Death on the Reik is one of the older adventures, originally published by Games Workshop before they abandoned the WFRP line to Hogshead. The quality of GW's early work is evident in this product: an inspired storyline, terrific artwork and interesting locales.

The book details an epic journey the length of the River Reik challenging the players with a good balance of invetigation and action as they attempt to thwart the forces of Chaos.

While many people rate the Enemy Within and Shadows of Bogenhafen higher, this adventure is my personal favourite. Be warned that the ending seems a bit of an anti-climax. A more epic finale would have seen this book get a 5-star rating.

Entertaining Mathematical Problems by Martin Gardner is a great book for all ages. This book has over 100 problems in sections ranging from topology to games. Some of the problems are simple to many, but there are some that require thought to do. Answers are included on the back. Any math lover will surely enjoy this book.
Paul Raff (Northwestern_Wildcat@ibm.net

Martin Gardner's witty writing style makes this book a pleasant pathway to the realms of logic. Neat and concise with its stories and challenges throughout and with solutions at the very end, the book is a very ideal read, especially if you are a passenger with a very long trip ahead and who needs good quality entertainment that is also educational.

The puzzle categories are also quite wide from tangram to chess problems.

While the books is useful beyond description, there are a few (minor) flaws. First, for people inclined to mercantile campaigns, a great deal of the book deals with weapons and armor. Secondly, there is nothing to differentiate between hard-sf equipment and cinematic "rubber science" sci-fi type gear. For those of us who play games closer to Larry Niven than George Lucas, this can be irritating, especially if we know more about history than physics.

Also, if you need a super-monster, this book comes with three of 'em. Always a pleasure, if you need a quick "Godzilla" to run at your party.

A lot of the book is full of information about stuff that is tangential to mathematics at best, like Escher drawings and other art. Escher is fine, but devoting so many pages to the symmetry drawings of a certain Mr. Kim is way out of line with what a reader might expect of this book. The "fake" chapter is also in bad taste for a book of this nature. Obviously "once bitten twice shy" is not something Gardner believes in.

Also an absence of adequate proofreading is evident. For example, the author claims that N is symmetrical about a horizontal axis. Also wrong (or incomplete) is Gardner's proof about why the second player can never guarantee a win in generalized tictactoe (the "proof" actually proves that the second player can't guarantee a win without looking at the first player's first move). More? The book says 1/0 is meaningless, and this in a chapter on infinity!

I however liked some parts of the book, for example an argument against the parallel universe theory is almost literature (it is not Gardner's but somebody else's whose name I've forgotten, unfortunately Gardner does not come across as anything more than a dilettante). Other interesting bits and pieces exist, too numerous to describe here, but scarcely enough to warrant a purchase. On the other hand, if your local library has a copy of this book, it's not a bad one to borrow.

If graph theory, game theory, topology, and numbers don't entirely scare you away, you'll find something vaguely interesting at any page you flip to in this book, and after a few more pages will have prob learned something, AND found yourself using a part of your brain that might otherwise go unused during any given day.

I bought this at the same time as buying BREAK THE ONE ARMED
BANDITS and can recommend that one instead, very highly.

Stay away from this one.

A. Reader