This small book provides attractive color pictures of every wildflower that it covers. The first time or sometime enthusiast will enjoy this book much more than the more broadly focused Jaeger and Munz classics that have fewer color plates and devote most of their coverage to the Mohave Desert. 1998 has been an extraordinary spring wildflower year. I have attempted to use all three books and found that my success with this one was such that I was able to find and identify about 3/4 of the flowers in the book just from my trips to Borrego Springs, Mecca Road (Box Canyon), Joshua Tree and the Colorado River.

Which is fair enough. I mean, to get these three classic movie bad guys together, you need to bend a few rules. A damn good idea, but in this case, extremely poorly executed. They should have just left it alone. One star for the monsters, one star for the cover.

Well I can't deny it...i absolutely love the Alien, Predator and Terminator. So when I heard of the crossover that pit all 3 against each other, I was thrilled...until I bought it and read it, that is.

This is probably the most convoluted and bizarre story yet in the Aliens vs. Predator universe. It hardly consists of any of the 3 fighting each other at all...at least not to the extent of which the cover and blurb on the back would have one assume. The story tells of John Connor and the resistance defeating Skynet, only to have Skynet reawakened years later by Terminators that have gone into deep cover, posing as scientists. To assure victory, samples of Alien DNA have been used to construct a new generation of Terminator, which the Predators see as a great threat of war.

If it sounds ridiculous...it is. The story is bizarre and goes in all different directions. And worse yet...it spins off of Alien: Resurrection. That alone makes me not like this comic, aside from the bizarre story and sub-par artwork. The story even has Ripley 'become' a Predator. So...she's human, she's Alien, and now she's Predator. The book just gets worse and worse as you go on.

I suppose if you are a fan of any or all of the characters, like I am, it should pique your interest. But the sloppy and senseless story combined with the elements that made Resurrection such a bad movie, not to mention the lack of attention paid to detail both in artwork and in story, just make this comic unreadable. This is a crossover that had so much potential, and it could have been in so many different, better ways...but it turned out to be nothing more than an attempt to throw 3 popular franchises into one book as a cash-graber. Buy this if you are a collector and want it for your collection, but don't bother reading it. Otherwise just stay away from it completely.

AvPvT is a very interesting plot, but the it gets one star off because the Aliens are only featured in three pages at the most, and they weren't drawn as well as the predators or terminators. How do each of the three races fit in the story? The Terminators are using Alien anatomy to perfect their combat effeciency, and the Predators have come in to stop that. The story follows Ripley, after Alien Resurrection. She is forced to follow Call and her friends to infiltrate a military compound to stop the Alien research that is going on there. The mission goes wrong when they encounter a Terminator/Alien hybrid and a band of predators that kill most of the team and cause havoc, and you figure it all out from there. The story was rushed for a book of this length, and a lot of events happen waaay too quickly, and some events take too long. For instance, one part where the team witnesses a terminator/alien hybrid fight a predator takes 12 pages, while an event where two terminator/alien hybrids single handedly attack and destroy 2 military bases, and wipe out an entire fleet of ships takes 10 pages!!!! AvPvT gets a point off for that. However, it gets 3 points for art and creativity. The art is about as close as you'll get to an anime styled AvP comic, it was all well drawn with a lot of effort and very original. The idea of how the story continues off Alien Resurrection is very original, the way the plot uses the three sides is original as well, though the aliens deserved more credit. Its a unique book. If you want an AvP book with unique art and story, this is it. But if you want something with more bite, with more of a realistic yet cinematic feel, consider getting Stronghold.

I picked up this book and was very disappointed--even more disappointed than after watching Death to Smoochy. It lacked all of the wit and satirical insight that Stewart usually brings with both his writing and delivery. Granted, his performance in the movies that he has been in have somewhat failed to bring forth his dynamic humor, but this book failed beyond that of even his movies. Unfortunately, the ending never delivered the cynical turnaround/punchline that I thought he spent most of the book setting up. Honestly, I can't really even enjoy his show any more. Stay away, this book is bad news.

This book, although amusing in sound, lacks the depth and intricacy that normally shows the extremely involved beliefs of both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.