great. I turn all of the assists off, and while it isn't the same feel as NR2003 or iRacing, it's extremely realistic and should deliver satisfaction to any racer. When your tires begin to fall off, prepare to wrestle with your car. There is a very user-friendly meter at the bottom of the screen that shows surrounding cars approaching, being to the back, front, left, right, or even coming through you. It's probably best to start with the Hard difficulty at first. The AI will bump draft you, and although they won't necessarily "swing" out and hope you follow/bump them at Daytona, if you push long enough they will fan out and you can push them alongside the other pack. Really good stuff in the cockpit view. Places like Atlanta and Charlotte are great for those who like to race multiple grooves as well. Me and my buddy raced together online last night, and he preferred the high line, and I stayed on the bottom. Several times if either of us got into a corner too hot, you would shoot up the track, or in his case, the wall. The Paint shop is incredible, so many options to choose from. It's time consuming, but you should put some effort into creating a custom car people I mean come on! Wouldn't you rather see complaints of TOO MANY options rather than TOO LITTLE? Graphics are BEAUTIFUL, track layouts are great, paint schemes are to a T.

A few drawbacks:

Super speedway qualifying is incredibly easy, just hold your line and you're on the pole. So in that respect it relates to EA. Cautions are a big issue. Sometimes they come out when they shouldn't, sometimes they don't when they should. That's strange and somewhat frustrating. Online is a mess. I'm sure it will be corrected. Any lobbies more than 8 people and I back out, otherwise if you have 8 or less, and weed out the jack@$$'s that only want to wreck people, racing online is a blast! I also noticed that with the same setups, the controller seems to be a tick faster on lap times online, so I use the controller when I race online, but the wheel in career/single race mode. Maybe that will be fixed, or maybe I need to get up on the wheel more. Time will tell. The spotter is overall helpful and on time, but a few REALLY cheesy lines kind of ruin the authenticity for a moment. Celebrations are very corny and many drivers do the Carl Edwards' back flip. That kind of spoils the real feel as well. Although I have a bro-mance with Smoke, he is way too heavy and old to be back-flipping. It would be cool to upload pictures in the paint shop, but I'm sure there are numerous concerns from the developers in regards to that aspect.

Conclusion:

I too am not that far into the game, so I cannot be a hypocrite and give this 5 stars after playing for a little over a day, but there's no way on Earth it's AS bad as some people claim on here. People just need to calm down and quit being so critical. There are some issues yes, but the developers are committed to this game and franchise, and in my opinion, will make said changes via patch or future title releases. So for now, I'll say a 4. For a racing game on the PS3, this is a great start for the guys at Eutechnyx. Hopefully next year an in depth career mode will be first on the agenda.

Also, whoever says the EA series was even half as good as this game in terms of game play, is a complete moron.
3545753
3.5 stars really. I have to say I eventually liked this book, but it took reading more than halfway to finally, REALLY get into it.  So if you do buy this, stick with it.  Each chapter begins with a diary entry by one of the character's best friends who is on a seemingly self-sacrificing, lone quest in the middle of nowhere, to find out what he can about the origins of Rahim, their world's version of God. This seems to tie in only barely to the rest of the story, despite the constant referral to said higher entity, as in Oh my God/Rahim. The friend, Jarmith, says he's on this quest for, or at the behest of his best friend Azil, who apparently couldn't give 2 cents about said higher being. Yet this quest suddenly becomes all important. Where does the Sustenance come from!?  How is it made? Where do you buy it?  Initially I found myself skipping paragraphs, then pages, trying to getanywhere. My eyes started to hurt with annoyance. I just didn't care about any of these characters, save perhaps for Sarhah. But how is she so lovely and adorable when her kind is supposed to be semi-zombies, virtually non-verbal and smell like rotten meat. Is she not what they say? Then along comes the referral to a book, which is suddenly the main quest of their search, all important. It has all the answers?!  Once again, try to be patient. The premise for this book has great potential, and it isn't without it's enjoyable, yet brief, moments during the first half, but it felt disjointed, and the constant referral to the import of finding the true nature and circumstances of this higher being, almost ruined it for me.  I stopped reading for a few days, but since I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book, by futurehousepublishing.com  in exchange for my honest review, it didn't seem fair not to finish.

The book definitely redeems itself, and becomes much more adventurous and creative.  I love all the magical creatures, many being so original and well thought out.  And the plot sort of starts to even out, and the explanations for all my above questions (except the origins of sustenance) are eventually answered.  As for the characters, they become more relatable and complicated, and you begin to care about what happens to them.  I was actually sad to  have the book end, but it seemed obvious, at least to me, that there will be a sequel to this, which I expect will be much better since all the necessary intros have been made in the first book.  I can also say, there will likely be no way to know what is going on in the sequel without first reading this book.  If you get this one, and find it hard to stick with at first, stick with it anyway.  You won't be disappointed. #futurehousepublishing
3025624
First off, early in the book the author admits he ran Boston as a bandit.  Like most bandits, he tries to justify running without qualifying and paying an entry fee.  The fact is, if everyone tried to do this, it would be a disastrous strain of resources and the event would fail.  Since everyone can't do it, what makes the author so special that he can do it?

The format of the book is excellent, with the chapters organized to each cover a mile of the course.  There is a description of what you will encounter along the course, some history of the area you run through, and stories of what happened at certain parts of the course, and other background of the race is included in many chapters.

The problem is, it comes off as very disjointed.  He winds up telling some of the same stories over and over, like hearing your somewhat senile grandfather repeat stories with only slight variations.  I don't know if he forgot he had told the stories before, or if he felt like when he mentioned a runner he had to give the story of the runner each time, or what the reason was, but the book didn't flow very well the more it went along.

More annoying to me, is that over and over we read about John "The Elder" Kelley almost as much about John "The Younger" Kelley, virtually always referred to in full like that.  See John "The Elder" Kelly run.  Run, John "The Elder" Kelley, run.  There had to be a better way to keep the two straight without being so redundant.

For the most part the author does capture the complete spirit of the marathon and everything that makes it so special.  I'm not sure I believe all of his stories.  For example, he says that Salazar got punched in the gut by an intoxicated spectator at Wellesley Square, something not mentioned by Duel in the Sun, a book dedicated to that race.  I can't disprove any of them but some of them sound more like legend than fact.

I think if the book had a solid editing to make it more cohesive I would've really enjoyed it, but as it was it was a struggle to get through at times.
2992395
The real issue is that all EOTWAWKI scenarios involving EMP's will be validated based on the standard set by "One Second After".

I felt that the story got off to a good start: "man from Montana who just finished a work assignment in Houston is  on plane that has just lifted off the runway when EMP goes off.  Drags injured seatmate off the plane who happened to have a pre-1980 automobile and is a local"  It is not illogical that the main character (Kyle) was able to figure out the nature of the issue in consideration of his background in working for an electric company and the surrounding empirical evidence.  Back home in Montana, Jennifer (AKA the wife of Kyle) is left with 3-kids and apparently not many close friends.

IMHO, both the strength and the weakness in the storyline revolve around Kyle's journey home.  The distance of the trek and the number of pages assigned to it could have made for some very interesting storylines and in this respect the author was only partially successful.  While I liked the idea that Eric was for the most part a "regular guy", some of the decisions made were not very well thought out and took away from the plot:

1.) As commented on by others, it may just be the worst decision in the history of EOTWAWKI novels to think that an average guy could pull a cart for so many miles without the body totally breaking down from the effort way before hitting the finish line.  The first task should have been to beg, borrow, barter or steal a bike and to get experience fixing flats!

2.) The first time that Eric was assaulted while passing through a city, he had plenty of time to see it coming yet made no effort to find a defensive position and engage with his 22-rifle, even if it were to fire warning shots.  In lieu, he faces 3-guys and gets the crap kicked out of himself

3.) The "should I - shouldn't I" decision with the woman that saved his life was so very "Victorian".  Frankly, you owe this woman your life and if all she is seeking in return is human contact....

4.) The tangent involving the courtship of his wife (and the engagement was almost broken when she found out he was experienced as a result of a prior relationship) added little to the plot

IMHO, the real weakness was the entire storyline involving Jennifer.  There was no substance to either the storyline on civic planning or her preparations for both the upcoming winter and how to ward off her unwanted suitor.  There was also very little thought written re: prepping strategies both before and after the fact.

When there are only 2-storylines in a novel and one of them is weak, this is what accounted for me 3* rating.

On a positive note, I feel that relative to the price (Kindle $2.99) that the value is above average/good.
2728282
Many of the reviews already posted here are spot-on regarding the book's weaknesses: the surprising shallowness of the characters, the lack of plot complexity (which ties in with the novel's relative brevity), and the overkill in the use of magic. [Minor spoiler alert.....] I mean, a resurrection? When fantasy authors do that, without any hint of a downside to the process, I start to lose interest. Magic, when handled well by an author, is simply a tool much like any other, not a miracle-on-demand machine.

To this list of problems I would add one other aspect of the book that bothered me quite a bit, which was the relative insignificance of the stakes involved. In the first three Nightrunner novels, Seregil and Alec are either saving the world, or trying to steer the fate of nations in benign directions; here, they're just trying to save themselves. While that's a worthy goal, it doesn't require heroes, and their characters have been sadly diminished by the relative smallness of scope allowed them here.

I, too, hope the next installment redeems this one, but I must say that if you're a fan of the first three books, you might want to wait until the verdict is out on the next novel before wading into these waters.
3830939
I have enjoyed Mr. Weber's work for years, and own every solo book he has ever written (and most of his collaborative efforts), having read many of them several times over.  "Off Armageddon Reef" was superb, and left me eagerly anticipating the next episode.  Perhaps therein lies the problem.

I was so excited that I didn't realize until about three-fourths of the way through "By Schism Rent Asunder" (delightfully lyrical title, btw) that nothing - nothing - was HAPPENING!  The storyline's pace is positively glacial, and you would need calipers to measure the plot's progress in the first three HUNDRED pages.  Instead, the reader is treated to an interminable series of meetings.  Call them councils if you like, but they are MEETINGS nonetheless.  The characters talk - ad nauseum - about what they're GOING to do and WHY they plan on doing it.  Unfortunately, nobody ever gets around to - you know - actually doing anything.  Just like meetings in the real world.

Now don't get me wrong:  expositive narrative is quite valuable as a literary tool, and I respect Mr. Weber's stupendous imagination, to have crafted such a detailed and finely-honed fictional universe.  Nor do I have sophomoric expectations of "non-stop" action, or action for its own sake.  But this book is, sadly, lacking, or perhaps lackluster.  It feels ... incomplete, and I get the feeling that the next book will move the storyline forward much more rapidly.  Perhaps he was rushed to a deadline?  Regardless, it might have been better to restructure the plot during the editing process, or perhaps wait and release both this volume and the next simultaneously.

Digression:  Those similarly familiar with Mr. Weber's body of work will easily recognize the conceptual similarities between the Safehold series and the (much shorter, but highly recommended) Heirs of Empire.  Does Mr. Weber anticipate tying the two together?  Could Safehold be a - very - remote prequel?
258405
I would like to start off by making it clear that the book is worth your time if you like softer fiction. The story is intriguing, though the writing a bit shoddy. Even four books in I'm not sure why the series needed to be five books. Ive also wondered why each book has ended in a blatant cliffhanger, which also happens to be the middle of a scene, when its obvious the main plot arc of the series has yet to be resolved. That should be enough to bring your readers back for the next installment. An Editor Ms. Moning is not, but as I said the story is intriguing.

My main frustration with modern fiction is the commercialism involved in its release. In the authors own words she conceptualized the story as a whole and, for that reason, writing it was done much more quickly than anything she had done previously. If that is the case, why are we waiting a year between books? And, again, why chop the story as a whole into five mini-arcs stuffed with an abundance of inner monologue and unnecessary scenes with unimportant characters. I have to assume the driving force behind this is money.

I await the final chapter, but I can say with certainty that this is the last time I will begin a suggested episodic tale prior to the release of its conclusion.
692053
I was a bit worried when, on the first page, a character knocked (sic) an arrow. I was thinking "Here we go again!" but fortunately it wasn't so bad. The story itself was great. The MC worked hard to learn swordplay. He didn't become an expert after three months practice as happens. Grrrr! It's obviously the beginning of a series as the book ends without a satisfactory conclusion. Not a deal breaker for me.

The book could've used an editor or proofreader though. Misplaced or misused commas, missing words along the lines of "the" or "of", and words written as two words instead of one (or vice versa). Example: "hunters retreats and wood cutters shacks" instead of "hunters retreats and woodcutters' shacks"

The most distracting thing was the lack of capitalization of the first word of dialog. What's up with that? Broken shift key?

All in all it was a worthy read. I'll definitely be on the lookout for the next installment. My gripes are minor. I just feel that if someone wants us to be taken seriously for their work, they should apply a bit of polish.
2753076
Read my review on the Starter Track and save your money...
This product has a lot of great features, which I will start with, and one major issue, GAMEPLAY, especially with expansion packs and cars. Understand that I am including expansion packs and expansion cars in my review because ANKI is the one including all the expansion possibilities in their marketing of this Starter Kit product.

Pros
- beautifully packaged
- outstanding car look and detail
- awesome car lights with varying colors
- simple track set up that is FUN fun fun!! (with a few minor tricks for risers to create multi levels)
- software is simple enough to grasp for people with experience on iPhone (first use of each expansion car required a little download update, that is fine with me)

Cons - You must be able to PLAY the game, or it is just a model kit, which is a 1 of 5 stars.
- major issues with gameplay, I repeat MAJOR. In Anki Demos on line - watch the demo with 10 if not 40 cars driving around the track flawlessly, we know that gameplay is limited to 4, with that said, lets start with a reasonable set of expectations a SIMPLE race with 2 to 4 cars... Just know that the following procedure must be repeated before each and every race, any mistake on the test laps, which I will list examples below, causes you to have to STOP and repeat all of these steps, which is too too often:
A. Each player must load the game on their phone/tablet (great) OR (not great...) back out of the failed game to return to the "room" that the host will select the players out of.
B. Place your car behind the start finish line on the track
C. On your phone/tablet select your car from the available cars, Host starts the race
D. Host begins race, and the cars take two laps around the track (attempt to anyway) to understand the shape/configuration of your track
E. Race may begin

So... knowing that is how EACH and EVERY race takes place whether you changed any racetrack configuration or not here we go...

-----we laid out a track with 2 cars and 4 cars, really made no difference in the errors, 50 % of the time, at least one of the cars could not drive around the track and stop at the start/finish line correctly which is required for most of the gameplay options (not time trial mode). Failures included but were not limited to:
1. inability to jump the ramp piece
2. cars getting confused during the test lap and literally turning around and going the wrong way
3. cars just plain driving themselves off the track then searching helplessly around the tile floor looking for the track
----- during gameplay if you cars leaves the track and this happens often, forget about putting it back o the track and trying to finish the race, whether by buggy software error, or someone shooting you off the track you are DONE most of the time, even when placed almost exactly where the car left the track the car is now disoriented and rarely will function properly for that player
----- use of the Launch Piece increases game failure rate - cars fail to jump the ramp successfully about 1/3 of the time when trying the test lap and during gameplay, this wonderful piece makes it very hard to get a race going
----- use of Big Bang - we had problems with the car Big Bang getting to the start/finish line properly, sometimes he would bang the other cars as it finished its warmup lap and tried to line itself up at the line. Bad news if you lets the race go on from this point because the cars are disoriented to the track, you must restart the race preparation procedures.

Ah, you are thinking user error:
----- Yes the cars were fully charged
----- Yes we had clean track piece
----- Yes we cleaned the tires with the tire cleaner

If Anki fixes these issues I would love to own the product. It simply, unequivacally DOES NOT WORK AS SHOW AT ALL!!!

MAJOR FROWNY FACE for ANKI.
678761
This book really split the line between three and four stars for me.  It's a very original book with definite strong points and some equally noticeable problems.

First the good.  The book is tremendously funny.  It's a great new take on the entire fantasy genre.  The author draws elements from lots of different corners of fiction and roleplaying, throws in some original stuff, and comes up with a system for how one would police two opposing groups of vigilantes with superpowers who constantly try to kill each other and/or the surrounding commoners.  The plot is consistent and generally exciting, with no holes that I noticed.  The characters, of whom there are many, are all unique and easily distinguishable, and each one has at least a bit of depth to it (except the Minions, of course, whose whole schtick is that they're basically humanoid cardboard cutouts).  The book even does a pretty well at detailing the spiritual side of its heroes without getting preachy.  Most of all, Mitchell Bonds does a great job of setting up a world that's very similar to that of most fantasy RPGs and then showing how silly and awesome the whole thing is.

The bad: Bonds doesn't stop at skewering the Fantasy genre and goes on to mock the English language itself.  Observe the bottom of page 253: "Serimal turned on his heel and began to leave.  He stopped briefly to turn the heel back off, and walked out of the room."  What?  Did that really just happen?  What does "turning off one's heel" mean?  I don't know, and somehow I doubt the author does either.  The author does this sort of thing over and over throughout the book--chapter 13 begins with "Night fell on Merope.  Which was rather painful.  Night picked himself up, swearing under his breath about the buildings being taller than they used to be, and continued on his way."  After the fifth or sixth instance of exploiting common English phrases for cheap laughs, this gets tiresome.

The book is of sufficient size for use as a melee weapon.  Clocking in at a hair over six hundred pages, it starts to lose the shine of its quirky originality near the end.  I found this book difficult to finish (although, to be fair, it had some stiff competition).  Had it ended a hundred pages sooner, I probably would have finished it feeling hungry for the next book (it's supposed to be the first in a series) instead of overfed by this one.  Having such a large number of characters and giving screen time to each one also made it difficult for me to invest much emotion in any of them in particular.

That said, the book is brilliant in a few spots, it can't possibly be accused of mediocrity, and the author's still in college.  I expect his writing will improve over time, and I confess to curiosity as to what he'll come up with in Book II of the Hero Complex.
1327052
The very plot and character interaction was very well told and played, and for the most i wanted to continue to read, except the one hurdle which comes very early in the first book. I realize that most of us who read these kind of books will be sci/fi fans, yet (without spoiling to much i hope) to bring ind the naming of certain classes on ship duties, relating to old sci/fi TV shows, kinda of break the 4th wall for me, and said names we are told they don't know where came from, but at same time they have no trouble identifying names of history people from the same century or even centuries before those with no problem at all, so i guess the history knowledge from WW 1 survive, but not TV shows, anyways if you can pass this hurdle you will find a good book read of space opera and plots to keep you entertained and waiting for the next book.
J.C.D&ouml;rr
415199
An interesting start, but the story line has tech issues.
2736220
This is one of those books that starts out great and just sort of goes downhill.  From the get go you're thrown into a very interesting excavation of an ancient site, only to have things go catastrophically insane. The beginning really is great. It is imaginative and suspenseful. In fact, with this book, immagination and suspense could have served a much greater purpose. The fear of things unknown could have succesfully drawn a little more life into the story, for once the author describes the horrid soul ingesting "lizard people," the book sort of becomes a joke.  So, my main gripe is that the antagonistic force driving the story is a bit weak. All in all, that's not too bad. The book isn't terrible by all accounts.  It certainly won't strike terror into your soul, or even make you slightly perspire at the thought of the coming of the title date. But hey, at least there is some negative force to contend with, even if it is ridiculous. My other main gripe is a continuity issue that pops up when the protagonist from the two moon world meets the protagonist from our own world. Wylie from one moon earth smokes a cigar, in which Martin from two moon earth is absolutely schocked because no one from his world smokes tobacco. There is a big deal made of it at this point in the book.  Much earlier in the story however, Martin hijacks an automobile in order to escape a crazed mob of pursuers.  When Martin enters the vehicle, the interior is described as smelling of cigarrettes(page 137 paperback), which would imply that people in his world do indeed smoke (since individuals would not draw a reference in comparison to an object of unfamiliarity, would they?).  Whereas later (page 278), this knowledge is unheard of to Martin. While this is not a huge error, it does show that either the writer was rushed and looking for filler material, or, he kept proofreading to a minimum, or both.  Minor continuity flaws are fine, unless they are highlighted and brought to attention later on. Some people may defend page 137 as being descriptive narrative, however, if people on two moon earth did not smoke tobacco, the car would not smell like cigarrettes, so there would be no need for the author to describe it as smelling as such.
  There are points to this tale that I enjoyed. The concept of alternate worlds was enjoyable, however, awkward, with no real explanation given for the difference in circumstance from world to world. I also greatly enjoyed the concept of a latent energy within all humans. Any at home Doomsday prophecy theorist has probably already came across a couple of possible correlations between the Mayans, people of Ancient India, and the idea of Kundalini. I won't go into detail about Kundalini, because it would take far too much time. It is nice to see the auther draw in a tie for those who have already speculated on the idea.
  In conclusion, it's not a terrible book. Not a good book either. If you're already a Strieber fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. If you're not a fan of his, however, this book probably won't transform you into one. Thank you for your time.
787432
Both of these stories are quite well-written, with one major caveat which I'll get to later; if you enjoy the characters of the Ferengi, or stories about them and their culture, you'll probably enjoy the first half of the book, "Satisfaction is not Guaranteed". I don't, so I didn't, although I will admit to having been gladdened by the resolution to one particular sub-plot; to specify which one would risk spoiling a plot-point, so I won't do so.

The second story, "Olympus Descending", might have been tolerable, although I don't much care for the storyline involving Odo interacting with other "Founders" in the great link; the storyline involving Kira and Taran'atar had great promise, but I can't forgive it one tremendous flaw: it had a chapter in which a tremendously important (and unpleasant) event was seen to transpire, only to have that event negated after a chapter's digression by the EXTREMELY trite and unacceptable device of "and then the little boy woke up and discovered that it was all a dream". Totally unforgivable cop-out.
2299468
The story and setup were really good.  Truly there is a lot to like with the story - high tech, fast paced, modern, of the times - most of the time it is anyway.  Until it's not...  and that is where the problems are.  The characters and subsequent dialogue are way too basic and clichd for a story this good.  The reader has to work through that just a bit and it takes effort at times.  Consequently the development of the individual characters lags in comparison to the story - so much that the reader doesn't really care if they live or die - just keep the story moving.  Having said that the story is really good and I recommend it to all but the harshest of critics.