Brandon Books

I met Brandon Sanderson and heard an author's reading this week. It gave a flavor of his personality and writing, enough to browse the shelf and pick up Alcatraz. Brandon wrote it as a quick break from crunching two serial volumes of his serious fantasy work. Don't let the young audience deter you, nor the dissuasions of librarians everywhere, who tried to block the book's publication. You'd expect that from cabals that control the Hushlander (shhh, keep it down, would you?) world.

Alcatraz seems to break just about everything he touches. It's practically a gift. Bouncing between foster homes, he seems too prone to breaking things to have a settled life. The grandfather he'd never known arrives a day late for his 13th birthday, learning Alcatraz has lost the bag of sand his unknown parents sent for his birthday. Now they have to save the Free Kingdoms from the plot of the evil librarians to take over the world.

Sanderson is hilarious, thought provoking, and insightful. He peoples the story with memorable characters, none of whom is the deceased dog or mother you dread reading about in "meaningful" books recommended by librarian types. Instead, Alcatraz takes you on a rollicking adventure that just might involve dinosaurs, sharks, paper monsters, enchanted glass, magical powers, and being sacrificed to the evil powers on an altar made of outdated encyclopedias. Or it might be a story about a boy and his dog. You never know until you read it. Alcatraz is well-written and funny--a swift read that just might change your ingrained preconceptions of the free world forever.

Mr Sanderson's sense of humor is deserving of either a Nobel Prize, or lethal injection. A warning label should come with this book 'Do not drive, operate heavy machinery, read while pregnant, or in the workplace' I have been kicked out of a hospital and my breakroom at work for excessive laughter and a need to read passages out loud to anyone in shouting distance. This book needs to be read not only by every child in the country, but also anyone living. Many good kids books have a meta-level that adults enjoy separately. This transcends that and has a humor that adults and children can enjoy in the same way. But frankly my dear, he had me at the Parmenides joke.

I am shocked by previous reviewers saying this book "fails to meet the logic test." Fantasy isn't supposed to be about logic! This book is by far the best fantasy young teen book written in a long, long time. The humor is wonderful, the premise is fantastic. Of course, if you don't like to laugh, then you should avoid this book. Otherwise, you will find yourself along a very exciting adventure with Alcatraz Smedry, one of the newest and best characters who must save the world. Though this time it's saving the world from evil librarians... pure genius, Brandon Sanderson. Pure genius.

Rarely do I have time to read a book - this one came very highly recommended by my sister and her entire family. It took maybe an hour to read, mainly because I kept laughing. I enjoyed the plot twists and the subtle (or not) hints that maybe this could be real... I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially those like me well up the education ladder and full of knowledge!

The world created for a book should be consistent and logical within its own set of rules. This book is set here and now and covers all of Earth so should work within (or at least with) "our" rules.

The premise of the evil librarians holding every bit of knowledge, and completely rewriting history wherever they defeat the Free Kingdoms is just plain stupid and fails the logic test. The description of how the librarians manage to keep the extra continents hidden is a throwaway comment in the text, and it displays both laziness and a lack of thought.

The frequent attempts to be witty and sarcastic came across as very annoying, making Alcatraz seem like a prat.

Don't dumb it down just because you are writing for children.

"Bets, Drugs and Rock & Roll" by Steve Budin. This book was written by the father of off shore sports book gambling and is a truly fascinating read. Having learned the basics of bookmaking from his father, who was one of the top bookies in New York City, Steve Budin demonstrated a remarkable talent for his chosen field. The book charts his rise from his early days as a high school bookmaker in Florida, who took bets from his classmates as well as their parents and his teachers, through his time as a casino host to his setting up of the first real offshore sports book in Panama and later in Costa Rica. He describes the difficulties this posed as well as his success in overcoming the many obstacles placed in his path. Steve Budin also discusses his battles with the US government, whichultimately lead to his downfall, notwithstanding that he was meticulous about paying taxes on his earnings. The book is filled with interesting tidbits about some of his celebrity clients, which included actors and professional athletes to his own philosophy about the proper conduct of a bookie. The book also provides an excellent introduction to the basics of sports betting which I found especially enlightening. I will note that Mr. Budin frequently pats himself on the back in his book and brags about his accomplishments but I think he is entitled to his pride when you realize he helped create what is now a multi-billion dollar industry. The book is a fast paced read which I finished in one sitting.

Fast shipping, great product, got exactly as described. I would do buisness with this seller again! :) Thank you!

This is a truly fascinating tale of the rise and fall of a Sports Gambling ring. Steve Budin was a self-made millionaire before turning thirty, and we see how he coped with the money, the drugs, the sports, and the fall of it all. The book sucks you in to the very last page.

all he talks about is how great is father is (the guy seems to be in line for the nobel peace prize) and how smart he is when all he really is is a tool for the New York mob, which called all the shots. The guy is a shameless self promoter. I am ashamed I spend money on this book and immediately tossed it in the garbage.

A third grader could have written a better book. This guy supposedly has the father of the year who was 6 foot 4 and full of muscle with the brains of Einstein and could never make a mistake. He makes the old man out to be Gandhi.

He makes himself out to be the coolest guy since James Bond. He admits that he smoked weed and cheated on his wife on a regular basis (she is also a Miss Universe clone). At the end of course he talks about how he is devoted to Jesus his savior and how he dedicated his life to him.

The so called "adventures" he goes through are so trumped up with BS and tall tales that you have no idea where the truth ends and fiction starts.
He apparently knows every mobster and wise guy in New York and Miami. He claims to be an international jet-setter.

Of course one his good buddies is Stu Feiner. If you know anything about sports betting I don't need to go any further.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I did finish it out of some outside chance that the end would be better. That did not happen.

I had never heard of the guy and I follow this subject very closely. He really seems to be a two-bit broken down gambler with a trifle of a story that is blown way out of proportion.

If you like sports gaming and the stories that go with it find another book.

I really recommened this book to anyone who liked the movie the Crow of just happens to be a fan of Brandon Lee. I really thought that in some parts of the book where hard to follow and not that interesting, but some of the stories and the facts were just so interesting. By reading this book, I felt like I got to know who Brandon really was. He seemed like a sweet,caring person who everyone really loved. But keep in mind that when you read the chapter of the gunshot, that is when the books tends to get hard to read. The book goes into detail of what happened to when he went to the hospial. I really think the author did a good job on researching this book.

I was fully expecting this book to be like a rehashing of every media account of what happened on the set of The Crow, but it surprised me by its tone and the way the subject matter was handled. I would recommend this to anyone who's interested. It is worth a read.

I love the Crow.....It is the greatest movie of all time and this book lets you know even more about what really went on during the making of it. You must check it out!

After reading this one more time, you learn a lot that you may have not known before. The main thing i learned was how much of a loveable and warm guy Brandon was. Personally, my last sentence and the title of my review say all I need to say.

The Story behind the film was very sad the they were filming the movie, they though that he was acting, but he wasn't he was real hurt badly. That part was the saddest part. I think some one real wanted to killed him so they can have the part and get money. I think because of someone in the film was so jealous and put bullet in the gun and let the guy to shot it and so they won't get busted. So I think they should try to find that guy and put him into jail. And I heard no was put to jail, I was real mad be he wasn't white.

This book is great! I absolutely love Brandon Mull's writing style. So imaginative, but at the same time it all seems so possible. I definitely recommend this book young adults and adults alike!

I could not put this book down. When I first started to read this book I thought this was going to be another Charlie and the Chocolat factory story. Boy was I wrong. When I got to the middle of the book, I had to stop and find something chocolat to eat before I could continue, the plot was that mouth watering. It was a great adventure to read I recommend parents to read this one out loud to thier kids to explain the moral about candy and strangers. I can see this book becoming a movie in the near future.

I love reading children to young adult books that I can then share with my neices and nephews. This book would keep them interested. It prooves that an adventure based on fantasy can be placed in modern times and seem beleiveable. I really like Brandon Mull's style of writing.

This book was really exciting. The characters were interesting and I liked the kids in the book. The plot was creative with lots of twists and turns. It had about eight different climaxes. I would highly recommend this book.

The Candy Shop War is definitely a departure from Brandon Mull's highly successful Fablehaven series. A stand-alone book, though as full of magic as the Fablehaven series is, that is where the similarity ends. The magic here is darker, and more violent, and could be frightening to younger children. The main characters are believable as children, but the narrative is often stilted to the point of feeling almost contrived. The vocabulary level is extremely rich, but the author seems to go out of his way to use the most difficult word choice possible, which at times distracts, and is sometimes annoying. After enjoying the Fablehaven books, I was disappointed in this book. I had to make myself keep reading to the end.

Very disappointing... The author and his wife travel through an extremely poor country, Tibet & Nepal. Instead of being self suffient, they rely on the kindness of villagers to supply them with lodging and food for themselves and their horse. They offer to pay very meager sums of money(and often haggle)for the villagers hospitality. It is a shame the author does not show more respect and generosity for these villagers. Instead of haggling with the locals over insignificant amounts of money, the author should of been a generous friendly American offering to help. It only takes small amount of money to help the people in this part of the world. If the author could not of spared the extra couple of hundred dollars to be a responsible traveler, he should not of embarked on this journey.

After reading Brandon Wilson's latest book: "Along The Templar Trail", his adventures in foreign lands so beautifully written inspired me to find out more about another one of his pilgrimages where he and his wife Cheryl walked across Tibet.

"Yak Butter Blues", for me, is a far more interesting, suspenseful, informative, and inspiring adventure than anyone in Hollywood could ever conjure up. The book opens itself up for the reader to join Brandon, Cheryl, and their horse Sadhu to experience what they had to go through to achieve their goal to cross Tibet's very forbidding terrain reserved only for the daring and the brave.

Weakened by hunger, illness, bitter cold, and the daily uncertainty of survival, Brandon and Cheryl's spirit remained strong enough to overcome the never ending obstacles thrown at them. Unlike fiction books where one expects the obligatory climatic ending and life changing epiphanies, this book is an autobiographic account of human survival stretched to its limit, and coming out of it alive is profound enough to change the way you look at life.

The highlight of the book for me was Brandon's creative ability of putting a face to each of the local Tibetans he came across, many of them angels who shared their homes and food with Brandon and Cheryl. Extreme poverty did not harden these Tbetan angels' generous hearts. These are people cut off from the eyes of the Western world, and through Brandon's journey we get a rare glimpse into the life of local Tibetans, the hardships they suffer, and the simple joys that bring a smile on their face.

With recent events involving conditions in Tibet that were painfully brought to light, I strongly recommend Yak Butter Blues as a source of information about the part of the world we know almost nothing about.

The world moves too fast these days to allow most travelogue books any success. A magazine article or a travel agent's poster is all it takes to send the travel-eager reader off to Luxor or Fez. The brilliant achievements of travel writers like Sir Richard Burton have no place in the twenty-first century. That's obvious, but fortunately it is also incorrect.
Brandon Wilson's Yak Butter Blues was probably never intended to reach the upper strata of armchair adventuring, but it does. The book is a soaring travel diary. It places the reader in the thick of the action every bit as well as Marco Polo transported Italians to China and, as it seems to me, better than Lowell Thomas led readers in the dust of Lawrence of Arabia.
I've seen a good part of the world, but when I was young enough to tolerate the grueling realities of Tibet, it seemed impossible--pretty much the way most of the Middle East is out of reach today. Choosing his moment with abandon, but lucking out all the way, Wilson and his wife trekked from Lhasa, Tibet, to Katmandu, Nepal. It's the great pilgrimage of Mahayana Buddhism, walked backward, but it is a remarkable journey. Not one reader in a million will ever make the trek, but I don't think any reader--regardless of age or physical ability--will ever read this book without dreaming of the whole trip.
Gripping Yak Butter in one hand, hopefully holding a better map than Wilson could find in the other, I want to risk it all by walking the road Wilson walked. I absolutely can't do it. Arthritis... age... cowardice... whatever, I won't do it. But, thanks to Wilson, I will not have missed the trek completely.
Naturally, a book about Tibet can't get from page one to the end without some mention of Shangri-La. Wilson knew that, so he tossed in the Shangri-La thing early and got it over with. Then he deals with the hard, cold reality for over 200 more pages. This is a trek tale, not a getting-there tale. They were trekking, not hitching. So, with bleeding blisters on his feet and a wife he'd have liked to save from walking in the cold while coughing and aching, Wilson turns down rides.
They get lost. They get very cold. They are abused at times and treated with remarkable kindness at other times. Till, almost amazingly and yet somehow inevitably, the trek really becomes the spiritual journey it was barely meant to replicate.
Don't be frightened away. The spiritual side of the trip is just a magical color flashing in the sun on the snow or whisper heard in the Himalayan wind. It never takes over the story, even if it may have been the wind beneath the trekkers wings by the end.
Hawai`i people may find a very special pathos in Yak butter Blues. The Tibetan people Wilson meets are losing their language and culture, and the author doesn't fail to make the mental and emotional connection to the plight of Hawaiians. He lives here. How could the parallel have been lost on him. You'll see it before he mentions it. You'll feel it before he points to it. (Very akamai writer, yeah?)

In our over developed world full of luxury and faceless friends - Yak Butter Blues brought me back to a true adventure. Where the human soul and friendship with strangers is at the center of the adventure. Where we are reminded that true adventure means taking risk and facing hardship.

Brandon Wilson and his wife set off an a trek that took them 650 miles over some down right inhospitable landscape all in an attempt to find a piece of their soul not yet found. Following a traditional pilgrims route they attempt what no other western had before them.

The writing was excellent - capturing to the point where I could not put the book down. I loved the mix of insightful writing pared with just the right amount of adventure story, geography lesson, and spiritual commentary. As I love anything and everything from Tibet I found this book to be a real winner. Highly recommend !!

This book was not about a spiritual journey as it states. Rather it is a whiney tale of rich people using poor people for their own betterment. Their reason for the trip? No other westerners had done it, and they'd do it illegally if they had to. Then they complain when someone chooses NOT to allow them to spend the night in their one room house, or don't want to share their already sparce meal with others. When asked for compensation, they haggle over what they should have to spend. This is truly an UNenlightening story.

Then you must buy this book. This book is does not contain general information that you can find in school websites or online publications such as business weekly. It is designed for applicants who already know what schools they want. It focuses on the application process itself. For this reason, it is more concise and more thorough than other b-school books, despite it's small volume (250 pages).

I have also purchased "How to get into the top MBA programs" and "Your MBA Game Plan". While these other books are helpful, the "88 Tips" is better because it discusses several things that are not found in the other books:

First, a chpater on Resume or Employment Record. This chapter contains tips to fill out the Employment Record portion of the application. Believe me, there is much more to it than just filling in the blanks. Here is one tip from the book: "Add 'employment summaries' to explain what you found significant about each of your work experiences." By adding just a few sentence of summary, you significantly enhances your record.

Second, a chapter on "Presenting you extracurricular Activities/Awards and Recognition/Community Service". Again, it is not a simple matter of listing dates and the activities. You need to elaborate on what it means to you and what you learned.

Third, a chapter on the overall packaging of you MBA essays and application. The effort you put into your package is evident to the adComs, and it shows your seriousness. The quality of your packaging is extremely important. Read this chapter and find some tips.

Again, all these information are not found in any other books I bought. The other books are helpful, but this book is a must.

I think it would be impossible to find a book about the MBA admission process that satisfies every single MBA candidate. Each candidate has his or her own strengths. Maybe, you are good in math, or have a superb writing. Furthermore, maybe you know someone, an MBA student or graduate, who has already provided you with important insights. But stop for a moment, think about the hundreds of candidates, especially international, who are not as lucky as you are, and who don't have access to valuable MBA admission insights. Do you think they are less capable ? Do you think it would be fair to compete with them for a seat at Wharton or any other top school ?

This book is the best single MBA admission resource available for ALL MBA candidates in the world. Mr Royal will make the MBA admission process a fair game.

This book is one of the best publications I've read on the MBA applications process. The author makes sure to use examples of the "dos" and "donts" of MBA applications. Moreover, his examples regarding essays and recommendation letters are excellent. They really show the difference between having an okay essay and the excellent essay that will make your application stand out.

All in all, this book has proven to be an extremely useful tool to get through a long and difficult process. It gets rid of the myth of "I'll work it out as I go along" for graduate business school applications.

For those serious about getting into a top MBA program, this book is GOLD.

This writer provides terrific information and treats the reader as a partner. Most books of this type are so general that the practical utility is lessened. In this book, the topics that count are all there, and handled with detail and in many cases brilliantly. The writer uses humor to help you remember his points. An example from the chapter on resumes: "You know your resume is ready when your mother looks at it and can't recognize who it is." Buy this book and enjoy!

I've read this book and the previous version. While none of the advice is wrong or bad, I didn't feel like any of it was earth-shattering, either. Most of what's in here is common sense to someone who has a decent shot of getting into a top business school. It's a catchy title, and you may pick up a few tidibits, but I've found other books to be more useful. Also, this version is longer than the previous one, but the additional content doesn't seem to justify the high price.

It is hard to believe how somebody can describe such an exciting trip in such a boring way. Describing some of the marvels of Africa takes the author one or two paragraphs, the whining about his fellow passengers on the other had can go on for dozen and dozens of pages. Also, it is woefully out of date. Zaire hasn't been Zaire since 1997, Mozambique has not been in a Civil War since 1992. It is somewhat unclear whether the trip took place before then or whether the author didn't bother checking his facts (similar to the Caiman that showed up in Malawi). In short, annoying to read.

All through Brandon Wilson's Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa one idea kept coming to me. Parallax! That's not a word that comes to mind every day. In science, it means getting better or more complete information about displacement or movement by collecting data from two points of view that are not in a straight line with the thing you are examining or learning about.
"After all those months of struggle, doubts of sanity and infinite challenges," Wilson writes near the end of the book, "we'd fulfilled our dream. We'd crossed the length of Africa from Ceuta to the Cape." All along the rugged, often road-less road dotted with rare moments of genuine rest--sarcastically (?) called "pure luxxxurrry"--Wilson pursues the parallax view of everything everywhere at every opportunity. He studies his fellow travelers and their motivations and observations like Margaret Mead recording the lives of Papua New Guineans. That, however, is nothing but technical practice for the real work of genuinely absorbing dozens or hundreds of African cultures.
To get in touch with "real Africa" and to understand lives as they are lived, Wilson talks with people who are not in the business of guiding and informing (and even listens to those who are in the overland/travel business). Sometimes the informant is a person eking out an existence in, say, the Central African Republic. When it is, he inquires of two or more people in different situations and observes still more. Sometimes he collects information from a Peace Corps worker or an Embassy employee. And always, he reports his own direct observations and often those of his intrepid and obviously longsuffering wife as well.
Parallax, for Wilson, is clearly a method for chipping through individual biases and official "facts" toward the precious truth which, over and over, turns out to be that misery and joy, dreams and wishes, family feelings and love are the same for us all no matter where or how we live. Fortunately, Wilson never stops treasuring the differences from culture to culture in Africa, and he never becomes numb to the differences between African cultures and his everyday life on Maui.
We, the readers, have the added dimension of our own experience and ideas. With luck, we are able to hold our untested perspectives gently enough that, once disproved, they can be let go painlessly.
Wilson's trek "X Africa" is not all pain and gain. As Wilson puts it, "Often you run into weird, but welcome coincidences traveling." World travelers have long known that if you spend the day on the Champs Elysées in Paris, you're sure to meet someone you know. Apparently, if you spend several months crossing Africa the long way, you're going to run into both other travelers whose paths crisscross with your own and people removed from yourself by slight degrees. "One night... we happened to share a table and talk with two U.S. Marines... one of them came from my small childhood town and the other had attended my Southern alma mater."
Coincidences are everywhere in Dead Men Don't Leave Tips, but the tale moves forward and finds its depth in the triumphant surprises. Frequently, these scenes of human contact start with someone reaching out to help himself by "helping" Wilson, then saying, "Don't worry." Often enough, the phrase introduces a series of events about which someone really should have been worrying. Then there are the other moments: the aunty with a gracious guest house, the discovery that being white isn't always a handicap in South Africa so long as people know he's not an Afrikaner, the magic of one kind of "pole-pole" travel hold-up meshing seamlessly with another.
Africa's pole-pole is a real-life opposite of Hawai`i's never very serious wiki-wiki, it means at the speed of... well, Africa.
I was swept away by the drama and the storytelling in Wilson's book. Still, it is only my second favorite travel book from the past century or so. Maybe Wilson won't mind that so much if he hears that his "adventures X Africa" are second only to his earlier Yak Butter Blues.
Even if you normally can't stand to read a travel book, give Wilson a chance. He'll win you over.

I purchased this book for my husband who only reads non-fiction. He stated that it is "dry" and written like a diary. It is not engaging nor funny. I hope he picks it back up to finishe reading...or I guess I will to feel we got our monies worth.

"Wild, pristine beauty surrounded us as we drove to the base of remote Djomba to establish camp. Towering green peaks sprouted out of ripe clusters of lush vegetation. Massive pyramidal volcanoes rose of the verdant floor suggesting its prehistoric past. Churning, whitecapped rivers cascaded over mountainsides into translucent pools below, and its beauty didn't end with nature." ~ pg. 146

Brandon Wilson is an expert storyteller who masterfully weaves a story of a seven-month odyssey across Africa. His exciting writing style keeps you on the edge of your seat as you journey to the heart of Africa. The detailed descriptions bring the story alive with the sounds, scents and sights of a real-life adventure.

Brandon Wilson is an award-winning writer and photographer who has spent his life exploring the world. He is also a keen observer of human nature and deftly describes the human drama that is ever present in the stories of the overlanders and exotic locales. There are a few photographs to compliment this journey but the writing captures scenes in seconds and transports you to a different time and place.

As Brandon and his partner travel from Mororcco to Cape Town you are invited to vicariously experience every nuance and challenge experienced by independent travelers. He and his partner have a passion for adventure and are inquisitive about the local peoples and unique cultures. They maintain their sense of humor throughout and press on, undaunted towards their final goal. Some of their adventures include:

Hunting with Pygmies
Climbing Africa's Highest Mountain
Meeting Mountain Gorilla
Horseback riding in lion territory
Sitting out underneath the stars by campfires
Watching Antelope and Cape Buffalo graze
Visiting Serengeti National Park
Watching Hippos in Zaire
Experiencing village life and living with locals
Surviving Torrential Rains
Sampling local foods and finding restaurants
Swimming and rafting in African rivers


Through vibrant prose and the eye of an artist, Brandon Wilson paints his recollections with startling clarity. His writing unleashes an immense longing for the experiences he describes. There is a profound beauty of freedom in the way he travels. As they reach Gillman's Point on Mt. Kilimanjaro you can't help but cheer them on to even more exciting adventures like surviving a rafting trip down the Zambezi river.

I can also highly recommend Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith. Brandon Wilson's writing is the best travel writing I've ever read and his adventurous spirit is inspiring.

~The Rebecca Review

I bought this book following Amazon's reader reviews but found it a pain to read.
From the start the author can't bear the way he chose to travel (overlanding with a group) and his fellow travelers... well, when on a low budget, stay graceful! If one can't stand other human beings AND can't afford a way to travel suitable to both his arrogance and means, why do it anyway?

The "traveler" seems to wander through Africa with American centered prejudices and poor references of a narrow minded background.
The reader is continuously faced with his self centered obsession for his own boring motives (if any) that he thinks anyone cares about. He makes the reader witness all his irritations and frustration of a pure misanthrope, "forgot" to check the proper geography and history and spelling of the names of the countries he goes through, remains ignorant of the world, cultures and people and till the end totally misses the whole point of traveling.

Everything, even the slight excitement he seems to feel when encountering wild animals is awkwardly written, in dry insensitive words without style.

Oh, those hundreds of dull phrases in italic! Those infinitely repeated "burro" like donkeys have Spanish names in Africa, "black" like there's a need to remind us of the color of Africa's inhabitants.
What is Lake Kiva? Lake Tanzania? Are there really "caimans" in Africa? What is a "wild west town" to anyone not American? When were there only 700 black rhinos left? "Zaire, these days, after years of war, known as DRC": check exactly when the name changed? Victoria Falls, the world highest cascades? Since when does Michelin rate up to five stars? Any need to be condescending and transcript everyone's accent again and again while oneself has no clue about foreign languages? Any need to be rude, pushy and obnoxious when addressing people?

In this long boring account of what seems to have been an ordeal to him that we are forced to share, the only human encounter that seems to have somewhat pleased the ever complaining author are... another white couple traveling and Whites in South Africa.

This is a shallow disappointing report that would disgust anyone who wishes to travel to Africa.
Thanks God we know better.

There is no way I can think of to even describe this book. The setting...and the characters...and the magic...and everything... It's just so... I loved this book!

Basically, this is THE masterpiece of the 21st century. I have never seen anything that can come anywhere near.

I think my all-time favorite moment in this book was when the super-evil cookie-eating ninja-monkey attacks that flying squirrel that elvis spent so much time training how to talk (the first 90,683 pages, if I recall correctly). My least favorite moment must have been when Elvis gave his huge monologue on the dangers of using your knees as a toaster. That was a good 52,864 pages in the middle of the book that I could have dealt without.

But the scope of the book is so broad, so all-inclusive, that one can only be amazed that Brandon has managed to get it all into 5,948,286,139,783,570,082 pages.

However, I feel compelled to warn new readers...this book is not for the faint of heart. Those who cannot stand the sight of mistborn llamas attacking villages and gradually taking over the world, or the idea of someone dying from excessive intake of cheese, you should stay away from this one.

By the way, whoever it was that mentioned it being a septology was most definitely mistaken. Brandon himself has confirmed that the series will be ten books long. They will be as follows:

1) The Path of Kings (you were right on this part)
2) The Way of Kings: Part One
This book will involve the training of the aforementioned flying squirrel.
3) The Way of Kings: Part Two
This book will involve the conquest of the mistborn llamas
4) The Way of Kings: Part Three
This book will involve the departure of Elvis to a land of fairies, butterflies, and magical dancing flowers which are far more sinister than they seem...
5) The Way of Kings: Part Four
This book will involve the rescue of Elvis by method of Awakened Rope, after which he will train young Adkgnoeklndwl Eklfsneo Clkne'apne'akjdn'dlcna Alskndoeinleoc in the arts of being a king.
6) The Road of Kings - No further explanation needed
7) The Interstate of Kings - involves the development of highways and interstates and their impact on the kingdom of Aonenvamemnvekldcmndevndxlkwnvkldnc.
8) The Kings' Lane - No one really knows what this book is about. Brandon didn't even know when we asked him.
9) Juanita Meets Shaniqua: Mr. Dill takes a horseback ride in the park!
This one is about the unfortunate occurrence of "the Dill Day" That is referenced constantly throughout the books.
10) The Dangerous and Highly Sophisticated Art of Becoming a King in the World of Aonenvamemnvekldcmndevndxlkwnvkldnc Which Has Not Yet Been Fully Discovered and Is Still Being Heavily Researched By Such Important Figures as Elvis, Juanita, and Doctor Frizzle Who Are All Highly Qualified Individuals (Do Not Attempt At Home)and Which Art Above Mentioned Quite Often Leads to Abrupt, Tragic, and Painful (Sometimes Even Instantaneous) Death So There - The longest of the series, the title of this one says it all. As a side note, this is Brandon's main attempt at mimicking a Greek Tragedy style and blending it with the modern ideas of Lord of the Rings.

The series as a whole is titled THE WAY OF KINGS. The product you are viewing is a compilation of all of the books, and is well worth the $987,654,321,000.99 that you will likely have to pay (Tor requires that you print your own copy, then you'll have to pay to bind it, as well as getting it shipped to your home, which will cost a minor fortune. No, not even minor...). Still, this is well worth anything you must do for it. Go buy this book today and you will not regret it!

Perhaps it's just me, but isn't this whole "war and conflict" theme totally overused in literature? I mean yeah, Homer hit a home run with the Iliad, but have we not progressed since then? And Kings? Honestly, how many books with kings are there? It seems that even when the kings and wars are not present, authors find a way to slip them in symbolically. Despite being mired in such derivative ideas, "The Way of Kings" manages to rise above it all and craft a brilliant, yet flawed, masterpiece.

The narrator of this book, an aged and battleweary Elvis, having spent the last several decades in an alternate world of might and magic, is one of the books selling points. Imagine, if you will, "A Little Less Conversation" being stretched out into a 3-month long symphony of clanging armor and dying cries. Or, perhaps a better way to describe the colorful commentary left by the King- Holden Caulfield's playful banter mixed with Samuel L. Jackson's bible-quoting wisdom from "Pulp Fiction." It is nothing short of amazing, especially when you realize that for economy's sake he has replaces all gender-specific pronouns with "he." Once you realize this, the opening dedication ("For Emily. I couldn't have done it without him.") makes a lot more sense.

The prose glides along wonderfully, for them most part. The imagery of Garcia Marquez, the economy of Hemingway, and the ebb and flow of Shel Silverstein in his most poetic moments- they're all there. And the plot, despite the generic beginnings, comes together like a mix of "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Lord of the Flies" written by a Jorge Luis Borges/Douglas Adams tag team. Humor, love, action, existential musings, Barak Obama- they are all there.

My only real quibble is that, in his zeal to illustrate the importance of action on global warming, Sanderson resorts to some rather awkward metaphors and similes. For example, on page 2,706 he says, "The battleaxe, so alien to the young Elvis, moved with the grace of a gazelle teleported from the African plains onto the ever-thinning ice of the Arctic Passage as the waters meet air for the first time in recorded history." Or, about 400 pages later, saying, "Susan looked at himself in the mirror and saw the tears flowing down his face like the rising waters engulfing New York City upon the melting of the ice caps." Carbon dioxide emissions and Elvis' anger are also compared on at least three occasions, and Al Gore makes a strange cameo as the bearer of the Sacred Cloak of No Footprint which allows Elvis to enter the Palace of Capitalism without leaving a footprint in the carbon-covered ground. But the amazing flow of the rest of the novel makes you soon forget these things.

But these are small quibbles. You should go now, without a second of hesitation, and begin "the Way of Kings." 3,787 pages have never flown by so fast, or impacted me so greatly. If Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Santa Claus could be rolled up and packaged in book form, it would be this book.

I found the strong anti-lettuce themes in this book immensely emotionally disturbing. As a stegasaurus this put me off my food for weeks and will require immense therapy to overcome.

The frequent overuse of gorey, violent ketchup was obviously the product of a twisted mind.

Not a book for children or eaters-of-food.

Why are Sanderson's detractors so dismissive of this, the most gargantuan of literary achievements? Is it, perhaps, a sign of his greatness? After all, attacks on seminal artists who offer us a unique insight into the human condition whilst simultaneously re-defining the form in which they operate are nothing new. I suspect that they, unlike the cognoscenti, will require the benefit of time before recognizing his genius to be on a par with his intellectual peers Michelangelo, Joyce and Van Gogh.

What is inarguable is that Sanderson has now transcended his previous status as a mere literary colossus to become the pre-eminent 21st century cultural icon.

Why? Aside from his authorship of this monumental septology he is many, many other things: an exuberantly fecund and original public intellectual; a prolific composer of atonal polyphonic ballet scores, quartets and fugues; witty, learned and much-published critic and internationally acclaimed homme de lettres on a Johnsonian scale; noted polyglot, celebrated for his elegant translation of Harry Potter into Linear B; fervent advocate of Esperanto; skilled amateur sleuth; inventor of tiramisu; habitual pipe-smoker; energetic mentor to the Dalai Lama; noted honkytonk pub pianist; respected sex therapist and confidant of Paris Hilton; and author of some sixty published bawdy limericks, which rank among the most sublimely entertaining and endlessly re-readable in this or any other language.

This is it. THE book. The book to end all books. The book that even those that hate reading with every fiber of their poor, misguided beings are violently stampeding to get their hands upon.

Words cannot describe this book. Imagery fails to capture its essence. Even pictures do little good, as is evidenced by the front cover.

In fact, the mere title alone inspires thoughts of the most imaginative and uplifted nature.

How can I review such a book, when those four words, "The Way of Kings", are all that one needs to formulate one's own opinion? I dare not tread where others have boldly gone before, and will be content with closing my 'review' with this final thought: Mr. Sanderson will be hard put to surpass this masterpiece in literary form.

I mean, where else can you have beginning, middle, transition, and an end in a book consisting of only four words?

This is Afowrev Iewer, signing out.

Niall Leniham is a bright young student from a better suburb south of Dublin who struggles with his gay inclinations. He is infatuated with Ian, a popular school boy, whom he goes out of his way to befriend, but it seems he is never fully accepted into Ian's circle. When he wins a prestigious scholarship to Trinity College Dublin he soon falls in with a new group of friends, and also discovers the lively gay scene. His first encounter though is with the enigmatic Pablo Virgomare, who becomes an infatuation for Niall, and something of a White Rabbit character mysteriously appearing at different times throughout the book.
After a while Niall becomes drawn into the activities of an older student Sarah and bank employee John, who use random text extracts from books to make decisions and determine their lives. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Niall forces himself upon the pair following a brief encounter with their practices, for neither Sarah nor John make him particularly welcome. The fact that he has a crush on John, who earlier rescued him from an attempted gay bashing, adds to the attraction. As Niall becomes more deeply involved with what he himself describes as the "sect", it begins to take over his life to the extent he breaks contact with his family and friends, including his old school friend Patrick, his new friends at TCD, and the boyfriend, Chris, he meets in a Dublin gay bar and with whom he has the chance of building a relationship.
Following a nervous breakdown he is brought to his senses, and starts to rebuild a normal life. However he eventually has a relapse, and resorting again to consulting random texts, he rushes off to France to find Sarah and John, before coming to a final realisation.
The major part or the novel does concentrate on Niall's dealings with his obsession and the sect's activities, and it does require some effort at times to stick with it. However this is a beautifully written story and Niall's obsession is convincingly portrayed, as is his youthful enthusiasm for involvement despite the indifferent treatment from Sarah and John.
It is interesting to see how his relationship with his childhood friend Patrick matures, and how he eventually reconciles his earlier infatuation with Ian. His affair with Chris, an office worker from a north Dublin working class background and who comes over as a particularly appealing character, is heart warming, and that Chris puts up with Niall's unreliable behaviour indicates the depth of his feelings for Niall.

What a remarkable book! There are passages inside this novel that outshine almost any writer working today; characters who come alive in the space of a few sentences; ideas that no other writer would touch. At times, this seems like the perfect combination of James Joyce with Harry Potter--literary magic for an adult. But then there are other momnents when the book falters, stutters, and practically disintegrates. Long, pretentious passages; plotting that goes awry; characters who fail to make sense. What a strange book--perhaps it wasn't edited, perhaps no one helped the writer make sense of what could have been a genuine masterpiece. Still, if you've got the urge to disappear into a strange mind in a strange land, you could do far worse than The First Verse.

This is a disappointing book. The basic idea is intriguing -- using random excerpts from books to answer questions -- and could have set up a interesting opposition between the possibilities of an actual secret world of auguries versus an uptight intellectual's nervous breakdown when he enters the big new world of college and his own sexuality. But it's way, way, too long and far too repetitive. McCrea seems to be committed to an absolute literalism of description -- no detail of an action is to small to be included, whether or not it forwards the story or reveals anything about a character. I lost count of the number of times Niall tries to follow some elusive figure through a bar only to have them dissolve into the crowd. Similarly, when Niall embarks on his many aimless treks around Dublin I began to feel as hopeless and dispirited as if I'd walked every step of them myself -- and I don't think that that was the author's intention. The result is prose that's clunkily written -- not what you'd expect when it sports an enthusiastic blurb from such an immaculate stylist as Edmund White. Frankly, the great reviews it's received here are a mystery to me.

I was floored by this book, which grabbed me right from the beginning. Niall is a loveable young student seduced by a literary cult in post-boom Dublin; the idea fascinated me and I wasn't disappointed. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is Niall's alienation, and the ways in which that isolation slowly drives him to madness. After a while you start to question whether what's happening is 'real,' and as you put the pieces of the puzzle together you're left surprised and amazed. The quality of the writing is so much better than most of what's out there, and the story is mysterious, moving, and very exciting. I read it a while ago and I'm still thinking about it.

Barry McCrea's first novel, The First Verse, opens with the words 'In the end...' Straight away you are aware this is a clever, playful and courageous writer.

The world McCrea describes is MY world. We must have sat beside eachother at lectures in Trinity College Dublin without knowing. He paints a picture familiar to me and hundreds like me who attended Trinners in the years which gave birth to the 'celtic tiger' - Ireland's booming economic miracle.

Being gay in Dublin has never been easy. And being a literary boffin just makes it worse!

The main character in this novel inhabits various such parallel universes at once. The story is propelled along by cultish mysteries and the recognition that a youth culture, born without direction or values, is more prepared to live their lives according to hocus-pocus than to actually take control of their own lives and accept responsibility for their life-choices.

This book is so well-written and thought out that it must surely join the ranks of such luminary Irish writers as Joyce and Beckett.

Even the tiniest detail of Dublin is so well observed and noted that I am all the more in a state of shock that THE FIRST VERSE has not yet been published in Ireland and seems to be aimed primarily at the U.S. market.

Irish people don't yet know Barry McCrea. But, once they do discover his first novel, he will be the toast of a whole generation who recognise their city and themselves amongst its finely crafted pages.

1 Star is more than it deserves.

It's impossible to understand how so many readers had liked this book. It's bore and void. It has no charm and its content is so poor. The narrative is tedious and nonsense and the characters are lost figures in the plot (what plot?).

Ken Bruen's three previous Jack Taylor novels established the Irish cop as a complex, sarcastic, conflicted, and utterly fascinating anti-hero in a world of murky shadows and dangerous back alleys.

Now he does it again with The Dramatist, a book that is at least as good as the Guards (my personal favorite) and maybe even a little bit better because Bruen's handling of the emotional complexities of the story gets beter with each book.

This is compelling reading. Go out and get it now.

criticising Ken Bruen at this point is a little like complaining that Michaelangelo's David has big hands. Bruen has a fluid and compelling style, a touch for dialogue like Elmore Leonard and a unique Irish voice. He does like to pepper his stories with references to pop songs that few have ever heard but this is a minor vice. His problem, if he has one, is that he is lacking that great Irish talent, a sense of humor. Especially in noir novels, the depression and gloom can be oppressive without a touch of lightness. Bruen's South London novels are much better than his Jack Taylor series in this respect. This novel has an ingenious plot but there are moments of unnecessary horror, to the point where you wish Taylor would just have a drink. But these are minor carpings. Bruen is the master of this field and always worth a read.

Jack Taylor is a man defined by his vices and weaknesses. Essentially, he is a man whose life has been largely consumed by an abuse of alcohol, pills, cocaine and nicotine. Taylor does nothing half way and his weaknesses have ensured that his personal life is a wreck; he runs women off at a steady pace and his closest friends are the two octogenarian women who run the failing hotel at which he's taken up permanent residence. But, hey, things are looking up for Jack. He's been off the dope and booze for a few weeks and he's even thinking about giving up cigarettes - all because his dealer has been given a six year prison sentence and Jack doesn't have the energy to locate a new supplier.

It is when Jack's dealer summons him to the prison to ask for help in finding out why and how his sister was killed that Jack reluctantly resumes his non-paying work as a private detective. The Dramatist is Ken Bruen's fourth Jack Taylor novel, and this time around, Bruen offers a more elaborate and detailed plot than in the previous three. Even so, Taylor's reluctance to get involved in the investigation of what he soon realizes was a murder and not an accidental death allows the author to detail Jack's daily struggles to remain sober and to rebuild the personal life that drugs and booze have taken from him.

This is the heart of the book and, along the way, Jack watches his mother's steady deterioration, is confronted by an old lover while struggling to maintain a new relationship, is challenged by one of his few friends to confront a group of vigilantes and is threatened by a deranged killer. Ultimately, the murder investigation is brought to a successful climax but that was not the most intriguing part of the book for me as a reader and, in fact, the killer's identity came as no great surprise. Rather, I found myself fascinated by the train wreck that is Jack Taylor's life. I rooted for him as he managed to stay off the booze after each personal crisis confronted him but I didn't really expect him to manage it. His personal history filled me with skepticism that his abstinence would last despite the fact that he continued to surprise his friends and even himself by remaining stone cold sober no matter what life tossed at him next.

But be warned: even my skepticism did not prepare me for the ending of this book. I was stunned at its suddenness and power. The Dramatist is the first Ken Bruen novel that I've read without thinking about, and admiring, the author's style more than the novel's plot. Jack Taylor fans will consider this one to be a classic.

There is some small injustice in describing Ken Bruen's "The Dramatist" as simply "noir". While all of Bruen's writing is bleak - in-your-face crime fiction with no regard for inane political correctness or modern niceties, "The Dramatist" reads like a chainsaw to the gut - an emotional tour de force that will leave fragments of Bruen's broken prose haunting your subconscious weeks after you've turned the last page. Yeah, this is black - Stygian black, about as dark as fiction gets.

Galway ex-Guard Jack Taylor is back, who as a favor to his imprisoned former drug dealer is pulled into the investigation of the death of a college student. The apparently accidental fall down a boarding house staircase, while tragic, looks benign enough. Except for the unexplained volume of Irish playwright J.M. Synge ("A Playboy of the Western World") tucked under her body. But what seems to initially be an unexplained coincidence turns sinister when a similar fate visits another student. As expected from Burke, the mystery of the apparent murders, while compelling, fades a bit into the background under the ferocity and intensity of the irreverent and unrepentant Jack Taylor. And as always, the ridiculously well read Bruen spices this bare-knuckled tale with an eclectic collection of quotes from Synge (as expected), Robert Crais, James Lee Burke, Sean Burke, Matthew Stokoe, and several more. The Irish melancholy and fatalism reads as thick as a Galway sea fret as Taylor lumbers through the crimes and busted love affairs as well, leading to a climax that while fitting with the tone and timbre, nonetheless hit me like a two-by-four between the eyes.

The prolific Bruen continues to write like nobody in the business today. I'll concede, if you enjoy beautiful action hero-type people straight from People Magazine, complete with neat and happy little endings to wrap them up, then Bruen's jagged tales of sparsely written brutality may have you billing OT with your analyst. But if you're looking for that off-the-beaten track maverick who'd prefer to rewrite the genre than follow the pack, get to know this guy.