Overall the book was slow starting, however after the first chapter the book then became interesting with a climatic end. Would recommend to novice fantasy readers.

Recomended to me by my brother, I had no pre-conceived notion about what this book would be like. Agreed, it has somewhat of a slow beginning, STICK WITH IT! It is an amazing book, and I guarantee that it will be a favorite of most fantasy readers. Though I didn't do this, I would also recomend reading Greenmagic before this. It's much better in the right order.

This may seem to be out of my normal areas of interest, but one can learn a great deal of strategy from various 'how to' books. This one is well organized and includes creative exercises, such as getting out of a hostile crowd.

I read this book, and found it somewhat illuminating, but not as good as, for example, Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction. I'd rate it a three, except for the end, where the author's discussion of the business of writing struck me as very helpful.

Killian starts out by telling readers how hard it is to make a living at writing novels. I emailed with Tad Williams (fantasy author) and he told me that something like only 1% of fiction writers make six figure salaries or greater.

Truth is, if you want to learn how to make money while you write, read something like RICH DAD, POOR DAD. Banking on your writing to turn you into a bestseller has low odds and can be painful if you don't fall into that number. Be sure to enjoy it, too. Yes, silly but you'd be surprised how many people

Anyway, here's the highlights of his book:

(1) realize the genres of fantasy and sci if; (2) understand the types of general readers attracted to the genres; (3) create your fictional world; (4) get good writing habits; (5) work on your story; (6) learn plotting; thicken the plot; (7) narrative voice; (8) symbolism; (9) know your publishers; query letters; manuscript form; (10) royalties; residuals; understand the contracts.

After you've read this, check out HOLLYLISLE.COM . . . a fantasy author who freely gives out advice and makes her living at it fulltime.

Best of luck!

I am not a sci-fi fan, so it takes something really interesting to grab me. This one did and held me with excellent description and "show, not tell" narrative. Sucks even "non sci-fi" reader in, so you forget you're reading and find yourself "experiencing." The plot doesn't even matter because the writing just sweeps you along like a piece of debris in outer space. Sort of like a Star War thing. Good literary adventure to go on.

I'm a bit biased as a relative of mine wrote this book. Even so, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I'm a bit fan of disaster stories and "nature gone wrong" themes so this was right up my alley. I thought the character development was pretty good, but the plot and the pace of the story is what kept me turning the pages. If you enjoy this, read "Icequake" as it is sort of the companion novel to "Tsunami".

This book reminds me of the internet boom days - lots of fluff, but no substance. Crawford Killian's book covers web site structure, organizing content, writing style, editing, corporate writing, yet there is no mention of any actual web sites he has worked on.

Yes, the author mentions his print bias, but if I were interviewing Mr. Killian to work for me as web/technical writer, the first thing I would ask:

Name me three URL's (not your home page) you have worked on as a paid professional writer. Not as a contributor, but as somebody who had to take a collection of badly-written material and make a *real* client happy.

Simple question, and I think this would reveal Mr. Killian's real audience for this book: people who don't know *anything* about writing, let alone writing for the web.

Mr. Killian makes a good case for better writing on the web, but his lack of professional experience and academic perspective make Writing for the Web useful only to the dilettante.

This thin and flatly-written volume will disappoint anyone hoping for a Web writing manifesto. Kilian brings no new research and an unimpressive bunch of case studies. But by making the case once again for caring about Web text, Kilian's book serves a useful purpose.

Many pages of the book are taken up with advice applicable to writing for any medium: understand your reader's viewpoint, use the "active voice", avoid relying on your spell checker. Devotees of that classic writers' how-to manual, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, will find a startling amount of familiar material. So will devotees of Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen and his Alertbox site. A substantial slice of Kilian's book could well have been gathered off a handful of well-known Web sites.

But Kilian also makes a series of points that have been missed or underemphasised in discussions of Web writing to date:

* The Web demands your writing deliver "joltage". A former chief executive of the Fairfax newspaper group liked to compare the newspaper-reading experience to a warm bath. Web reading, by comparison, is a 30-second shower - get in, get the job done, wake you up, don't hang around. As Kilian puts it: "Computers condition us for high joltage. A 'jolt' is an emotional reward that follows a prescribed action ... We feel deprived if we don't get some sort of jolt at regular intervals, so we go where we hope to find more stimulation which, on the Web, means web sites."

* Beware old-style marketers who see the Web as another opportunity to pump a message at a commercial audience. In most media, the marketer hunts the customer down and delivers a broadcast or printed spiel that can be hard to avoid. On the Web, the customer comes looking for the transaction, with a million other sites a single mouse-click away. Research shows Web users are uncommonly likely to bolt at the sight of an old-style marketing pitch. A very few good Web marketers, on the other hand, already understand that the message of a commercial Web site must rely on a more subtle link with a brand's values.

* The Web suits "response" writing which prompts the user to carry out an activity. In the offline commercial world an entire marketing discipline - direct response copywriting - has evolved to offer users spcific benefits if they carry out particular actions. Indeed, the long-established rules of direct response advertising copywriting often look remarkably like Web writers need to import these direct response lessons, in just the same way that Web interface designers need to understand how to convince users to click on the appropriate screen buttons. "The Web is a culture of impatience," writes Kilian. "Effective appeals offer quick and painlesss ways to respond".

Killian could and should have given his readers more insights on issues like these, rather than recycling better-known guidelines. His book does not deserve whole-hearted recommendation. But it's nice to see Web writing getting some of the attention it deserves.

The "Geek" edition of "Writing for the Web" by Crawford Kilian was written for Web developers who are more adept to programming than sitting at the keyboard of a computer and cranking out written Web page content. This book will help them to write better content that will effectively communicate the purpose of their Websites, to inform their readers, and to achieve desired results.

To become more effective communicators online we must adopt certain writing guidelines that will appeal to readers, that will inform them, and then persuade them to act upon what they have been exposed to. Crawford Kilian assists Web developers to do just this. His thoughtful instruction will help Web developers to craft their content around guidelines that includes minimalization, coherence, clarity, accuracy, and correctness. This requires Web developers to know their audience(s), to generate reader interest and interactivity, writing for international readers, properly organizing content, choosing words carefully, avoiding biased and otherwise problematic terminology, and respecting spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

Topics covered in the book that will contribute to better Web writing includes instruction on organization, choosing the right words, editing existing Web content - with examples, persuading readers to respond, marketing on the Web, understanding copyright matters, and FAQ's about launching Web-writing careers.

This concise guide to Web writing is packed with excellent writing instruction that will set new Web developers straight on the art and science of writing with the online community in mind. The focus on written content makes this book a good choice for those persons desiring to start a Web-writing career or wanting to advance their existing writing pursuits. Recommended for new Web developers, small business operators, and for classroom use!

I liked the fact that Brother Jonathan was set in a relatively near term future, which was relatively realistic. I didn't see anything in the book which was particularly far-fetched or incredibly hokey-and enough detail was added to make it generally interesting).

This book crafts a chilling picture of what capitalism out-of-control could be like in a future world. It's one of the earlier SF novels I read and it has most of the elements I like to see in this genre. For those who like humanism in their SF, I would reccomend this novel. In the future, massive corporations rule the world in place of countries. They routinely try to outbid each other and declare war on one another in takeover attempts. Thrown into this struggle are a group of neurologically handicapped children and animals who are at the bottom of the pecking order. They're to be the guinea pigs for a new computer implants that the scientists hope will rebuild the damaged areas of their brains. What actually happens is beyond everyones expectations . . . Suffice to say, this is a story about the triumph of the underdog and the changing of a world. The only downside is that this book makes a pat ending out of something that couldn't be that simple, in an otherwise enjoyable book, it's forgivable, but I feel like a lot more could be done along this theme. If you like this and want something more complex try Tad Williams' Otherland books, their big but worth reading.

This book was alright. I wouldn't call it good, but it wasn't -horrible-. I did manage to finish reading it, but it was a stretch. A tribe of people living in a primitive society that worships their goddess (a whale that speaks to them) find one day a great ship of the People of the Sun about to crash into the rocks. They rescue three of those aboard the ship, one is the son of the Sun (a ruler who was dethroned and driven from his homeland), one is the Sun's concubine, Silken, and the last is a tiny baby. They name him Eyas. Eyas grows, finding he has an ability to communicate with animals, and a natural affinity with the Brutes (centaurs, lotors, and windwalkers). As he grows, the young Sun grows ever more angry, aloof, and determined to take back the throne that is rightfully his. In short, he runs off to take back his throne, decides he will come back and conquer the peaceful people that raised him, and Eyas decided to round up an army of Brutes to defeat the Sun.

Oh, but wait, this is -also- in a far-flung future and the dead are fighting for the Suns and oh, my, they must destroy Skyland to win. This last bit wasn't introduced until the last eighth of the book. I think the author came up with various ideas -as he was writing-. Had any of this been incorporated in the beginning it would have been -much- better, but he started too small and moved too slowly. This book had a lot of potential, but the climax was just crammed into about twenty pages and disappointing.

Eyas is a very strange book. One of the strangest things about it is the fact that it's good. It shouldn't be good; Kilian writes from a pretty superficial Canadian/Progressive sensibility (check out his map of North America a million years from now, with the Great White North hugely expanded and most of the US gone).

But Eyas has a strange, cumulative power. It starts small, but moves very smoothly into bigger and bigger scale. And the notion of evil Kilian invents is brilliant. I won't give it away, but it's perhaps the best narrative metaphor for the baneful influence of the past you'll encounter anywhere.

Kilian transcends his conscious ideology in this book. Its climax is a Jihad as grand as any in Fantasy, and this Greenish author shows himself to be very adept at describing a complex military campaign. Like Eyas at the end of the novel, Kilian, in writing this book, crashed through layer after layer of ideology to make something greater than its maker.

The first two thirds of this book were great. It starts with a tribe who live like Indians. They have a naming ritual for infants which occurs at a cove. A giant sea creature surfaces there and names the baby. The baby in question becomes a heroic warrior named Eyas. The only problem I had with this book came at the two thirds mark. There was a jarring change in focus that could have easily ground the book to a halt. Still, I'll probably read this book again.

The book is set at the tail end of the 20th century and the first couple of decades of the 21st. Kilian presents us with a bleak dystopian vision of a decaying society on the brink of collapse. At the last moment a technique for absorbing and processing huge amounts of information was discovered and human computers called 'trainables' were born. Trainables were used to prop up the tottering fabric of society, but even they couldn't stave off the inevitable collapse. The world was saved by a freak lab accident which led to the discovery of alternative earths occupying different positions in time, both past and future. The idea of accessing these separate earths is a good one (if a bit clichéd) and the idea is well implemented in the story.

The books main character is Jerry Pierce, a highly trained special agent for the Intertemporal Agency. He specialises in the 'Black Ops' projects such as assassination and 'punitive' expeditions. At first sight he seem to be as ruthless and soulless as a cyborg. Later on in the book you learn the reason why this appears to be so and he is revealed to be a (marginally) more sympathetic character.

One of the core premises of the book is slightly suspect. Being a 'trainable' will surely allow a person to absorb a great deal of information quickly, but this doesn't mean that the information can be used intelligently. At least two additional skills are required to do this, the ability to cross reference the information and the ability to form opinions based on this collated information, without these skills all you have is a huge mound of undigested data. Kilian glosses over this in the book and as a result the trainable are seen as near genius figures.

This book was originally published in 1978 well before the first PCs were created. As a result some of the technology used (microfiche) is a little dated. The plot flows well and does manage to hold the readers interest and would probably make a great action film ( along the lines of 12 Monkeys and Terminator 2). I enjoyed this story and look forward to reading more chronoplane adventures from the same author.

Although I love disaster stories, this book was absolutely boring. It didn't hold my attention and the ending was poor. And there's a sequel?

Ok, so maybe I'm biased because a relative of mine wrote this book. Even so, I must say I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I am a big fan of natural disaster stories and "nature gone wrong" themes so this was right up my alley. The character development was good and the plot was interesting and kept me reading. Only thing that disappointed me was the ending- I didn't want it to end! :)