Publications and Media Books

I scanned and read parts of this book; it looked good enough to pass on to my extremely difficult daughter-in-law!

This book is an incredible resource of stories, advice, common sense, but mostly compassion and understanding about how it is up to each and every one of us to create and manifest our own reality. Learning to be a kindhearted, sensitive person who is aware of another's needs, no matter how difficult they may seem, will eventually lead to understanding and love, and the world will reflect that back to us, even in the form of our Mothers-in-law. This book should be required reading for all brides to be. A wonderful job and a wonderful read!

[...]

Gives insight into the inner workings of complex relationships between the two most important women in a man's life. Very thoughtful and I love the three parts of good, bad, and ugly. Really puts things into perspective! Every daughter in law or daughter in law to be needs to read this!

I'm a newlywed and currently have my "monster-in-law" living with us. Before she moved in, we were the best of friends but things drastically changed and I can't even manage to be in the same room as her! I'm desperatly seeking some kind of advice and there are no books out there that relate to my situation. I'm only 24 years old and have no kids, so it seems there aren't any people out there that can relate or there just isn't anyone who has written about it yet. This book is the closest I can get. Although it is a great read and has wonderful advice, about 80% of the information I can't relate to. I highly recommend this book but it's not for me.

This book is good because it covers all aspects of dealing with your Mother-in-Law. It helps readers to understand the tension the can occur and the impact it may have on the rest of the family. Keeping this book on hand and having a positive attitude will help reduce the stress of relating to your Mother-In-Law and bring peace to your family.

I found this book to be unnecessarily confusing, at least for a beginner. Perhaps part of the problem is that better raw materials have become available since this book was published. It is also poorly written, with incomplete sentences and strange syntax. It would have benefited from a good editor. The examples (in photos) are quite bizarre, but even if you are inspired, there are no explanations of how the result was achieved. The nicest example is on the cover, in my view. I also bought Sherri Haab's book, The Art of Resin Jewelry, and recommend it.

Kathie Murphy produces an excellent book which gives you an insight into the many types of resin, the pros and cons of using each type together with safety information.

I have both the "English" and "American" version of this book, if people are unsure when it comes to specific word or description, check it out for yourself. There is not that big a difference. Books are global!!

Just be thankful that we have a book that really helps people understand this amazing medium. Beautiful gallery of work, if you work with Resin, this is a great book to have.

This is another of the published both sides of the pond at the same time. The only problem with this book is the lack of careful editing done by the U S publisher krause publications.
So as to the subject matter it is covered only to the depth of giving the hobbyists an idea of what is involved in making jewelry out of resins and epoxies. It does go into the safety concerns, but not in one section all through the book. It is laid out so you can skim thru it and find what is interesting and use that section. It does have a half useful glossary. It was a forerunner of the new group books on this sub category of jewelry material use.
One thing that I had to track down to make sure of what it was as mentioned in the book was misspelled. It was spelled linicher which a friend in England informed me is correctly spelled linisher which in American is belt sander.
Even with the short comings it is a starting point for anybody looking in to getting started in resin jewelry making. Some of the resource guide places are out of date. But a web search will come up with more than enough locations for info on plastics and resins. I own it and will be keeping it

This is a great book for people who seriously want to make resin jewellery. It has step-by-step instructions accompanied by lots of photos. I was not fussed on the finished jewellery examples (not really my style) but the processes and procedures are really good.

I like this book not only because it explains the technique of resin casting very well, but also for its beautiful pictures of real resin art. Although I will never be able to produce such work, you get the feeling that she sky is the limit with this material

This book will let you know where you stand. I had a lot of trouble with the problems the first time through. The book served as a good evaluation of my weak areas. I would recommend this as a PE exam study aid.

Graet book with broad covering topics.
I couldn't logically understand answers with some problems.

I'm taking the PE exam in April 2007.

This book provides a good variety of challenging problems.

But I reported errata in addition to those listed at PPI website. Such quality is disappointing, expecially for a 3rd printing of the same edition.

Without errata, I would rate this book a 5.

The review manual has been very helpful in preparing for the exam so far. It has many problems with complete worked out solutions that are very helpful. I would recommend it to anyone preparing for the PE exam.

I took the WR afternoon session and the questions in the test were nothing of the magnitude in this book. The problems in this book were WAY harder than the actual PE. While studying with this book, I was constantly frustrated by not making the same assumptions the author did in order to solve a problem. No assumptions on the PE, mind you, other than standard weights, measures, etc. Get the sample problems from NCEES instead - very much worth the money!

I think people could be surprised at how much fanfic, esp on the Internet, can mean to people. Let alone that it was a big enough topic for people to write books and scholarly essays about! Could be something of a surpise, esp if you had no idea so many people enjoyed this hobby.

Being a woman who is an occasional writer of Klingon fan-novellas, I was interested in this scholarly book on fanfic and its female following. The author does an in-depth study of female fans of not only Star Trek, but Blake's 7 (a British sci-fi series), Starskiy & Hutch, The Man From Uncle, Alien Nation, Doctor Who, and other TV shows. Her conclusions: 98% of fanfic is written by women, who prefer intimacy, character-interaction, and continuity over action and special-effects. (I guess that makes me a "2%er" -- I prefer plot-driven adventure, decriptive carnage, and characters of my own creation.) Immersing herself in the subculture, Bacon-Smith delves into the very personal and sometimes secretive world of 'zines and fannish writing. With great respect toward the community which generously contributed to her study, she exposes the genres of fiction which appeal to most female writers and readers. They are the "MarySue" and "LaySpock" which are basically an extension of the writers' own personnae and fantasies; the "Hurt-Comfort" tender tales of nurturing and caretaking; and "Slash" or erotica featuring explicit sex between established characters. Bacon-Smith also cautiously explores the underground realm of homoerotic "Slash" (sometimes called "K/S" after Kirk/Spock) in which female fans envision intimate relationships between the two male partners of various favorite series. This is an intriguing book, containing much technical terminology and psych-evaluation. I thought I might identify with it, but instead I found the subculture wholly alien (no pun intended). At least I know now why my klinzines are not a big hit with the mainstream fandom!

A fascinating look at fandom, managing to catch the world of zines, video, and small communities just before the 'Net fully hit fandom. Occasionally a bit too filled with academic lingo for the average reader, but an utterly engrossing read for anyone involved in fandom.

Chad Arment's third book on cryptozoology is the result of prodigious archival research on unknown primate reports filed from 41 states and six Canadian provinces between 1785 and 1946. The book effectively disproves the claim that Bigfoot was "invented" by a Bluff Creek, CA, hoaxer in 1958 or by a mercenary cameraman in 1967. If The Historical Bigfoot achieved that goal alone, it would be worth the cover price, but Arment offers a great deal more.

A skeptic in the purest sense, Arment opens with a thorough discussion of every conceivable explanation for false Bigfoot sightings, including hoaxes and stories contrived for ulterior motives, or misidentification of known animals or human beings. When all else is eliminated, only one possibility remains: that an unknown species still dwells in the wild reaches of North America.

The beauty of Arment's work is that he allows the historical record to speak for itself, through newspaper articles relating 143 separate sightings across North America. Nor do classic cases from the Pacific Northwest predominate. British Columbia and Oregon present only six cases each while Washington and northern California share another six between them. The entire region falls short of Pennsylvania, which has 19 cases on file while neighboring Ohio boasts 15.

Arment does not interpret the specific cases, nor does he dismiss them out of hand. Rather, he presents an archive so that readers can pursue specific items at their leisure.

Most of the stories collected in The Historical Bigfoot will be new to readers of the classic literature and to many field researchers. In that respect, the book performs an invaluable service. Casual Bigfoot buffs and serious cryptozoologists alike will rue the day they let this volume pass them by.
--www.mysteriesmagazine.com

Not just something of recent origin, Bigfoot and "Wild man" stories have been with us throughout our past history. What the author Chad Arment has done, is chronicled many past newspaper accounts, going back some 200 years, into what is now one of the best references to "The Historical Bigfoot." From small town papers throughout many of our states, to even articles taken from the New York Times, it seems hairy creature stories have long been an unsolved mystery that continues to leave us scratching our heads.

So many amusing tales to choose from, I found Missouri's "Blue Man of the Ozarks" one of the more intriguing. And of course with recent doubt over the credibility of British Columbia's well known 1884 "Jacko" capture, nothing of concrete critical evidence against that account has yet come to light. It remains one of my all-time favorite tales. Makes one want to search the archives of local newspapers for more hidden gems. And surely there are many just waiting to be re-discovered.

Chad Arment delves into the possible historical references of bigfoots. The author basically collected newspaper/magazine articles from the early 1800s up until roughly 1940, the time before the "big boom of bigfoot". This is before the general terms of bigfoot and sasquatch were used, so references are to wild man, apeman, gorilla, or 'nondescript'. He alphabetically covers areas through the U.S. and Canada and includes references to the sightings based on newspaper. It was an interesting book but does get rather monotonous. All in all, it's a good reference for pre-"bigfoot" name incidents but the incidents themselves fall anywhere within hoaxes, made-up news stories, actual sightings, local myths, boogeyman stories, and real hermits/runaways.

The amusing part of this whole collection is just how many newspapers would claim the creatures were escaped circus/carnival/zoo gorillas/orang-utangs/chimps/baboons. Man, zoo and circus security must have sucked because there were gorillas escaping all over the place. You quickly can tell this is an excuse the news used to try and explain the incidents, whether there were in reality any escaped gorillas or not. With the number of "escaped gorillas" from circuses, you'd think they wouldn't have any attractions left.

The second amusing explanation by the news was that these were often halfbreed children, escaped insane people (again very poor security for asylums), or lost hikers which all managed to instantly grow full body covering hair. Whew, if there were that many escaped crazy people, escaped gorillas, and feral hair-sprouting lost people, I'd be seriously concerned how the country ever developed. Not to mention the 100-man posses all over the countryside hunting down these gorillas and crazies but never managing to capture them.

Overall, it's not your traditional bigfoot book and that's good. It's a much better book on how far-fetched the newspapers got regarding "wildman" sightings. It should be in your bigfoot collection but it does get monotonous. Also the author only presents the articles, he doesn't offer any theories or explanations to the stories.

This book has three subject matters which all run in parallel, informing and commenting on each other.

These subjects are: * the relationship between biological entities and computer objects * the future of the internet * OOPs programming in Director

The book is very clearly and cleverly written. The Lingo scripting, for example, is discussed in the main text in terms of its underlying principles, and the actual scripts are shown in illustrations, reproducing Director's script window. This means that the underlying arguments can be read without interruption, and by readers who have no Lingo experience.

Indeed many of the arguments in the book are addressed to a much wider audience than Director users and Lingo programmers. Peter Small suggests through a series of analogies and practical examples that there may be less difference between human and artificial intelligence than is normally thought - if we concentrate on the effects of intelligence rather than getting caught up in arguments as to what intelligence is and where it comes from.

He uses a wide range of examples, introducing the idea of Hilbert Space as his final conceptual flourish. Against the odds he even manages to explain this abstruse mathematical concept clearly and simply, and then demonstrate convincingly how it can be a useful tool for thinking about the future development of multimedia.

Peter's concern with multimedia lies in the development of 'intelligent' multimedia entities that he refers to as avatars - entities which can grow and change, accessing information on local hard disks, on CD-Roms and on the world wide web. The primary difference between these and traditional bots is that they are designed to operate from a client oriented perspective, rather than the more usual server side emphasis. They are designed to grow organically, to exceed the original intentions of the original programmers. They are designed to be diverse and different, and to use that as a strength.

In many ways Peter is proposing a complete inversion of the way we currently see the Internet. It is usually seen as a new broadcasting medium - I have a website and you can tune into it. Peter suggests that this is a very limited and limiting way to see what is essentially a huge repository of information, all able to be communicated in any way we can imagine. He suggests that the idea of the standard, generalised browser is an idea whose time has more or less gone. Instead he proposes specialised avatar systems who can respond to their users needs and desires and extend themselves across the web to bring back information in useful and structured forms.

One of his demonstrations concerns the construction of a café which can be used to bring like-minded people together, while another concerns avatar web-bots which can be sent off in search of like-minded people to bring to the café. Both of these are described in terms of the fundamental principles, their likely effects - and the Lingo necessary to construct them.

For readers with no Lingo experience Peter provides convincing arguments with just enough technical detail to demonstrate that what he is talking about is not science fiction but can be done today with standard software.

For readers who do have Lingo experience, there is plenty to chew on in the accompanying illustrations of scripts. Here Peter provides the details of how various avatar systems can be built and extended. In addition to the café and web-bots, these include a chemist who is able to work out the correct set of ingredients from sixty million possible combinations in less than 38 steps, taking a second or less in total. Peter uses this as the basis for discussing genetic algorithms, which can be used to model complex thought processes, and which can learn from their experiences, becoming more intelligent the longer they are allowed to 'live'.

Most interestingly of all, though, Peter intends to work out the implications of what he is suggesting in practice on the web. The book is therefore a starting point for an experiment which will be carried out by Peter and anyone who wishes to join him.

The book is, in effect, an invitation to participate in a uniquely exciting experiment - and there aren't many books you can say that about.

Some people may be put off by the author's referrences to magic and sorcery in his titles. In my opinion, Peter Small has something important to say to those of us interested in knowledge management and Web marketing. An avatar is an animated character on a computer screen and may represent a real person in a virtual world. In my opinion, the importance of avatars is not so much in the programming behind them (as impressive as that may be) but in the human willingness to attribute emotion and intelligence to avatars. An avatar that can access a variety of forms of multimedia, can learn from a variety of sources, and can visually represent emotion is of great potential consequence. Peter Small is a visionary and makes some pretty "radical" statements in his books. This is about the juncture of artificial intelligence, object-oriented programming, and animated interface design. That is potentially a very rich juncture. I wish there was a virtual community of people interested in the practical applications of Mr. Small's ideas.

Although the too-cool title made me suspicious, I got this book because I read an excellent review of it (on this page). I was hoping to read a forward-looking thesis on multimedia avatars, but got instead a book which should have been called "Having Fun with Director." It's not about programming, artificial life or avatars. If you have never heard of genetic algorithms or object-oriented programming and think the internet is an incredible source of useful information, then perhaps this book is worth a quick read. Otherwise skip it.

Wouldn't buy it. No way no how no no.

Mr. Sutton isn't the best writer in the world, but he is adequate. I found myself liking him after initially being turned off by some of his awkward sentences. He is very self-deprecating, very real. He was someone I could relate to who just so happened to have to spent a ton of time in the Far East talking to and training with a number of martial arts Masters.

The uniqueness of Mr. Sutton's book is that much of his experience is from Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, rather than China itself. And most of his experience is through the Cheng Man Ching filter-- he even contends that some elements of Master Cheng's Tai Chi transmission in this part of the world may be more authentic than those in the USA/Hong Kong... Since that was his main art, that's mostly what he looked into when he went to the Far East.

That being said, Mr. Sutton basically just tells stories-- like you were sitting with him in a restaurant over tea and chow fun. The stories are overall pretty entertaining, and you get a good number of pearls for training. These are usually conveyed by Mr. Sutton as quotations from the masters he spent time with. By pearls, I mean training tips or insights that one feels will help with one's own training or progress. Despite a reasonable amount of experience in internal martial arts (9 years) and extensive reading, I found about a dozen pearls in Mr. Sutton's book. Some I had heard in some way, shape, or form before, but others were refreshingly new or at least a different way to look at things, that I hope to make use of and see where they take me.

Mr. Sutton covers sections on Tai Chi, Push Hands, Weapons, Applications, Qigong, Competition, and others, just trying to kick around ideas and convey his interpretation on things. He never claims enlightenment or demigodhood or anything, and one has to respect that in someone who spent that much time with such a diverse range of high-level masters. And again, he never force feeds you-- he basically says "This is what Master X said under these circumstances..." Rarely, Mr. Sutton says something to the effect of "I think he meant this..."

I'll put it this way-- I felt that Mr. Sutton was more genuine in trying to pass on what he had learned, and provided more insights in the process, than BK Frantzis did in his book "The Power of Internal Martial Arts", which is an analogous work to this one.

For people who are primarily interested in T'ai Chi as a form of exercise or mental health only, this book will either be an eye opener, or will not be of interest. The author goes into great detail about his experiences with many high level practitioners of the art in Asia, and places a strong emphasis on application of the T'ai Chi principles in combat. His anecdotes regarding his teachers are fascinating, and liberally sprinkled with practice notes and "pearls of wisdom" for people interested in leaning T'ai Chi as a true martial art. My only reason for not giving the book 5 stars is that I found his prose somewhat disjointed (although following his train of thought is not difficult if one pays close attention.) Overall, I recommend this book highly for people who are interested in the deeper aspects of T'ai Chi as a martial art with combat applications, or perhaps those people who would like to hear stories of people who have mastered this martial art...

Laszlo in Action is an 'ok' introduction to OpenLaszlo. I found it mildly informative, however, it lacks any backend information. Notably, how do you get your data from the database to OpenLaszlo. The publisher tells us that there are two appendices that describe backends for Java Struts and Ruby on Rails to transport data between a database and OpenLaszlo but those appendices are not actually in the book. They're download only PDFs from the publisher's website. Had I known this before purchasing the book I would have skipped buying it. I don't know why the publisher decided not to actually print the appendices but I call it an epic fail on their part.

Save your money. Download the appendices from the publisher and use OpenLaszlo's online documentation.

This book is an excellent introduction to OpenLaszlo version 4.0. It describes the OpenLaszlo framework, its concepts and unfolds the language philosophy over several chapters by creating a webshop application. One major aspect of OpenLaszlo is, to initially define the visual GUI mockup using some embedded XML test data inside the OpenLaszlo frontend. After finishing the visual GUI, you switch the XML source to a server address and off you go ! So, web applications can be visually created in a very simple and appealing way using a XML markup language and small XML test data - no need to fiddle around on server or database side. After finishing the visual work, a backend programmer can do the database creation and webservice part of the application. Frontend and backend development are no longer a mixed operation - web 2.0 applications in record time. Note: OpenLaszlo was already on the market in 2002, when Adobe (formerly Macromedia) stole that idea and created Flex. OpenLaszlo is OpenSource and it rocks !

Has Disney betrayed the public? After reading this book, and checking many of the facts and footnotes personally, I can only say that the author has done his homeowork and shocked us all. This book is not to be taken lightly. It is one that is packed with fact, and holds no punches back. I like it. Hell, I loved it. Those who will criticize it must have their own agenda, because the author does nothing but report what is a typical paper trail and timeline. It will be a most unpopular book, but that just makes it juicier. Very cool read. Very fast read. Very repeatable read...over and over.

This is at once the funniest and most tragic piece of writing I have ever read. Hopefully the editor was fired for allowing silly, silly mistakes such as the character Maleficent being mentioned as a villain in, first, Sleeping Beauty and, later, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (in the same chapter, even). Ferraiuolo frequently contradicts himself, weakening the argument against Disney and reaffirming the idiocy of people who believe that fairy tales and mythology (some of the first forms of literature in existence) are the downfall of society. Example: Chapter 1 states, "The introduction of Greek mythology into Disney's works was a precursor to his embracing a wide range of antibiblical themes, including black magic, witchcraft, sorcery and mysticism" (18). Yet, chapter 5 states, "Walt would be incensed, supposedly, at the level of family-degrading, sexually implicit and explicit movies being made" (93). How can "Uncle Walt" be immoral in one chapter and moral in another, especially in regards to his own films? The answer is simple: this book stretches any and every bit of so-called research to make a point fit an agenda.

The content of this book is something that everyone with kids needs to know. Like most American kids, I grew up with those "beloved" Disney characters, but was also frightened by a few of them. Years ago, Disney could be trusted as a family-oriented company. Unfortunately, such is no longer the case.

Although the writing style in this book is less than flawlessly smooth, it is, at least, easy to understand, and the content is dead-on. Christian or not, read this book.

While Perucci Ferraiuolo does address some legitimate concerns, most of his arguments border on the ludicrous. Ferraiulo sees what is obviously merely an attempt to avoid confusion with other cartoon productions of classics, i.e. billing "Peter Pan" as "Walt Disney's Peter Pan", as a display of blatant egotism. He claims that the story of Cinderella promotes occultic themes, and goes on to describe the original fairy tale as proof. What he doesn't see is that the Walt Disney production has left practically all of that out. He claims that the movie strongly suggests that the fairy godmother is in fact Cinderella's dead mother. (how so? Because she calls Cinderella 'Child?'). He criticises "Something Wicked This Way Comes", because the movie's villian shares obvious parallels with Satan. Again, Mr Ferraiuolo fails to see the point. This movie is in fact an analogy of the dangers of the temptations of the material world, and in the end, good triumphs over evil.
The occultic background of fairies are exposed in this book. But I have yet to hear of a child who developed an unhealthy interest in the occult after watching Sleeping Beauty. A lot of it, in the end, has to do with the mind.
I am not suggesting evil does not exist. However, we should not go about looking for evil in every corner until we get so caught up with it that we neglect the more important aspects of being a Christian, such as, loving your neighbour.

The Lunatic Religious Fringe is really Out There, folks! I'm accustomed to their ubiquitous presence outside Star Trek conventions, handing out tracts to warn costumed Klingons of the unScripturality of sci-fi/fantasy. "Disney and the Bible" was being peddled by earnest evangelists outside the recent International Comic Con, along with tracts about gay Tinkiwinkies, satanic Anime, and pagan Potter. After skimming through the book, I was intrigued enough to buy it. Who knew that Walt Disney was a left-leaning Satanist out to destroy American Values, that Tinkerbell is a sex-maniac, Scar the Lion a homosexual, and that witchcraft is glorified in Disney cartoons? Well... in actuality, Disney was a leading contributor of suspected Hollywood commies' names to McCarthy's Blacklist. And Disney witches are all depicted as the stereotypical evil, ugly hags right out of Puritan pulpits. As for the deviant fairies and anthropomorphic animals, and supposed subliminal messages, erections, and phalluses, these are all addressed with righteous outrage. There's plenty of denouncement of the positive portrayals of nonChristian religion in Disney animation. Why indeed, should children be exposed to Hindu Mowgli, Buddhist Mulan, Muslim Aladdin, and other characters' heathen faiths? Somehow Robin Hood's pious Christian badger, Friar Tuck, gets overlooked in the indignant ardor. I have to wonder, though, why these zealots so strongly condemn the religious imagery of the Lion King, when so many Christians love Divine Aslan of the "Narnia" fairytales? And would it really have improved the story of Pocahontas to depict her coerced conversion to Christianity, subsequent virtual slavery in white man's society, and untimely death from smallpox? These Fundamentalist activists apparently think so! Parts of this book are unintentionally hilarious. For example, the allegation is made that "Fantasia", so popular with the hippie generation, must have been produced by a Disney staff high on drugs. "Yes, it is true'" one animator is quoted in seeming verification of the charge, "I myself was addicted to Ex-Lax and Feenamint!" At other times the book gets bogged down with humorless reproach from the likes of "reverends" Wildmon and Kennedy, the Assemblies of God, and the Southern Baptist Convention. One would think these "spiritual leaders" would have more urgent Christian callings than attacking animation. Overall, what seems most evident about this expose' is that obsessed religious fanatics can and do find Satan wherever they look for him.

A mummy that reportedly holds the secrets to eternal youth is stolen and a young girl that has a disease that makes her age quickly is kidnapped to use as a guinea pig for the new drug that will give people the extra years we all desire. Nice blend of real life facts but gets a bit long in the tooth.

Death's Door is the ninth entry into bestselling author Michael Slade's Special X series and it begins and ends with a bang!

The audacious, and bloodthirsty theft of a mummy starts the Special X squad down a road littered with snuff films, psychos, murder, mayhem, and the return of the villain who matched wits with Robert DeClercq and still managed to slip away.

Michael Slade spins his mystery/thrillers with a vicious glee and a tip of the hat to the hard boiled crime thrillers, and all the great detective mysteries of old. Within the pages of Death's Door you will be exposed to the twisted nature of the psychotic mind, and how those psychos are hunted down. Do you have the guts to follow the clues that lead you to Death's Door?

No one writes them quite like Slade.

Michael Slade, Death's Door (Cemetery Dance, 2003)

Since Headhunter, the team pseudonymously known as Michael Slade have been cranking out thrillers that sit about as far out on the bleeding edge as thrillers get (you can find a bit more gore in the horror genre if you know where to look, but not by much). Death's Door continues the tradition. In this one, Special X (Special External Operations, a branch of the Mounties well-known to readers of Slade's novels) get sucked into investigating the discoveries of horribly mutilated bodies turning up on Canada's western shore. If you've read any of the series' recent novels, you've probably got a good idea of what's coming.

Slade writes fast-moving novels that work like quick punches to the gut; the thriller reader with a taste for the perverse will find much between the covers to satisfy. ***

I came to this book unaware that it was a continuation (so to speak) of the lives and doings of a whole host of characters, but that much became apparant as I trudged through the laborious prose and the smug, self-referrential narrative.

The story starts with the theft of a mummy and then expands exponentially to encompass the world of snuff films, plastic surgery, pedophelia, necrophilia, and ... movie theory?

The chaos of the story is well-contained, that much can be said in favor of the book, but in some ways, it is too well-contained, so that buy the time I finished reading, I felt like I had hardly read any story at all. The theft of the mummy -- which is detailed in the first few well-crafted chapters -- turns out to be a side-bar to the muddled mess that is the rest of the book, a story that is much less than the sum of its parts.

The book would be engaging and entertaining -- in spite of its rather silly plot -- if it weren't for the prose-stopping lectures that punctuate the story like two-ton commas. For a book that is already teetering on the edge of goofiness, these clumsy chunks of unnecessary exposition are lethal to the pacing and what little interest the story can contrive.

Likewise, the style of the writing fluctuates between lofty all-knowingness and staccato-blast witticisms. In between stilted discourses on everything from the genesis of crime-solving software to Alfred Hitchcock films you will find snide and pithy one-liners that reference virtually every manner of pop culture, from Jackson Pollock to Porky Pig.

All of this aside, what you're left with is, essentially, a mordant tale staffed with almost wholly unlikeable characters who all speak alike (sometimes in the same agnozing soliloquies that infect the narration). Finally, the book's conclusion is no conclusion at all, and is an obvious and strained attempt to leave room for another sequel for all of these flatly formed characters to suffer through.

I, however, won't be suffering with them next time.

Once upon a time, "Michael Slade" wrote original, interesting stories with well-nuanced characters in a sub-genre of "splatterpunk". But that was 20 years ago, and the original authors behind the Slade name (John Banks, Jay Clarke, Lee Clarke, Richard Covell) have dispersed, leaving the father-daughter team of Jay and Rebecca Clarke to trade in on the earlier "glories", and all we get are the now-standard "Special X" characters and a franchise name. Pity. OK, I'll concede that there is a veneer of intelligence usually lacking in graphic (as in "gore-riddled") crime fiction, but just sticking a bibliography at the end of every book doesn't necessarily make that book intelligent in and of itself. "Death's Door" is the most egregrious example of laurel-resting I've come across in a looooong time, worse even than Stephen King's last two or three thousand books. Not only are the major characters recycled, including the villian ("Mephisto", oh, dear.....), they are now recycled cardboard. Zinc Chandler gets to bang his head (again - poor man would be in an institution by now), DeClerq gets to act the swell and brood (alternately), "Ghost Keeper" is even more of a stereotype than his last appearance, as is Ed "Mad Dog" Rabidowski (full-blown psychotic now), and the rest of the crew, well, what did you expect?

I really hate it when an author can't break new ground and instead feels entitled to dish out familiar material to an apparently easily-satisfied fan-base. Believe me, if this was "Michael Slade's" *first* novel, no publisher would touch it.

Do yourself a favor: if you've already read the first four Slade books ("Headhunter" through "Cutthroat"), you've read all that's *worth* reading. You can stop now and pick up something else, something different, original, and not continue to encourage sloppy, condescending, franchise gunk.

Slade, if you come up with something OFF of the "Special X" gravy train you've been riding a little *too* long, I'll be delighted to check it out. Otherwise: you've sold me your last book.