Kevin Anderson Books

This book fits in the "spirit world" kind of episodes from the X-files. I like it when i read it, and it has some additional aspects about the relationships between Mulder and Scully that i never seen in the series, but are according to the characters. If you are a X-Fan, you will like to read this book. But you will not find any alien!

I just finished this book last night, and I feel that it is the best of the Dune history trilogy (Butlerian Jihad, Machine Crusade, Battle of Corrin). All the loose ends in the trilogy are brought together in ways that the long time fan will immediately recognize. We see the origins of the feud between the Atreides and Harkonnen. We see the beginnings of the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild navigators, the Fremen. I felt that this book was very good and an excellent conclusion to this trilogy and a nice segue into House Atreides. 5 stars.

These books were designed to make money. Their creation was clearly rushed, and little thought or care was given to the end product. They sold well due to greatness of Herbert Sr.'s creation. However, without that connection, no publisher would want anything to do with them. They are unimaginative and contradictory. I can't imagine ruining my father's creation just to make a little money.

This series, the legends of dune is a very good read and story. It did much to develop the characters and their motivations plus backgrounds for the actual Dune series. Really explained much that was missing from the original Dune books. A keeper.

The good things I can say about this book:
1. You only have to read about 2-3 sentences per page and you can still follow what's going on (without having to actually wade through the excruciating dialog and descriptions).
2. You find out the Harkkonen's treachery.

The bad:
just about everything else: dialog, plot, characters, technologies, story-lines, ....

Thank you, thank you. I've read all of the Dune books...the prequels and the sequels won't disappoint the Dune fan. They are well-written, thoughtful, fit in well with the original stories (how Herbert and Andersen pulled that off I'll never know). I'll never forget the day I heard Frank Herbert died...even though I didn't know him, I was truly saddened -- for selfish reasons: I thought there would be no more Dune. Brian and Kevin are keeping him alive while giving us their own voice. A rare ability.

The Artifact , by Kevin J Anderson (and others) just affirmed why he is one of my favorite authors. Every book of his that I have read has been action-packed and fast-paced. It feels like you're watching a movie. The Artifact was no exception. A group of men, calling themselves the Daredevils Club meet every year to brag about their adventures. When one of the men discover several mysterious artifacts, seemingly not of this world, he enlists the aid of the Daredevils Club to help find the missing pieces.

The cast of characters was a group of people, so none of them were explored too deeply. But this was a short book, with only a back-story at the beginning, explaining how the Daredevils got together.

With plenty of twists and a surprise ending, The Artifact will keep you on the edge of your seat. I read through it in two days, because it was so hard to put down.

I'm not sure where to start with this one! Artifact read more like a television pilot then a novel by a couple of the better authors out there. The characters seemed shallow. The action was flat. And the story tried very hard to stay out of its own way. Don't get me wrong, I like a book that leaves something to the imagination, but this one was too unresolved and too wide open.

I could have done without reading this book.

In a world where we are constantly told to lower our expectations and accept the "vanilla" that our world is trying to become, it is an absolutely OUTSTANDING moment when well crafted, brilliantly executed adventure returns to our lives. ARTIFACT is that rare book, written by WRITERS (as opposed to creative typists) that engages, challenges, and entertains us at the maximum level possible. Consistently interesting, it is a novel you want to keep reading, and will become your constant companion at lunch, on trains, planes, and in every spare moment! REALLY FIRST RATE!!!

Picked up this book the other day. The story description looked interesting, and I noticed that one of my favorite writers, F. Paul Wilson, was one of the authors. I have to say that I was disappointed in this book. The "good guy" characters weren't particularly likeable, which is crucial to a good story. They were bland and kind of boring. The ending was unfulfilling. After forcing myself to read the entire book, hoping it would get a little better, I felt let down and cheated. Seems like the authors took the easy way out and left things unexplained. Wouldn't recommend this book.

I love F. Paul Wilson. His Repairman Jack novels are some of my favorite. I have read his collaboration works with Mathew J. Costello and enjoyed those. Kevin J. Anderson is another author I enjoy. And while I have never read Janet Berliner, this should have been a "can't miss" book, right? Wrong. It is absolutely terrible. I have been buying books from Amazon since it first had a web presence and have never returned a book because I didn't like it. I returned this one.

Usually in a collaborative work, the authors take pains to write such that you cannot tell where one author ends and another begins. Not so here. It is painfully obvious that different chapters are written by different authors. It even appears that when a change in author takes place that the new author often takes a drastic turn in the book by changing how you view a character or the entire direction the book appears to be headed. You develop empathy for someone and next chapter his/her personality changes. It is a book full of split-personality characters with passages that seem like they were written in haste by a junior high student.

The story had great potential, but the delivery and readability is just not there to pull you through the book. Don't waste your money here.

These bad reviews must have been written by biased old Slan fanatics who have a problem with Kevin finishing the second book. I just finished it and found it to be an enjoyable read. If you like Kevin Anderson's other books you'll enjoy this one.

I think the negative reviews come from people who are expecting 2008 level sci-fi from this book. IT IS NOT.

What it is, is a continuation of the Slan story, almost from the instant of the ending of Slan, in EXACTLY the same style.

Van Vogt has always been noted for leaving holes and gaps, this book maintains this.

I was suprised at some differences from the original canon, but reading this book brought me back to the world of Slan I have missed dearly since childhood, when I first read it.

Read through both novels in one stride and, like others reported, Anderson's sequel is a cleaner and clearer read.

The themes explored, the plot, the motivations, the repsect of the overhaul way the characters were acting in Slan and now act in Slan Hunter, are all there and intact.
I did not find the harsh discrepancies other reviewers have remarked upon. Thus, in my opinion, such remarks must stem from something else...perhaps in a sacred cow feeling on the reviewer's part.

The only problem I could find were the last two paragraphs, about 6 lines of text, in which a character physically does some ridiculous thing (and here I use the term apporpriately) instead of thinking it. Anderson prefers to _show_ us, through that phsycial act, what happens in that scene instead of having another slan read it off the character's mind and say it outloud for us the readers.
Still, those last few lines don't mare the story, albeit they're definitely clumsy. The idea they convey is sound and matches well with the story, but is badly delivered to the reader.

Firstly, let us clarify one point: the original Slan was not a classic of the genre. It was, admittedly, a great adventure, but the technique tended overwhelmingly towards the amateur. Now, is Kevin J. Anderson's sequel, Slan Hunter, a great work of literature? No - and it never pretends to be. Yet Slan Hunter is in many regards manifestly superior to its predecessor. It's clear that the first half of the book was culled from A.E. van Vogt's notes: the prose jounces awkwardly from one paragraph to the next, an inconsistency probably indicative of heavy cropping by an editor with a completely different style from the original writer. All for the best, since Anderson's stylistic minimalism is a refreshing alternative to van Vogt's typical floridity. Also, the early dialogue retains a certain pulpy grandiosity easily identifiable with a writer who peaked during the 1950s. I'm sure the uncompleted van Vogt manuscript was very elegantly refurbished, but the result is a rather uneven, static quality - too many cooks spoil the broth, don't you know. Slan Hunter only hits its stride in the middle third, the portion obviously written entirely by Anderson. The prose suddenly becomes quick and fluid, fraught with sharp sensory details. Admittedly, this writing is more effusive than Anderson's normal polished standard. (One must feel sorry for the poor man: his most publicly visible works - Dune, Star Wars, etc. - are distinctly inferior to his more obscure classics, like Blindfold and Captain Nemo.) But the dialogue, typically an Achilles' heel to Anderson, is actually quite snappy; the comic-book repartee between Granny and John Petty is worthy of genuine chuckles. Although Anderson is frequently derided for thin characters (an accusation which I find invalid, by the way), his renderings of established players are orders of magnitude better than the two-dimensional stereotypes of the original novel. In Slan, the entire dramatis personae consisted of forthright, emotionless do-gooders pitted against monotonously sadistic villains. The schmaltzy romantic subplot practically demanded a swooning violin soundtrack. I readily confess that Anderson hasn't lent the characters tremendous depth, but their easy humanity is so much more palatable than that former pomposity. The villains are not spectacularly threatening (both of them could use a refresher course in the Evil Overlord List: "When I have my gun on the hero and he tells me to put it down and fight him like a man, I will not. Instead, I will shoot him."), but they at least possess some reasonable motivation. Unfortunately, Chief Petty is portrayed as totally incompetent, which, while amusing as fantasy vindication, robs him of whatever small antagonistic depth he had in the original. Lack of depth is an issue throughout the book: it's not bad, but it clearly doesn't take itself seriously. In fact, as a parody of pulp writing, it's quite intelligent (numerous sly offhand references are made to the fact that the ostensibly far-future universe of Slan operates on technology equivalent to that of mid-Twentieth Century America), but one can't help but long for a more intellectually engaging work. Of course, such longings beg the question: after sixty years, is it possible to write a serious-minded sequel to Slan? I understand Anderson's dilemma, because it afflicts all latter-day adapters of old camp. The problem is quite simply that pulp novels don't age well, and any attempts to resurrect them as modern dramas look pretentious and, frankly, goofy. I tell you, contract Greg Bear to write a follow-up to Battlefield Earth, and even he wouldn't keep a straight face all the way through. On the flip side, Anderson can't very well toss out the entire Slan universe and turn his sequel into a comedy! And so Slan Hunter languishes in the sort of half-serious tonal indecision that plagued Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Gabrial Mesta's The Martian War. (Before you tell me, yes, I am aware that Gabriel Mesta is a pseudonym for Kevin J. Anderson.) That state of limbo exposes the novel to criticism from both ends of its self-contradictory stylistic spectrum: if it is a "real" novel, it lacks substance; if, by contrast, it is a parody, it lacks humor. I'll give Anderson this: he treats the world of Slan as a real universe. Yes, he fiddles with Slan continuity - but very the term "Slan continuity" is misleading and somewhat oxymoronic. Slan was originally serialized in a science fiction magazine, and van Vogt basically developed the plot on the fly. You want a study in self-contradiction? Read the first five chapters of Slan, skip the middle, and then read the last five chapters. Uh, yeah. There is no practicable way for Anderson to remain faithful to a novel that isn't faithful to itself, but given his pick of continuity, he seems to have chosen the more logical threads - viz., the threads which make the most sense juxtaposed against the whole. Slan Hunter is at its best when it bounces along on crackerjack adventures, unconcerned about its own absurdity. Alas, the fun cannot last; the narrative crumbles towards the tail end. That was no doubt the point at which Anderson was forced to return to the specifications of van Vogt's outline. Note, in particular, the eye-rolling deus ex machina by which the plot is resolved. The text feels uncomfortable, almost apologetic, as though to say, "I hate to foist this trash on you guys, but it's in the contract." The final chapter, too, is improbably tidy and quick. On the whole, Slan Hunter leaves an aftertaste of disappointment, of unrealized potential. Still, Slan Hunter is adequate for what it is; indeed, in some literary respects, it is more technically adept than its predecessor. But given the source material from which it was derived, the book was doomed to mediocrity. Modern science fiction has simply lost the naïveté that allowed the existence of Slan.

Slan Hunter (2007) is the sequel to Slan. In the previous volume, Jommy Cross learned that the tendrilless slans were preparing to invade the Earth. Returning from Mars, he attempted to warn the human government. He entered the palace by a hidden way and was met by Kier Gray, the President of Earth.

Gray released him from the trap -- which Jommy had already neutralized -- and received the news of the invasion. Then Jommy learned that Kathleen -- whom he had thought dead -- was alive and cured of the terrible wound inflicted by John Petty.

In this novel, Davis Stewart is driving his very pregnant wife to the hospital. Anthea is in labor and Davis is in a hurry. When he reaches the emergency room, he runs into the hospital to get help and comes out pushing a wheelchair and leading an orderly.

The orderly wheels Anthea toward the delivery room while calling out to the nurses. A nurse stops Davis at the door, but Anthea is quickly moved into position. The doctor speaks calmly to Anthea and tells her to push.

The baby comes quickly and the doctor holds him up for his mother to see. A nurse cries out and the doctor shows a horrified expression. The baby has golden tendrils growing out of the back of his head. He is a slan.

Neither Anthea nor Davis show any sign of being slans. They certainly are not aware of any such possibility. However, the doctor fills a hypodermic syringe with a poisonous substance and reaches for the baby.

Davis comes into the delivery room, responding to a feeling of danger. Nurses and orderlies try to block his passage, but he fights his way through. Anthea tells him of the doctor's intention and Davis throws aside everyone between him and the doctor.

After removing Anthea and their baby from the room, Davis immediately recognized the danger of three security men and a secret policeman coming toward them. He tells Anthea to take the baby and run, then he runs toward the security men. As Anthea goes the other way, she hears the shots that signal the death of her husband.

In this story, Petty had the president's quarters bugged by his secret police and learns that Gray is really a tendrilless slan. He has the president arrested and then captures Jommy and Kathleen. They are all secured in cells under the palace. Jommy and Kathleen are detained in adjacent cells and soon free themselves from their captors.

Gray was imprisoned elsewhere in the underground facility. Jommy and Kathleen soon learn the location of his cell and manage to break him free. But Petty has set up an ambush nearby and recaptures all three.

Meanwhile, the tendrilless slans attack the planet, including Centropolis, the capital. They are bombing the palace while Petty is securing his captives. Petty quickly agrees to join forces against the tendrilless slans.

This story concludes the storyline established in Slan. Very little is new other than the plot. Most of the characters, the locales and the technology are taken from the earlier story. This trend is unlike Van Vogt, who usually tried to introduce new ideas into each sequel within a series. Across series, however, he often reused older ideas. The best innovation in this tale is indicated by the concluding paragraph.

The Foreword describes how this book came to be published. This provides a fascinating -- and dismaying -- glimpse into the Van Vogt life story. The senior author tried to produce this book, but was overcome by Alzheimer's. Eventually, the novel was put into the hands of the junior author.

Recommended for Van Vogt & Anderson fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of viable mutations, reactionary social elements, and human relationships.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Kevin J anderson wrote one of my favorite sets of SW novels, The Jedi Academy. This comic picks up after that trilogy, and now Kip is a student. The story was a little below what i hoped for so I rate it 2 stars, but I really liked the pencils, inking and general production quality of this comic, giving it 4 stars for a final rating of 3 stars.

The best part of the story was the inclusion of the many characters we have only read about, Kyp, Kirana Ti, Tionne, Streen, Dorsk 82, Luke and Leia.

This specific collection of chapters that form, "Leviathan", is one of the weaker installments from Dark Horse that I have read. The two key elements that are critical, a good story, and good illustrations are glaringly absent.

I generally don't enjoy when artists take great liberty with the appearance of characters that have been solidly established for nearly three decades. A way to get by this fault is to offer readers a great story, however this does not happen here. Luke starts the story by musing to himself about nothing of great importance, and this is followed by a task for his newest Jedi Knights that is vague and one dimensional. A planet appears to suffer total destruction on a fairly regular basis, and even though this is documented, new colonists keep coming back for more. For some unknown reason nobody ever catches on that this planet is a less than hospitable spot, and invariably the cause of destruction is routinely disturbed.

The only other consistent theme is how unsuited Kyp is as a Jedi, and how hopeless he would be as a Jedi Master. His treatment of a new potentially force sensitive recruit is hopelessly inept and abrasive. When the central conflict does arrive it is terribly predictable and not worthy of the material Dark Horse generally offers. It is rare when a written installment of this saga does not offer any new insight, however this one is nearly vacant.

It seemed more like Alien to me. It a good 'monster'-type story, despite Anderson's horrendously forced dialogue. But it has almost no elements of Star Wars, some bordering on the line of obscenely un-Star Wars-ish. My biggest complain may be regarding Dorsk 82. The idea behind him was by no means bad, but Anderson's writing turns him into an annoying, craven fool. Sometimes I wished that Leviathan would just step on him and put the reader out of his or her misery.

The art's good, although once again, not Star Wars-ish. It worked far better in the 'Tales of the Jedi' series than in the modern SW universe.

You wants real 'Star Wars' comics, see something like the X-wing Rogue Squadron comics, especially 'In the Empire's Service' and 'Mandatory Retirement'. You want a story transplanted to the SW universe, read this. I'm grading this as a Star Wars comic, and as a Star Wars comic its just plain bad.

I picked this up since I am an Anderson fan and I was greatly pleased with everything- from the fight/battle scenes to the wonderous scripted speaking. All the characters are very well drawn and were presented in an exotic fashion. If you like the Jedi Academy novels, then you'll most likely enjoy this!

1) This is the thinnest plot I have ever seen. It's like they called Kevin J, said "Hey, we want a comic related to the Jedi Academy, but we need the whole script in five minutes" and this is what they got. Nothing is ever explained, nothing makes sense, the characters repeat themselves constantly, and the whole point seems to be to make Dorsk 82, who never really shows up again anywhere else as far as I know, feel good about himself. And I'm not even sure he does that!
2) Luke looks like He-Man on a bad day, and I originally thought Leia was some totally new character. Does Dorsk 82 have to be drawn *shaking* in every frame? Why must everyone have spit lines between his teeth? The art in this comic is rock-bottom awful.

I teach Finite Mathematics at the community college level, and have no problem with this textbook. While the book is not uniquely good, I think that some of the complaints leveled against the text are a little off-base. First, the book does not assume that the student has no calculator. Many sections include an addendum showing how to perform the pertinent tasks on their calculator, and the book includes a calculator tutorial.

Further, while it is true that the textbook doesn't dedicate much energy to theorems, that is somewhat irrelevant. This is an applied mathematics text; it exists to show a student how to use concepts. It does not exist to discuss the origin of these concepts. That is beyond the scope of the text, and presumably beyond the scope of any course utilizing the book.

This is a perfectly usable textbook, but don't expect miracles. Many students will see matrices and mathematical game theory for the first time in this text. Doing Gauss-Jordan by hand is slow, tedious work. The book can't change these types of facts. As always, math is a language. The way you learn a language is by practicing and practicing until one day you find you understand the conversation.

I would give this thing -10 stars or more if it were an option from the pull-down menu. The text is little more than a workbook; it has little explanation to go along with the problems you will get assigned as homework. I attend a large university so compounding this problem is the level of math this text is for, freshmen. Freshman classes are taught by "lecturers", or graduate students who, while very knowledgeable of their field, have little or no teaching experience so prove to not be able to effectively fill in the numerous blanks this book leaves. Also, these size of these classes tend to be in the hundreds and with the lecturer himself/herself being a student as well, can not devote the time needed to teach this subject because of the strains their own course loads put on them. Also this book claims that it "aims to provide students with the quantitative skills needed for their chosen fields and to lay the foundation for more advanced courses in mathematics."(qtd. by Amazon from Book News, Inc.) My college uses this text for Business Mathematics but having worked before attending college I can not recall some of the examples in the book as being used in my office...ever. As an example the book uses the old "bag full of different colored marbles, probability of pulling out a given color" exercise. There is also the "5 people on a row of 8 seats in a movie theater different combinations" exercise. That might have been just the example the lecturer picked but I saw no real exercises in accounting and such. The book also assumes that there is no software or calculators in existence to figure out compund interest and such other things so one has to painfully struggle through word problems with one example that is supposed to fit the dozens of different problems given in the book. So, if you are a weak math student like me, prepare to ask lots of questions and go to office hours regularly to beg for help when this book has no explanations. All in all this book leaves you scratching your head unless you already know the math concepts in the book(in which case you should not be taking a class that uses this text). Anyone who has a choice of what text to get should avoid this one. Also, if you can take a course with a different text then by all means do so. I would flush this thing if it would fit in the toilet.

This was the required text for my Finite Mathematics class. There is absolutely no detailed information. Students have virtually no tools to apply to problem solving. Apparently there is also no student workbook to demonstrate the steps that Tan failed to illustrate in this text. Slow painful torture is preferable to the struggle one faces when trying to make progress through this textbook.

This book is not nearly as bad as the other reviews indicate. I teach a course in finite mathematics at the college level and I examined it for possible adoption as a textbook. While it is not the best text I have seen, so I will not be using it, the quality is just below that of the book I use. Therefore, I would have no trouble using this book in my class.
The coverage in college courses in finite mathematics is standard and this book adheres to those standards. Topics are introduced via worked examples; there are exercises at the ends of the sections and review questions at the end of the chapters. The writing is clear, and the explanations are thorough. Solutions to the odd numbered exercises and all of the review exercises are included. While I hesitate to strongly recommend this book as a text, there is no delay in saying that it is one of the better options available.

This was the text book that was used in a course I took in Finite Math. Do not waste your time or money on this book. It does not go into any depth whatsoever, many of the thereoms shown were just pulled out of the authors hat without any proof of any kind. I honestly, had a hard time staying awake as I would read it, since it is so dull. It places far too much emphasis on phony applications and almost known on good solid theory. I only wish I could give this book a negative rating.

Usually an author sits down and looks over his notes, checks his story, writes his rough draft, then goes back and edits it until it's polished and ready for publication. Somehow in the process of creating this book the authors never got as far as looking over the notes before it appeared on the shelves.
And it shows.
If you liked Dune don't get this book.
If you thought Legends of Dune was novel and cool, don't get this book.
If you thought that Hunters of Dune was readable, even still DON'T GET THIS BOOK.
A million monkeys working at a million typewriters for about 5 minutes hammered this thing out.
Go buy original Dune and imagine an ending for yourself, you will be glad you skipped finding out what this one is.

Working at this book was sheer drudgery. I'm a quick reader, and I love true crime, so taking two weeks to plow through the first half of the book was most unusual. Most frustrating, too. Finally, I gave up, checked the back of the book for the verdict (normally verboten) and just threw it away. The author built an air castle on conjecture. "If", "maybe", "perhaps", "possibly", are the main words. There's hardly a sentence without one of these, and a notable scarcity of facts and evidence. It was a big waste of money and time, and I'm going to be pretty allergic to the name Carlton Smith from now on! (Too bad he shares a first name with another true crime author who's consistently good!) Yuk.

True crime is tough to write about, but filling page after page after page ... with complicated legal wranglings and accounting practices that no one but an accountant could understand or even care about takes this book from about 10 pages of interesting information about the lives of these people to however many it ended up being. Sorry, I ramble.

Do not waste your money on this one. Very poor research and slow moving. This si not the first time I have been disappointed with this author, but it will be the last time and of this I am sure. I think this book was probably written in about 2 days. This is one of the worst books I have read in along time. I can not understand how this Turkey ever got published. AWFUL!!!!!

I wouldn't give the book even one star, if there were a "no stars" category. Reading it is sheer drudgery. I'm a quick reader and very fond of true crime, so plowing through it for two weeks was quite unusual and quite unsatisfying. There are few facts - instead, lots of "if", "maybe", "perhaps", and "might" - the author has built an air castle on his own conjecture. Finally I just checked the back of the book for the verdict (normally verboten) and threw it away. What a total waste of money and time! I'm going to be allergic to the name Carlton Smith from now on. Too bad he shares the first name of a good true-crime writer!

This is an awful book, full of elliptical jargon that exemplifies the piteous state left wing theory has stumbled into. The basic problem seems to be the capture of Marxism by an exclusively university-based contingent of professional obscurantists and windbags. Since the demise of communist states marxism lost any semblance of a connection to lived experience and the lives and struggles of real people. It now resembles the species of 19th century German idealist philosophy that Lenin reviled. It is amusing to contemplate what Lenin would make of Badiou or the unbelievably opaque Zizek, and how he would review this mud-wallow of speculation without praxis, addressed to a vacuum. It seems designed to put its audience to sleep or drive them into the arms of Liberal Democratic theory. At least that body of work has some relation to reality and attempts to address itself to the real world. There is something to be said for Leninist labour camps for this pompous gaggle of academic wankers.

It is unfortunate that such an important political figure in the history of socialism as Lenin is so often outside the realm of academic discussion, and therefore the reasoning behind having a collection of academic writers discuss Lenin specifically is a good one. However, the result, "Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth" is astoundingly mediocre.

The great majority of the articles are incomprehensible pseudo-philosophical ramblings, either by professional dilettantes like Zizek, Jameson, and Balibar, or by people who do have something to say but are incapable of expressing themselves clearly, like Badiou and Callinicos. The greater part of this book is dedicated to essays musing on Lenin's relation to Lacan, the "Situation", "Leninist gestures", "the dialectic today", and so on and so forth. Even a normally engaging writer like Terry Eagleton comes off poorly when forced to write on such an infertile ground, although he at least has the advantage of being a skilled writer. It is unfortunate, but it is safe to say that almost all the articles in this collection can be skipped without any loss to the reader.

I say skipped, however, because there are a few contributions that at least redeem this book a little bit, although to strain the reader's patience they are all put at the back of the book (perhaps nobody can be enticed to actually read the likes of Zizek or Kouvelakis otherwise). Georges Labica has a strong and interesting piece comparing Lenin's view of imperialism to global capitalism today. Also of interest is a perhaps somewhat far-fetched, but nevertheless very original and intriguing view of Lenin as a socialist missionary by Lars Lih, who incidentally is also the only author in the collection to not express support for Lenin. This is best read in combination with the article by Alan Shandro on Lenin's idea of vanguard politics and its relation to hegemony in politics, an essay surprisingly free of Gramscian jargon. But the best contribution in the collection is probably by Domenico Losurdo, who uses Lenin to mount a very strong and rhetorically effective, almost Mike Davis-like, attack on liberalism's hypocrisy and pretense about democracy and 'human rights', both in the past and today. This article and that of Lih are certainly must reads. Borrow this book from a university library to read those, and so spare yourself the expense of money for a whole pile of nothing.

This is a far cry from KA's best work. The first two books in this series (Gamearth and Gameplay) are downright bad. The third shows definite improvement in his writing ability, but overall, the series probably isn't worth your time, unless you're a complete D&D addict.