This book contains just enough good patterns of Egyptian gods, animals and a couple of cobras to make it worth the price. The patterns, however, are small, dark and hard to read. I will find it necessary to make enlarged copies and color them.

It seems that Egypt is "in" this season and this book is a good place to begin. There are some very simple designs plus some harder projects. This book is a nice and inexpensive place to begin.

I was not impressed when I bought this book as it actually does not contain 500 Alphabets, in fact there are about 90. There are some numbers from 0-9, not enought to make up the other 410 designs though (and a set of numbers is not an alphabet). I know that Julie Hasler has done a series of '500' books, but the title clearly states that there are *500* Alphabets in Cross Stitch. Apart from the small fact that there are 400-odd missing it's not a bad book. I think this is a breach of the Fair Trading Act, the commerce commission should do these people! If anyone can explain how 90 and 500 are related, I'd love to know!