Carey Books

wow, i really don't recommend this to anyone.. at all. being a devoted fan for 6 years, there was nothing new to learn about mariah in this book. most of the information was taken from articles ive already read and no previously unvisited aspects of her life were discussed in this book.. i could have read this biography and a student's school essay about mariah and there would not be a difference.

im a big mariah fan, and prior to reading the book, i knew all the information in it. it wasn't anything special that most fans dont know already. i wrote a research paper on mariah for school, it had to be at least 20 pages typed, and i'd say my paper is better then the book. i wouldnt recommend this book to her die-hard fans, i'd recomend it to people who know little on mariah, and want to learn about her. the pictures werent any good either.

When I boght Mariah Carey: Her Story, I thought I was finally gonna be able to read a book that talks about Mariah Carey and will have a more realistic view about her life. But what I read was an artificial biography that wrote about things I already knew. What's worse is that the author made a huge effort to compare Mariah to Cinderella, which made the book just as sugar-coated as Mariah's old music. It also turned me off that the author constantly compared Mariah to Whitney Houston, and never wrote one possible thing about Whitney.

If you're not very familiar about Mariah's life--then this book is for you, but I wouldn't recommend it, save your money or buy a REAL biography.

It was obvious from the first couple of sentences, that the author wasn't on top of things when it came to reporting about Mariah. His first mistake was getting a simple fact like her BIRTHDAY wrong! I was left sceptical about how much he actually researched for the book. As a MAJOR MAJOR fan of hers, this really irked me. I was hoping to find out something about my mentor that I didn't have access to learning. No such luck. Most of the book was a repeat of articles written on her by other journalists.

The book was very positive for Mariah. The few photos that were included were beautiful!

For those that don't know much about Mariah, I would say this is a good book to start out with, but do something the author didn't do...research what is being said. Read another book on her, go find another article on her, you'll find that some links were missed.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I liked the book because it's like a rags to riches story. I also enjoyed the book because Mariah Carey is my favorite singer. Not only do I enjoy her music but I love how she care for the children, and has actually taken more than a few steps to help them. I would say that I was her #1 fan. Not an obsessed fan but more like a great admirer of her art. My review is named, Butterfly, because what I got from her story is that she struggled, went through some things, as we all do in life, worked hard, set a goal for herself, was determined,did so, and became the SUPERStar she is today. She's blossomed into this beautiful woman...a butterfly.

This book is infromed one aspect of Linux Administartion.
I became Linux Administrator reading 100 books and using some of them I try to understand commands and errors.
The notes below is the states of this book and the stetes of my answer.

"Why Linux?"
"Source code fot the entire kernel."
I was successed to compile linux kernel using Debian Distribution, not usign this book.
"Full configurability of the operating system."
I was not successed to configure some Linux operating system, now.
"Ability to turn features of the system on and off without rebooting."
Sometimes I should reboot Linux systems to upgrade and reconfigure the hardware or software.
"Full 32-bit oeprating system."
The Standard of C compiler is not ristricted to 32-bit C language.
So sometimes 16 bit code is still in the system.
"Access to the 25 years of softwaer that makes u the uNIX world."
Yes, but I cannot understand all of 25 years.

This book is good as an introduction to Linix administration for readers who are completely new to Linix. I concur with a number of the readers in that this book does lack depth. For myself, it was useful in terms of the breadth of information provided. If you are completely new to this operating system, this book suffices as an overview of common administrative tasks. You will get a basic feel for what needs to be done, but you won't learn operating-system specifics for your particular distribution of Linix. My recommendation is that if you are new, use this book as a start. Identify why you are setting up a Linix server (or workstation) and then jump to the appropriate chapters on that topic. The book is well-organized, so you'll have no problem finding your way around. When you're ready, buy another book that focuses on what you're interested in.

When this book came out I was somewhat new to Linux and having a lot of trouble using the other admin. books. I had to have a quick and easy way to get network services up. It was the only book that taught me how to get up all the services I needed.

It covered a lot of important things that are left out of the other books, at least important things to beginners. Most important he has a section on AppleTalk. Other books don't even give hints on this. This is important if you work in publishing, advertising, graphics etc... and need to get a server up in a hurry. What this book does is teach you to get the basic services up and running and then points you to where you need to go to get the real info. I recommend it.

This book was on discount sale at my local bookstore and I see why now. For someone who has never touched Linux or Unix and wants to read a glorified advertising brochure about its potential, this is a good text. It answers the question "what is possible if I were to buy Linux" and maybe "how would I get started if all goes well"...not the real system admin questions like "what can I do exactly" or "how do I do the following...". If you are an experienced Linux user (like even 2 days experience) you'll be offended by this book.

Oh, it's this book...

I picked up this book in a bookstore. The introduction promised it to be a great guide to everything you need to get done on a linux system. On a quick flip through the chapters were logically laid out and is seemed to be a friendly read.

Unfortunately, this book has almost no depth to it. Even for experienced sys admins this book would be of little value.

Do Not Buy This Book.

Excellent!!! Amazon IS shipping the right product and its a good one. Fantastic artwork. Sonja is expertly drawn and not so much as the pin-up model (although she is attractive as always) but looks very much a believable warrior and the action scenes are well choreographed, facial expressions sincere. Some of the most powerful pages are those with no text-- proof of the artwork's high quality. The story is your basic Conan/fantasy tale and Sonja's character is well but subtly developed. Story finishes with a series of Red Sonja cover art. I HIGHLY recommend this graphic novel for any fan of Red Sonja, Conan, or general admirers of the fantasy genre.

"Red Sonya, She Devil with a Sword" marks the triumphant return of Robert E. Howard's heroine to the comic book medium. And what a glorious return it is. The writers, Oeming and Carey, have woven a wonderful story for the first six issues (including issue 0) which are represented in this collection. The artwork by artist Mel Rubi is breathtaking. Red Sonja has never looked sexier, nor more lethal. The various guest artists who contribute the numerous covers are all impressive, but in my opinion Rubi's Sonja is the best. Just having finished this collection, I would not be exagerrating to say that I was blown away by it, and I plan to read it again, cover to cover. I think Robert E. Howard would be proud to see what they've done with his creation. 5 stars is not enough.

Unfortunately, the above entitled product was not the product I received from Amazon. Like just about everyone else whose contributed a review, I received, "The Adventures of Red Sonja Vol 1" which collects the first few issues of the thirty year old Marvel comic. Lame! Unlike Barry Smith or John Buscema, who drew for Conan at the same time, and whose work still looks as good today as it did then, the artwork in the old Red Sonja looks mostly amatuerish by today's standards, especially compared to the new Red Sonja. But that's beside the point. This wasn't the item that I ordered and its not the item that I want to keep. I tried to do an exchange with Amazon, but they just sent me the same incorrect product a second time!!! Having returned both copies, I'm now waiting on my refund.

So how did I get "Red Sonja, She Devil with a Sword", you ask? I bought it somewhere else.

I don't know if Amazon is listing this book incorrectly or what, but I'm returning my copy, as many others have apparently done.

For some reason some of the other reviews on this page are for the wrong book. Apparently there was some confusion in the past and no one has ever updated this page. The artwork in the Carey/Oeming/Rubi book looks better than the artwork in the Thomas/Jones/Thorne book, which was recolored but not very skillfully.

Unlike that book, there is no Conan appearance in this one. I think Dynamite publishing bought the rights to the Red Sonja character only, though I suppose an exception was made that allowed them to reprint the story featuring Conan in the Thomas/Jones/Thorne book, which reprinted the original Marvel Comics.

Sometimes the story is a bit hard to follow, but this link provides a summary of the first three or four volumes: [...]
Note that the online summary begins with the events of Red Sonja #0, which actually belongs chronologically after #1-6 as it is reprinted in the book. The summary also includes #7 which is not reprinted in either Volume #1 or Volume #2.

I don't know if Amazon has worked out the confusion between the Red Sonja reprints and the new series, but I'm reviewing the book that this page is supposed to solicit -- the one containing issues 0-6 of the new series written by Michael Avon Oeming with Mike Carey with art by Mel Rubi.

The book itself is a nice product. Nice paper, nice reproduction values -- none of the ugliness that marred the Roy Thomas/Bruce Jones "Adventures of Red Sonja, Vol. 1" TPB. At the back it's got what I was hoping for -- a nice cover gallery of all 36 covers for the 6 issues of this series, plus the cover for issue 0, all full-sized and looking great. Plus there's a bit of interview with the writers, and a few Mel Rubi sketches. As I said, quality product. But not without its problems. Two pages from issue three are missing all dialogue. The art is there, but there are no word bubbles. This is a pretty unforgivable misstep.

As for the comic -- I really wanted to like this. I love what Kurt Busiek's been doing for Conan over at Dark Horse, and I had hopes for something similar here, especially when I got wind of Mike Carey's involvement. And, to be fair, it tries. There's a story here about the price of peace, the cost of freedom, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, it's mostly handled in a fairly trite, puerile way. (And someone involved really doesn't like commas, which is unfortunate, because a lot of the dialogue (when it's not missing!) reads in an oddly rushed fashion.) The story and the writing both are also without wit, without charm. Simply not much fun. That said, the art is mostly solid, occasionally very good, but also occasionally not to my liking. Sonja is at times a bit too manga-ish, a bit too cutesy. I also still don't like her chainmail bikini, but I understand why the licensors wanted her to keep that costume and I guess I'm resigned to it by now. I guess the biggest problem with the story is that I never really got sucked into it, never really came to know or care enough about most of the characters to really be all that invested in their fates.

In the end, this is an average/mediocre start to the series. Because I'm a sucker for this genre and for Red Sonja, I'll stick with the book for another arc or two and see if it improves, but while this book generally isn't awful, it's also not in any way outstanding and there are far better books to spend your money on -- like Dark Horse's Conan line, for starters.

This represents my second foray into the weird and wonderful mind of Diane Carey (the first being DNA War of this same franchise). Surprisingly and despite a plethora of negative reviews to browse, I found Cauldron to be a step in the right direction.

The story simultaneously follows two spacecraft (and their respective crews): The Virginia and the Umiak. The former comes off as the traditional "space trucker" ideology seen time and time again throughout the films. The latter presents the very cool concept of young cadets having an opportunity to participate hands on in a military-style voyage. It is here that Carey introduces us to one of her wildest creations, Pearl Floy; a mutant freak show of a human being and outcast to her peers. The mere concept of such a character manages to capture the dark grittiness of the universe painted by the films themselves.

About my biggest complaint to this novel (and most of the franchise as a whole) is the reliance upon earth. Historical references, character backgrounds, clichés, and even animal species all spiral back to earth. Sure it makes for relate-ability but if you think back to the films, earth is a very small part to the greater whole. We don't even get a glimpse of the planet until the very end of Resurrection and through some earlier witty dialog; we discover that many of the crew have never even been there (and don't think very highly of the place at that).

Space is a very big place and it would be great if authors of the ALIENS franchise remembered that in the future, the role of earth is quite miniscule. That said I have to give Carey credit on crafting some interesting characters and dropping them into some pretty nasty situations. Also noteworthy is the fact that she created an interesting variant of the Xenomorph species in a couple of sections. So often these books paint the animals as merely giant ants but there isn't much terror in that. The movies got around this by continually introducing the viewer to new aliens (the queen, the dog/hybrid, the baby/hybrid, the predator/hybrid and so on).

Some may argue that the ending is a bit happy-go-lucky and others may find the antics of Thomas Pangborn to be a bit over the top, but I would counter that this is a pretty worthy entry into a rich universe. Considering the difficulty of attempting to bring something fresh to the table after six films and dozens of books, Carey manages to assemble some unique situations and a pretty memorable cast. This is a 3.5 star product but since Amazon won't allow for half-star ratings, I'll round it up to four on account of the fact that ALIENS books that aren't totally butchered are few and far between.

I liked this book alot the start a little slow but made up for with the finish damn it was good yo, really recommend this for the aliens fans out their but so far most of the books i've read about aliens was fairly good.

I just finished reading Diane Carey's second ALIENS novel titled CAULDRON and let me tell you it was not easy! I've read a lot of movie related tie-in books over the past 25+ years, but never have I been so bored with a writer as I am with Diane and her two ALIENS books.
I started this book around the second week in August, got stuck half way thru it due to boredom and didn't finish it until October 18th. Almost 2 months to read 284 measly pages! A good writer hooks you in right away and keeps you hooked and coming back for more! A good book is hard to put down, this one was not! It actually fell out of my hands and onto the floor when I dozed off reading it in bed! (Totally true!)
As most reviewers have pointed out, there isn't a whole lot of alien related action in this short book. It does take quite a while for the alien carnage to start so be prepared for large boring lulls inbetween.
What there is plenty of though is "attempted character development" which is normally a good thing, but in Diane's hands, it was long, tedious, and just bored me to tears. This resulted in me not caring for ANY of her characters which is never a good thing. I honestly had a hard time keeping track of the endless list of people populating both spaceships in the story.
This book reads like a mish mash of "Mutiny on the Bounty" meets "ALIENS" meets "Noah's Ark" and contains several scenes that will leave you scratching your head. The first scene is were one of the older and brighter cadets concocts a drug that he uses on most of the adult crew putting them into a temporary coma. He also has the captain awake but gagged and in chains. It is not made clear how one teenager could over power and take out five trained adults all on his own without ANYONE else on the ship ever noticing.
Another scene has the ship's cook taking on an alien with a meat cleaver and than throws simple baking soda on the alien's acid blood to neutralize it. I honestly don't think a molecular acid that can eat thru multiple levels of a ship could be stopped with a simple box of "Arm & Hammer"!
Finally, towards the end of the book, the cadets release a slew of live animals that the ship is transporting to various new worlds out in space in the hopes they will distract the aliens so the humans can slip thru unnoticed. That's all cool and plausible, but then Diane throws in a wooly mammoth, saber tooth tiger and a grizzly bear into the mix throwing what little plausibility there was out the window! They seemed to be there simply to have cool animals for the aliens to fight with since the teenage crew she created doesn't offer much hope for exciting action scenes.
I don't want this review to come across as totally negative so I do have a few good things to say. Diane is really good when writing about all of the technical details like how the two ships exchange cargo in deep space. All the technobable sounded plausible to me. She is also good with all of the ship jargon since she is a sailor herself. She also came up with a creepy and sick scene where two aliens use a dead body in a gruesome way to lure in their next victim. While I thought the scene was out of character for the aliens, it still gave me chills. She is also very good at describing the gory bits in yucky detail. It appears the publisher got a better editor than was used on "DNA War" because I saw only a couple of typos this time around.
As should be blatantly obvious, I'm not a huge fan of the book or the author and I wonder if this review will get another direct response from Diane? I'm glad to see two different writers will be taking on the next two books in this series. Diane has had the ball twice now and fumbled both times. You have been warned!

I wasn't real keen on Diane Carey's last foray into the Aliens world. Mostly I think she does a great job a taking an existing story (movie, tv show)and giving it great backstory. That's her strength. So far, after two aliens books she has shown poor plotting, strange motivations, and in this book, little of the aliens. Very little. Too bad, there are some great opportunities here, but they fail to materialize to any great extent. To be fair, there are a couple really good moments, but they are overshadowed by the obnoxiousness and stupidity of having a shipload of teenagers that I certainly did not care if they lived or died. I actually found myself rooting for the Captain's plot to kill them all off and survive with just himself as a grand hero, which should never have happened had the characterization been better.
The aliens books need a new author.

If you buy an Alien novel, you expect to read something about the Aliens. With _Cauldron_ you get a novel about prodigies making their first space flight as part of a semester-in-space program. You get very little of the Aliens. In fact the monsters don't show up until about two thirds of the way through, by which time most Alien fans are likely to be exasperated with the lives of Carey's space-faring teenagers.

Not that she does a bad job with the characterization. The protagonist Ned is well drawn and I began to develop some real affection for the soft-spoken, straight-talking lad from the Isle of Man, as well as his foil, the arrogant Adam, who through his experience with the Aliens learns to put aside his pride.

Unfortunately, the rest of the characters are rather flat and predictable, as is the situation - a group of teenagers being stalked by a murderous beast in poorly lit, unfamiliar surroundings. Carey is at least honest enough to admit what crosses the mind of everyone who reads _Cauldron_. "You know what this is?" her lead Ned asks. "This is a teenage slasher flick."

There are some ingeniously plotted means for the kids to get pick off the Aliens that is not your typical showdown with sweaty marines totting large guns. In the end, though, I felt like I really hadn't read an Alien novel so much as a novel with a few aliens.

#

Old MAn and the Sea is a book that I don't highly recommend. I think that it is pretty boring but it's not bad, to be flat out BORING. It is about a grudgy old man and a humungous sword fish. This man gets dragged out to sea and gets so bored that he talks to his hands and other fish and birds. I didn't like it but I know some people who do, so be a doll and pick it up, if you're not sure about the book, at least read it to page 50. Thanks for your sweet time!

This was an awesome book. The descriptions are fantastic, you are there helping him catch the fish.(the actual book, that is)iT is a short and enjoyable read. Definately worth the time-you will be amazed at human willpower and strength.

Well, had to read this one for a summer reading project... It's summer? Why do I have to do I still have homework??!!?? Oh well, anyways, The Old Man and the Sea was definitely a good choice. It is well written with much detail and a fine sense of imagery. It was worth losing part of the summer over

This book was a terrible book. It was boring and tiring! The text had no feeling and had no grab. All it wasn't is the question. I've seen better from amateurs! Sorry but you read it you'll regret it!!!!!! PEACE DOG

This was a horrible book. Ernest Hemmingway was not a good writer... at least not in this book. It was just about an old fisherman that talked to himself and just about killed himself while trying to catch a fish. and 1/2 of the fish was eaten by sharks.

I had read Carey's other books (the Kushiel trilogy, and Banewreaker) and was completely delighted with them. Figuring that a good author generally doen't put out a bad book, I picked this one up. Well, now I have learned better.

This book is painfully dissapointing. Sunny is written like a caricature of that friendly girl in high school who solved everybody's problems by putting her ankles behind her ears. Bridget is written like a ghost long before she's actually dead. Jean is almost a saving grace, but it's too little too late.

Don't waste your time. This author is a wonderful writer, just not in this book. I feel like I just bought a Maria Callas recording, only to hear her yodeling on the disc.

I was so looking forward to this book after reading a "literary" review but was so disappointed. The premise was good but the book didn't deliver. I stuck with it to the end, but it didn't help.

not sure some people that read this realize that the author of this book is not the same who wrote the Kushiel fantasy series. So, if you think they are the same person, you will be greatly disappointed.

... than the reviewers. I found this to be pseudo-literary, interiorly-focused drivel. While the premise was somewhat interesting [the reason for the second star] I found the writing as annoying as that of Erica Jong, who turns out the same kind of cutesy closet philosophy and know-it-all narrative.

Yuck. Stick with genre BDSM, Jacqueline.

From the reviews, I expected "The Crossley Baby'" to be yet another attack on "career women," another hymn to stayathome mothers. In fact, it's neither. Jean, the hard-driving businesswoman sister, is a wonderful comic invention -- watching her always get what she wants is fascinating, and , like the serpent in the bible, she gets all the best lines, too. Sunny, the "nice" suburban-mom sister, gets what she wants too -- but in the process she has to toughen up a bit and shed some of her illusions about what you can get with a smile. I loved Carey's dry wit--very sharply observed.

I've just started reading this book for a university course and though I've only finished one chapter, I have to say that the writing is so poor that I would not recommend this book to anyone. I find myself continually having to re-read sentences because they are oddly worded. The omission of serial commas and the lack of semicolons in many lists containing the word "and" merely add to the confusion. There are many HCI books out there, so save yourself a headache and find one that's well written.

I really liked this book!

If you've been using this book (1994) and you want a revised edition, then take a look at our new book (2002) "Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction", jointly authored by Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers and Helen Sharp, published by John Wiley & Sons.

IMO great for undergrad intro course on usability, and Human factors for CIS. Unlike many Usability books out there instead of why, it presents how and what.

This book is an apology for bad science. Design must be a serious issue, but this book handles it in an amateur manner for soft-scientists. Imagine writing down your opinions in prose and casting it as facts: now imagine these opinions being set as examinable for students who could have better spent their time watching grass grow. As the Oscars cliche goes "Half an hour of the best entertainment spread over the next four hours".

The chapter on video game history was interesting (though malplaced) and worth a star. Malplaced would also describe the first chapter about setting up equipment. (Early filler chapters seems to be popular for increased page count among authors.) The rest of the stuff dips a bit into various BASIC dialects, various CPUs and their instruction sets, general first steps in programming (algorithms 101), and assorted chips and how to program them. Nothing at all in-depth. (And you get the feeling that the author has a fondness for the old Atari - what was wrong in focusing on only that then?) Chapter 8 begins talking about a few things I would have hoped was the starting point of such a book: Movement, inertia, tracking etc. I pity the reader that has to try to learn hex/binary, a programming language, programming, assembly programming, hardware operation, and game logic from this incomplete description of 4 architectures. In my (obvious?) delusion I had hoped for a book that expected the reader to come tooled up on basic knowledge and could break down and explain the inner workings of a good number of classic game styles, and then tie it all together with some well commented code examples and a suplementary cd/website with complete games. This is not that book. Of only three books I have ever considered failed purchases this is the one I would miss the least.

When I first saw this book my heart thumped with anticipation and my mind reeled down memory lane in the late seventies and early eighties of both video and arcade games.
I have owned,programmed and played games on an Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Vic 20, and also owned and played games on Atari 2600.
Chapter 1 was a trip down nostalgia lane with specific vintgage computer and game systems. Also, Chapter 3 was a very good interesting chapter too. Yet, on a smaller note E.E. Smith wasn't the father of Science Fiction! For one person before him....Jules Verne. ;)
Yet, the rest of the book was disappointing and incomplete. Not a lot of sample and example codes. Most of the material you can access from docs and articles on the various websites for the 6502,6809 cpus' and 6502 assembly language. The chapter on assembly language was short and just a quick reference manual.
However, the last chapter pertained to code a text-based game.
The idea and layout was good but the code was incomplete...frustrating for I'm sure both for the beginner and the game programmer. Well, for this game programmmer anyway.

Not too much to add, cause James Anderson in another review expressed some of the pitfalls and weaknesses of this book very well.
(...)There was just a main page with a sponsored retro game programmer but no links, no forums, no tutorials, no vintage computer emulators, no source code from the book, no data sheets nor schematics...no-thing. Nada!! :(
I strongly don't recommend this book to anyone. I also want my money back!!! Or most of it...I'll keep the frontcover, chapters 1 and 3. Hopefully, in the future Andre LaMothe, the series editor, will more closely scutinize and edit His series books. I will be very cautious in the future before I buy another book from his company.
(...)

There's a glaring typo about once every three pages or so but you can generally figure out what is meant. Seems like this was rushed a little. Maybe it will get better on future printings.

Obviously it doesn't teach you everything, but it does a good job of letting you know what you need to know. http://www.atariarchives.com is a particularly good resource with a lot of old book scans - it makes a better companion website than the one advertised which admittedly is not looking too good.

The book is nowhere near perfect but it's still a lot of fun. I would buy it again still knowing what I know. It's a fascinating subject and a noble effort on Earl Carey's part. Don't discourage the guy. I'm glad someone is doing it at all.

This type of book is needed and desired by folks looking to learn how old machines worked or how our old favorite games were built on simple machine of yore. I am old enough to have actually owned an Apple and Commmodore 64. I miss those old machines!
I wanted to like the book and actually had hope of a great book from Acknowledgements alone (it was different and special). But, the book needs to be edited - badly. Whoever was responsible for editing the book was on vacation. The books has many annoying typos, the text does not match the figures, poor language usage ("...what this means..." appears too many times) and it could have been better organized. The first chapter spends so much time on the machines but chances are the average reader is going to have to use emulators so why not discuss that in the same detail? Lastly, the book needs to be bigger if you expect to take the reader from "no programming background" to "programming a retro game".

The publishers rushed this out before it was truly ready. I would look for the next edition or another book.

I understand what the guy was trying to do and I like it. I have tried learning this stuff on my own. I have tried scouring the Internet to find examples of how to program these machines and you know what. I still cannot do it. I am almost through the book and already I have a lot more confidence than I had before about my ability to program games. This book is helping me to understand the complete picture of what it takes to build my own games.

I do not know if I am going to become a professional game programmer or not. What I do know is that I am having fun with this book and I consider it to be money well spent.

i love the ultimate fantastic four, i think it's the best ultimate book out there (ok tied with ultimate spider-man). the vols. 1-3, and 5-6 are great. but this one sucks. you really don't need to read it at all, i think maybe they were in between writers/artists at the time and just got someone to fill in on issues 19-20. the annual isn't that great either, it just introduces the inhumans (basically johnny meets crystal).

I picked up "Ultimate Fantastic Four, vol. 4: Inhuman," at my local library yesterday, and though many may think what I did was premature, I borrowed it and read it anyway. The paperback is pretty thin thus only containing issues #19 (Think Tank Part One), #20 (Think Tank Part Two - Finale), and #1 Annual issue (Inhuman). First off to get this out of the way: The cover art is probably the biggest missleader for me. Being someone who is an avid follower of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN (who artist, Mark Bagley does some amazing work for the comic book overall) I too one look at the cover and expected some of the same excellent art work. Instead I am welcomed with pencil thin drawn art by artist Jae Lee which was less than impressive. His art technique failed to capture any real emotion displayed in the dialogue of the characters; Most of the time the characters were straight faced or angry-faced for too long, or just deadpanned in one too many scenes (notably Sue).



Johnny's "flame on" scenes were horrible: They looked like computer graphics overlapped over the pencil drawing. And then throughout most of the "Think Tank" storyline, I found myself staring at black blobs that were supposed to be the characters (this art style is carried on into #1 Annual) doing various things in the supposed dark, via incoherent and poorly drawn action scenes that had me re-looking at the panels twice. The storyline for all three issues were weak and uninspiring.




Issue 19 is simply a start up for the FEMALE Mad Thinker, Rhona Burchill who proceeds to capture the soldiers and the teen-Fantastic Four once they reach the heart of the so-called Baxter Building, which is in no way booby-trapped. In issue 20, for some reason the reader is given a horrible excuse for a backstory to Rhona Burchill in issue #20, and then are supposed to believe that she somehow "beat Reed Richards" and Reed has a moment of "Brain Evny," (they insult my intelligence to no end). The first Annual issue is probably the weakest story of them all: It starts off with plot-starter characters who are mountain climbing in a snowy mountain region. The pair barely discover a guarded city which belong to the ULTIMATE Inhumans before being carried off to be mind-wipped. Elsewhere Ben and Reed are somewhere inside Sue and Johnny's father, ridding the old man of Cancer cells and other invading viruses while Johnny is out hopping through clubs, picking up "scanks" as he called the women (who resemble the Inhuman Medusa a little too much). He then proceeds to attempt to rescue a damsel in distress but is pummeled into a broken mess by her perusers' instead. In the next panels: She is suddenly in the Baxter Building (no scene on how she got there or a simple "on the defense moment" from the tiro at the BB), speaking to the UFF-teens. She is introduced as Crystal - one of the Inhumans that control the power of all elements. She complains to the quad-team that she was bored of her perfect life, escaped an arranged marriage and came to NYC for excitement. Ben laments, "Yeah, just what New York needs... more freakin' weirdos," - I concur. Crystal, as well as the other Inhuman's backstories are never explored at all. Instead Crystal is "kidnapped" by her fellow peers and taken back to the secret city. Johnny proceeds to call her "the love of his life" but Sue rightfully puts him straight and quad go after her with the help of her teleporting bull-doggish creature, LockJaw. From there disaster strikes the moment the UFF are found out by a Tien-type character named Tri-clops.



From there The Thing starts fighting and the others follow suit. If anything Annual was a poor attempt at introducing the INHUMANS to the ULTIMATE MARVEL universe; Nothing was properly explained about these characters and if anything, "ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1" was a better constructed story. Many people complain about Chris Claremount or Brain Michael Bendis' tendencies to drag storylines out to the point of boredom (I don't think in such a manner, properly explained stories are probably my favorite as long as their not TOO DRUG OUT), but at least they give you time to adjust to the characters/story. Mark Millar (writer for the normal FANTASIC FOUR continuity) and Mike Carey throw them on you and expects you to accept them because they were something special in the normal MARVEL COMMUNITY. Lastly, throughout all three issues Reed is less of a leader -more of a chicken- than he is in the original FF series and behaves to the point why I remembered I didn't like him. He spens most of his time tellng the others to "Look out for Sue! (whose character is non-exsistent in this volume)," and dodging enemy attacks most of the time. Ben grumbles and complains, Sue huffs at the male attention she gets when in a dangerous situation, and Johnny acts pretty much like a brash hothead. Basically, they all act like teenagers to a point only more annoying. All in all, it wasn't horrible, it was great either. I seriously think a change of writers is in serious need for this title series. [a 3 out of 5]

I sincerely hope I wasn't the only one disappointed with "Ultimate Fantastic Four: Inhuman." Because if I was, then I have lost a lot of faith in the human race. This volume wasn't so much a comic book as it was a written turd.

The art sucks, even the cover-page, which others have liked, I have deemed worse than the art I have come to recognize in this series. In the book itself, half the time I couldn't even see what was going on; everyone looked like black blobs talking to one other. Jae Lee needs to drop his art supplies and go back to college to get some lessons. It isn't 'art' if you can't see it!

As for the story...my Lord, I've read stories written by six-year olds that were more compelling than this. The characters made no sense when they spoke, the story was unrelated to the summary (what booby-traps?!), and the villain looked and sounded like a total retart...something you really should watch out for when you have a villain called "The THINKER." If she's so smart, why can't she form a coherent sentence? Or explain herself? Or do ANYTHING right?

I mean, come on. Thus far, I've read pretty much every Ultimate Marvel book out there, and enjoyed most of them. Sure, some of them aren't as good as others, and sure some are just plan sucky. Well...this one fits in the bottom category. Literally. I wish I could go back in time and stop the people from cutting down trees to make the paper used in this book...what a waste of nature.

Overall, I'm more than disappointed with this story (as I'm sure you can probably all tell by now.) I've loved volumes one through three, but this is a dead dog in an otherwise perfect race. The fantastic art and the incredible storylines are completely absent in this book...as is any fun you might have had in reading it.

Don't buy this. Don't read it. Don't hurt yourself

The "Ultimate FF" series starts to hit its stride here, having finally gotten past all the set-up and exposition, and settles into adventure-oriented stories that take only one or two issues to tell (as opposed to longer story arcs of previous volumes). In this sense it begins to feel like the old, original FF, back in the early days of Kirby and Lee.

The revamped, postmodern Mad Thinker is a real gas -- one of the most interesting, most creepily psychotic Marvel baddies I've seen in years (and a definitely improvement on the old, two-dimensional Thinker...) The second story, introducing the new version of the Inhumans, was less satisfying... the plot whizzed by too fast and things were not well explained; if you didn't already know the whole Inhumans mythology, I'm not sure how much of it would make sense. In both stories, however, Jae Lee's artwork is consistently dynamic and fresh, challenging readers to follow the graphic side of the comicbook equation in new and exhiliarating ways. It was a good read.

(PS - I'm not sure what the other reviewer is referring to when he talks about this series promoting drug use and anti-Americanism. His comments don't seem to have anything to do with the actual content of the book, so take it all with a grain of salt.)

I'm a huge fan of the Ultimate lines of X-Men, Spiderman, Ultimate(Avengers), and of course the Fantastic Four. For that reason, I am deeply upset with how UFF Vol. 4: Inhuman turned out. First off, this cover is way too decieving. Jae Lee, while an obviously talented artist, is definitely not the write person to be drawing for the Ultimate series. It completely veered away from the amazing artwork done in the first 3 volumes, which is pretty much the uniform look for the entire Ultimate universe.
The stories definitely could have been better written and needed to be spanned out more. 2 issues is definitely not enough to fully tell the story with the Thinker. Then you have that UFF Annuals #1 which was even worse than the Thinker story. TOO SHORT, plus the artwork was just wrong. It was all a rare miss in the Ultimate line and having seen the upcoming Vol. 5: Crossover, it doesn't appear to be one that's going to be repeated.

I was very disappointed with this purchase. I notified the seller and he never responded to my email.

This is a relatively good cookbook approach. It gets you started quickly with hands-on exercise development as you read the text. The review exercises and case problems are good, because they step you through a little at a time and in some cases show what you should be getting as a result. However, the type-in code and the text itself have lots of errors throughtout the book, so if you're unsure what to do, and can't discern where the text is wrong, that could be a show-stopper. For such an expensive book it should have been better edited.

Also, Patrick Carey does very little to explain why things are the way they are. It's just, "Do this, then that. See the result?"

You'll need another book to have the "aha" moments that give you insight into XML. I highly recommend "XML Companion" by Neil Bradley.

JUST CORRECT THE ERRORS IN THE TEXT AND ATTACHED FILES!!!!

This is one of the best books that I have read on XML. It is an excellent book for teaching yourself XML. The author creates fictional application scenarios in each chapter so you learn XML within the context of the application. The exercises are challenging but not too difficult. The topics covered range from DTD, XML schema, XSL, XPath and DOM. The author doesn't try and cram too much in the book. He is very thorough in what he covers so topics like SOAP, SQL support within XML are not addressed.