I read this book because I read Poltergeist and saw the movie which I really enjoyed!!!!!!!!

Not overly scary, but "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" still takes the reader on a supernatural rollercoaster, as the Freeling family is once again tormented by an army of malevolent ghosts. The novel differs noticeably from the movie, but excels just as well. More of a thriller than a horror story, "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" is a fun, imaginative, and one-of-a-kind novel

While getting a little long in tooth, this text is an excellent introduction to environmental economics. Unlike many texts in this area, the methodology used in this text is quite similar, although less mathmatically rigorous, to presentations used in graduate studies.

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" disappointed a number of Indy fans, perhaps surprised at the darker tone of the second film, and is generally regarded as the weakest film of what is currently a trilogy. Not so the novelisation.
Whereas the first book was a turgid and often plodding slog this second volume gets the tone absolutely spot-on. The joy of the Indiana Jones films is that they are are B-movies, big budget and carefully crafted, but essentially homages to the Saturday serials and action adventures of the thirties, and the novelisation of "Raiders" seemed to entirely miss that point, and thus failed to capture the thrills and flavour of the cinema version. It cannot be easy writing a novel based on a screenplay anyway, since there is a severe time constraint and the very real possibility that the finished movie may veer dramatically (ahem... no pun intended) from the early written version. This is certainly one reason for a few of the more disappointing scene changes in the "Raiders" novel.
"Temple," however, is much closer to the finished film, adding to it by way of thoughts and motivations for the characters but thankfully avoiding the trap of getting mired down in efforts to produce a "serious" work. James Kahn's book is slim and has rather large type when compared to the first and third novelisations, but in this case I regard that as a plus.
The pace is furious, the action as ripsnorting as you could wish and even - goodness, I can't believe I'm saying it - Short Round actually comes over as rather a good character, which is more than you can say for the film. Indeed, going back to the movie after reading this book I found that my disappointment with the second film had abated somewhat. It is still a less exciting ride than "Raiders" and not such a glorious romp as "Crusade," yet there is much to enjoy on screen and especially in this book. A pity that Mr Kahn did not pen the later original Indy novels, as they would have been vastly improved by a writer with a keen sense of what a damn good B-movie should be all about. Hats off, indeed.

I teach a research class at the Unversity of Arizona and have reviewed just about every book on the market in the area. This is the best all around book for an introduction into research.

I gave _Timefall_ a generous three stars only because the first hundred pages are a wild, intriguing ride.
This hybrid, shaggy-dog Indiana Jones meets Rider Haggard meets H.G. Wells type-tale has everything for very light summer reading. It purports to be about a quest to save existence itself. That's a grabber!
Its characters and situations include a drug smuggler, a seven foot, loin-clothed, anarchist-mystic, South American treasures, baseball size emeralds, dangerous jungle treks, blow-darts and cannibals, a 70 million year-old human fossil, fabled lost cities, a mysterious, beautiful android and that's just the first half (and best part) of the book!
The central part cleverly "explains" reincarnation, deja vu, clairvoyance, ghosts, mythical creatures such as centaurs, unicorns, vampires, dragons, etc., UFO's, haunted houses, even slyly alluding to the whereabouts of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the rats, and the missing children. So, we understand the author's deeper metaphysics.
The final third includes time travel, parallel worlds in time, and the Doppler effect of receding stars as a result of the "Big Bang" and the author's take on modern physics and existence.
_Timefall_ is not quite as mystical or scientific (for both, read Gary Zukav's _The Dancing Wu Li Masters_) as it pretends to be, and does not contain much social comment which is what one expects from fantasy or SF these days.
Among the main characters, Joshua Green strikes one as a fickle flake and Darwina Vine as a vindictive, psychotic fruitcake.
Unlike Joshua, I would not trust a newborn, much less a psychic genius with the power to alter existence itself, to her.
The storyline cannot make its mind up whether its fantasy or SF.
The hero's hokey solution for saving the universe is almost anticlimatic after the wild action-adventure setup. One wishes writers would follow Poe's advise and write their stories backward. (This story seems to be cobbled from the author's wildest speculations which he then ties together very loosely. Loosely is the operative word.) With a particular end in mind, all avenues and choices lead "inevitably" to the conclusion. Kahn's "solution" is so improvised his only hope for credibility is to let us decide if this is a "what if" story. Is it a "true" chronicle of events experienced by his vanished patient Joshua Green or is it just a stylized narrative gambit?
As a chronicle, it's not really a drama/story and the solution chosen is improvised and strikes this reader as quite undramatic. As a story, one that merits a dramatic solution, the author's choice is one out of touch with the adventurous spirit of the book.
Finally, although the relationship between the main character Joshua and his wife, Di, is supposedly deep, this reader did not get that impression. There seems to be a deeper, male-bonding relationship between Fernando and Karl and between Karl and Lon.
Even the epilogue leaves one with a sense of pathos due to the past-present relationship between the author, Dr. Kahn, and his vanished patient, Joshua.
If you like this type of historical/fantasy action-adventure, read Benoit's _La Atlantide_ or Rider Haggard's _She_ or even _My First Two Thousand Years_ which are cleverly written, have some literary merit, and comment on the human condition.
Read _Timefall_ only after you've exhausted your "must read" list. Another critic said that Kahn's other novels are better. Maybe they are. At least I hope so.

I read this book expecting to find a continuation of the two brilliantly written novels, "World Enough and Time" and "Time's Dark Laughter". It was and it wasn't. Kahn prefaces the story with the implication that the main character, one Joshua Green, is in fact a mental patient he once interviewed and that the text of the first two novels came from a 70 million year old diary which Joshua's past incarnation left for him to find in the deepest Africa. Uhuh. Not as good as the first two novels but O.K. It was somewhat disturbing that the author didn't wish to draw a nice safe line between fiction and reality. I mean, the story couldn't be true ... could it...?