With four brothers, I've been there. Most likely so has everyone else who grew up in a house with one or more siblings. That's what makes "Sister for Sale" such a special little tale. It's true, it's real, and it's funny.

Michelle writes in a simple, rhythmic fashion that helps you glide through this story and never miss a beat. The facial expressions in the illustrations are priceless!

I loved this little book. So did my wife, and 13-year-old son.

Sister for sale. How about a brother for free?

But I am so glad I picked up this book. I loved it. After I read it, I went out and found Adams' and Brooks' first novel, the Unwound Way, which I enjoyed just as much.

The books are pure space opera, but of the best kind. It's like all my favorite plot elements in a science-fiction adventure have been brought together and judiciously mixed with a healthy dose of originality. These books have some of the most delicious plot twists I have ever had the pleasure to be confounded by.

I hate comparisons to other others, but I want to make people read these books, so I'm going to make a simplified comparison. If Robert Heinlein, Roger Zelazny, and Larry Niven had ever collaborated together, the results would have been something like this. Read this book.

To say this book is well-textured is akin to saying the Mona Lisa is a nice picture; well, yes, that's true, but it hardly does the book justice.

Adams and Brooks draw on the life of George Gordon Byron, the sixth Lord Byron, among the best known of the Romantic poets. The protagonist in FAME is Evan Larkspur, whose life resonates with Byron's but ultimately follows its own course. Far in the future, Larkspur's works have become the voice of the Kanalism movement. Seeking to drive out the tyrannical Column that rules humanity, the Kanalists hope to re-establish an earlier, more beneficent government.

The title of the book evokes a stanza from Canto I of DON JUAN, one of Byron's best known works:

What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills', is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heros kill,
And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper',
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

It would take a 6000 word essay to discuss why FAME is such an effective play on Byron's words. Read it, and you'll see.

This book is like an intricate machine, as beautiful to see as it is intriguing to operate, with lustrous gears and glossy levers, parts made from precious materials, gold, silver, ivory, ebony, all interlocking with intricate pieces. The closer you look, the more details you see, like a fractal design revealing new structure at increasingly greater magnifications. It's a versatile engine, brilliantly designed and lovely to boot.

FAME is a great book. Here's hoping it's just the beginning of fame for Adams and Brooks.

On one level, the most obvious one, Adam's book is a sometimes idiosyncratic history of Medieval art, literature, and religion that takes as its center of gravity the great Gothic cathedrals of the period--structures that Adams thinks sum up what the middle ages are all about. To read the book on this level alone is fine. It provides intriguing insights into, for example, courtly love and the cult of Mary.

But I now believe that, at a deeper level, the book is disguised autobiography on the one hand and a backhanded history of Adams's own time on the other. An at times overwhelming sense of nostalgia permeates the book. In reading Adams on the 11th century mystics, the debates of the schoolmen, the chansons of the troubadours, and the unified worldview of the middle ages, one can almost hear him sigh with longing to return to a world which, he thinks, was whole, unfractured, and pure--a world, as the medievals themselves would've said, which reflects "integritas." This reveals a great deal about the restless, unquiet nature of Henry Adams the man. But it also reveals the restless, unquiet nature of the modern era which spawned and molded him: the gilded age, the fast-paced first wave of capitalism, secularism, and consumerism, which has no center of gravity, no art, no tradition. And even though we claim to be living in a "postmodern" age, it seems to me that a great deal of the qualities Adams deplored in his own times are still with us and account for our own sense of homelessness.

*Mont Saint Michel and Chartres,* then, is more than a quaint turn-of-the-last-century history. Read correctly, it's also a mirror of our present discontent. Highly recommended.

Whether you're cooking for one, entertaining friends, or trying to give a guy some tactful advice on how to take barbecue to a whole new level (tell him to try the Hot Girls Spice Rub - the recipe, not a spot in the red-light district) you should own this book. Yeah, being so effusive about a cookbook may seem weird, but only until you read this one.

I have most of the stuff that has been put out for Hunter so far, and this would come right after the Survival Guide in order of usefulness and game expansion. The Hermit class is EXTREMELY interesting (they hear voices from the Messengers constantly) and the Merits/Flaws really help to round out a character (there's a fair bit more than just the standard merits/flaws that find their way into all the player's guides).

The roleplaying tips and ideas are realy nice, especially concerning what types of people are likely to pick up a given creed. There are some interesting rules presented on changing creeds as well (you were an innocent, but you've seen enough, etc.) which make good sense. A whole section on Bystanders is a nice addition as well (they hint that many Bystanders are failed Hunters - ones who heard the call but failed to act).

There's more here than I can lay down, suffice it to say if you've picked up the main book and want to delve deeper into the roleplaying of Hunter this is definetly a worthwhile purchase.

The second astounding and disturbing book is Brooks Adams' "The New Empire." Adams covers a lot of time (4000 b.c. - 1900 a.d.) and territory (Asia, Europe, America). He shows how shifting trade routes have caused great cities to rise, and to fall. He regards these cities as the seats of 'Empires.'

Adams -- younger brother of Henry Adams -- discusses these trade routes as connections among products, resources, and markets. When water traffic became less expensive than overland traffic, port cities became great centers. When the ocean routes began to be navigated, the center of 'Empire' shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic countries, especially Spain, Holland, France and England. Adams discusses various wars as inevitable forms of economic clashes. In early times, Adams discusses the importance of metals. As he moves into the modern era, he looks at coal as essential. I would love to have his thoughts about oil. But the reader can extrapolate easily enough. It's scary.

Lots and lots of good historical stories, including Gengis Khan, the Russo-Japanese rivalry, and the rise of the USA as the center of the 'New Empire." He points out that if we don't stay flexible and energetic, China could become the new center.

He discusses political administrative efficiency as a factor in determining the cost of transport and production.

Why did I never see this book in eight years of university English lit studies?

You'll love Adams' sweeping conclusions and generalities. Buy this book! Read it. It's a keeper.

If you like Niven's novels, but without Niven's "cute" moments, you will love this work.