This is a beautiful love story of two children who grew up together but took different paths. Amy did a great job bringing them together, I have loved all the "Irish" books and this one really stands out above the others. Connal and Sinead cannot be together without true love between them or Sinead will perish (she has magical powers). Through all the trials and tribulations they go through - well I don't want to ruin the plot - READ IT! It is really a good story, it flows and makes you believe in magik and true love can happen. I was sad to hear that this is the last of the series, maybe Amy will change her mind eh?

If you like to have fun, then this is the book for you! And where can you have this kind of fun that you can just wash off. With "Magical Creatures: Glitter Tattoos" you can explore the mystical world of fantacy from any place your heart desires. Put on a tattoo or two and sail off into the mystic!!!

My only reservation that this book is almost as much about Georgia as about Beria. It portrays the monster of the Soviet police state who loyally did Stalin's bidding and acquired such ferocious reputation that, when Stalin died, the new leader Khruscheve thought it necessary to kill Beria to protect his own power. Well-research, this book is a valuable addition any library on Soviet politics or history.

Laventrii Beria by far outshines Joseph Djugashvili Stalin by far. As Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels was to Adolf Hitler, Beria is to Stalin, perhaps he went one better than the Nazi Minister of Propaganda? The closest person to Beria's stature today is Richard Perle, the man in the White House who influences George Walker Bush ("Junior"), 43rd U.S. President (2000-2004), like he did former president George Walker Bush ("Senior'), 41st U.S. President. Like Stalin's and Hitler's regimes, the Bush regime bears a striking similiarity to the other two totalitarian regimes, perhaps Perle is more sinister than Beria and Goebbles?

Having just read this, the only book-length biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's most powerful henchman, I wondered if I would have survived in Beria's world. Office politics in the Stalinist USSR was not just about bitching by the water cooler and trying to suck up to the boss (although such elements were also present, writ large). Even surviving in such an environment required degrees of political acumen and sheer nastiness that very few people need to demonstrate in our herbivorous times. Even as an apparatchik reached his goal of near-absolute power (say, Yagoda, Ezhov or Zhdanov) he would find himself subtly undermined. Even as someone was appointed to the Central Committee he would find that key associates carefully placed across the state and party apparatus were being removed to the coziness of the Lubianka or Kolyma.

In this world, which was described quite well by Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, in a chapter titled "Why the Worst Get on Top", Beria was almost bound to rise (although, for political reasons, Hayek was describing Nazi Germany rather than the USSR). He was a Mingrelian, a minority ethnic group in Georgia, and, like Stalin, he was brought up by his mother after his father's early death. He rose rapidly through the ranks of the political police and eventually managed to become Georgian and then Transcaucasian party boss (he even killed a few competitors in the way). Ezhov's "Great Terror" of 1936-1937 paved the way for a takeover by Beria, who consolidated his position during the war and then by heading the nuclear weapons project. A brilliant manager, who was able to get on well with those he worked with (but who had no compunction about delivering them to their deaths if it served his purposes) he always delivered. Unlike Stalin, he was not interested in praises (although he organised his own personality cult for practical reasons) and was reasonable enough to tell the difference between real enemies and loyal followers. Women were his weakness. Ms Knight, a serious historian, does not indulge her readers with lurid stories about girls picked up in Moscow streets and then killed in the basement of Beria's town house, but she does mention that Beria was treated for siphilis during the War. As Stalin aged, be became more and more deranged and eventually wanted to be rid of Beria and his Mingrelians. Unlike other historians, such as Edvard Radzinsky, the author does not speculate about Beria's possible role in Stalin's demise in March 1953, although she concludes that only this saved Beria from the destiny of many of his predecessors. While Beria's energetic attempts at de-Stalinisation were already known (Beria's lieutenant Pavel Sudoplatov had already mentioned them in his book "Special Operations"), Ms Knight elaborates on how wide-ranging they would have been had Beria succeeded in consolidating his grip on power. Indeed, it is quite possible that glasnost might have come more than 30 years before Gorbachov came to power, and that it would have been implemented from a position of strength rather than one of weakness (in 1953 the Soviet Union was at the top of its power, having succeeded in launching a Hydrogen bomb and having established control over North Korea). German re-unification might have happened in the 1950s rather than the early 1990s, and would have been much less costly and disruptive. On the other hand, it's also possible that Beria might have backtracked after attaining his goal, which was only power for himself. As Ms Knight shows, Beria, like most Soviet politicians had only very slight concern about policies, reserving most of his time and effort for power politics. His downfall was swift, and to be frank, required significant courage from Kruschev and Malenkov. Kruschev comes out of this book (like he did in Volkogonov's Stalin) as a devious henchman who was no less guilty than Beria, but far less able.

It is interesting to see that the downfall of Soviet leaders in the period 1948-1990 was associated with failures to control events in their zones of influence. Beria's downfall started with the breakup of Soviet-Yugoslav relations in 1948 and concluded in 1953, due to demonstrations in Eastern Germany. Kruschev's downfall came in 1964, after he badly miscalculated the risk in transporting nuclear warheads to Cuba. Gorbachov's fall was associated with failure over Germany in 1989. As it was, Kruschov's de-Stalinisation was probably much less comprehensive than Beria's would have been. A nice complement to Ms Knight's book is Sergo Beria's recently published "Beria My Father". One last comment: Ms Knight's book is not for the casual reader. Even for someone who has read Conquest, Pipes, Volkogonov, Radzinsky, Bullock and Ulan it is sometimes difficult to keep straight all the unfamiliar names and party organisations, especially in Transcaucasia. The book would have gained from a few charts illustrating who worked when and where with Ezhov, Beria, Kruschev, Zhdanov or Malenkov. A "power map", with Stalin on top and the various top leaders and their key protegees would also have been useful. If you haven't read much Soviet history you should probably stay clear of this book, as it probably is not the most suitable one for a novice.

Stalin once famously introduced Beria to some Americans as "Our Himmler" (Ms Knight has ommitted this anecdote, and I wonder whether that was because she didn't believe it really happened). If one compares Ms Knight's Beria with, for example, Peter Padfield's Himmler (although his book is clearly much less scholarly than Ms Knight's) one can see that Beria was much more realistic and efficient than Himmler. The correct comparison is between Beria and Heydrich. Had the Third Reich truly been a totalitarian state, Himmler would have gone the way of Yagoda and Heydrich would have been Hitler's Beria. With Goering liquidated during the purges that would have followed, the entire foreign service culled for unreliable elements such as Ambassador Schulenburg and the Wermacht rid of likely conspirators such as Claus von Stauffenberg, it is possible that the War might have ended otherwise. But that's a different subject.

Apparently, not everyone in Russia was dying to develop democracy. In fact, the leadership likes to assume in times of trouble that the KGB was never disbanded, Yeltsin used their strong-arm tactics just as effectively as any Soviet premier.

Knight does write an interesting book, but there are some major flaws. I was reading this book for enjoyment, and found that it is about as dry as the vellum the Constitution was printed on - I fell asleep quite easily while reading it. That's not to say I didn't think it was good, I just wouldn't read it if I was suffering from insomnia. The second flaw isn't Knight's fault: this is an account of the first 4 years of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States through the eyes of the former KGB - what about the time since '95? Perhaps a post-Yeltsin update is in order. The third flaw is that Knight's research was primarily Russian newspaper and other media sources - so if you're interested in international espionage for example, the Russian media didn't cover it all except for the Aldritch Ames case.

However it does have its good points, and is a great source for anyone wondering whatever happened to the KGB. I wouldn't drop everything and get it, but if you can find it it is a good enough read.

Amy Knight identifies a part of post-Soviet society that the citizens of that former empire need to reconsile with. The Secret Police Empire is the remnant of Bolshevik terror and corruption that eats away at what could possibly be a law based society. Knight illustrates how post Soviet leaders have tried to distance themselves from their KGB goons but hurry back when going get tough.

A very interesting biography of the Bolshevik leader Kirov, in counterpoint to Stalin. The author's research into formerly secret Soviet archival material shows that Kirov opposed Stalin in certain respects, which may have provided a motive for Stalin to have initiated a plot to assasinate Kirov. The book is more a political biography of Kirov than a whodunit, however. There are some bizarre circumstances to the Kirov murder, which this book details, such as the "accidental" death of Kirov's bodyguard while en route to be interrogated by the KGB. In sum, a very interesting book about a sinister and fascinating era in modern history.

Who Killed Kirov? Even a the conclusion of this fine book the question remains, as Knight informs us in the subtitle, the Kremlin's greatest mystery. Rather than providing a definitive answer to a question that has burned in the minds of Russians, historians, and conspiracy theorists alike since Sergei Kirov's murder in 1934, Knight presents a fascinating and thorough account of the circumstances surrounding his death. Again proving herself the one of the foremost scholars in her field, Knight scrupulously traces the path of evidence leading up to the crime, unfolding clues at every turn. From this book we learn about Kirov, the man and politician, his relationship with Stalin (who used Kirov's murder as a catalyst to launch the bloody purges of his regime), and most importantly, why a study of this event is so crucial to understanding Russian history. Sifting through previously undisclosed archival material, Knight has provided us with the most comprehensive study to date of the murder of Sergei Kirov. Russia has buried much of its fascinating yet grim history. With this book, however, Knight uncovers an important part of it with clarity and insight. Who Killed Kirov? is a page-turner, not only for those interested in Russian history, but also for anyone who enjoys a real-life murder mystery full of intrigue!

Sergei Kirov's assassination in 1934 has often been compared to President Kennedy's assassination some 30 years later. Indeed both shared similarities such as inexplicable bullets and the murder of an eyewitness shortly afterwards. But whereas Kennedy's death led to the rise of LBJ and his "Great Society" initiatives, Kirov's death led directly to Stalin's great purges preceding World War II, with the Soviet slaughter of approximately a million individuals.

For many years, information surrounding Kirov has been shrouded in official secrecy. Now, however, much more information has been made available by the Russian government, and historian/researcher Amy Knight has delved into primary documentation that has been heretofore unavailable. Knight is no stranger to Russian historical research, and her experience pays off with an intriguing and fascinating story. Tracing Kirov's impoverished roots in the north, to his revolutionary political activities as a college student, through his meteoric rise in Bolshevik politics, and finally examining the mysterious circumstances surrounding his murder, Knight gives us a primer in early Soviet history and introduces us to the major historical characters who were intertwined in Kirov's life.

Inevitably, Stalin is implicated as being complicit in Kirov's death, and perhaps arranging it for political purposes. That Kirov's murder was used as an excuse to launch his purges is without doubt. Knight has done an exceptional job of research and has gone the extra mile to produce a readable and interesting book.