Unlike its predecessor, "If at Faust" is not funny, the characters are entirely unformed--even the ones we met in the prequel--and there are many agitating inconsistencies in the plot. This is supposedly about a contest between good and evil which takes place at the close of every milennium. It was pretty clear when the first book took place, but this one is less certain. Are we in the year 2000? There's no indication. If we are, why do the contestents concern themselves so much with the medieval and renaissance cultures? Demons in the contemporary world might have been fun. And if this is not the year 2000, why in the world is there a contest? Several stages and characters are set up and introducted and then are just left alone, never developing into anything important or interesting. Basically, nothing happens, and it's just not funny. It's missing the absurd adorability and enchanting ingenuity (and humor) of the first book, "Bring Me the Hea! d of Prince Charming." All I can say in it's favor is that it's a very quick read.

If At Faust you don't Succeed is the second book of a trilogy made by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley. Though this book wasn't nearly as good as the first, I must say that it was still a worthy sequel. In this book, there is a contest being held between good and evil, and the victor gets to rule over mankind for the next thousand years. In this book, a human named Faust was chosen to represent mankind, but a thief named Mack accidentally got put in his place. So Faust goes off in search of Mack through time and space so he can switch places with Mack and gain his rightful place in the contest. If at Faust you Don't Succeed seems to be a bit more serious than the book before it (Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming), so some readers may be turned off by this fact. Other than that, it is still a great book and worth reading if you were a fan of the first book.

8/13/01 I have read both Zelazny's and Sheckley's books:"If At Faust You Don't Succeed"(timed in the middle ages with the wrong apothecary being kidnapped by the evil forces in error) and "Bring Me The Head Of Prince Charming", where body parts of the dead, are used to reconstruct a Prince (using legs of a coward who'd run away during a battle which gave the legs the magic of 'speed'.They had credit cards from the supernatural world for their expense account to be able to pay for the services and supplies they needed from 'dark humans' who dealt in darkness with the occult,etc.The bottom line in these millenium wars between good and evil was that the good would default it they used any dishonest means to win the power of 1000 years and the bad would default if they used anything but their atypical deceptions to win the power to influence the world for 1000 years.. Although you're almost sure from the beginning who'll win, the book has enough slapstick humor to make you want to go the route with them as the baddies feel they've got their scheme in place this time.

I was disappointed. I was hoping for a harder hitting futuristic satire; what I got was a lightweight story with mostly uninteresting characters. Perhaps if you are really into advertising and marketing the novel is worthwhile. For the average casual reader I would say skip this one.

Faust's Huxley-ish "Pembroke Hall" series (Brave New Advertising Industry?) is chockful of wicked satire and hilarious sendups of the PR field. The author's "day job" in that environment allows him cutting insight into his characters and their motivations as they pursue their "daily Jones" of success and $$. I very much recommend this novel and the continuation: "Boddekker's Demons".

This is one of the more original and enjoyable stories that I have read in a while. As long as Faust keeps writing, I'm hooked!

I'm a college ESL instructor, and am a bit frustrated. This book has some good exercises, and is very good, but it DOES have errors, and no web site or phone number is given for support. In these Internet-intensive days, a support web site should be a given! I've got to correct students' homework now, seeing if they found the 8 grammatical errors in the given paragraph; I can only find 7! I wish there were someone to contact.

This book let you catch the most important thing easily. What's more, you would be suprised at it's detail which makes you understand the tricky things... Whenever you are stuck, it will give best help.

This tale benefits greatly from Foust's style; he deftly handles the protagonist's clashes and friendship with a Greek family on the family's own, dangerous turf. The book jacket trumpeted comparisons with Hemingway, and it was right. This book provides a tight, literate summer read

After reading Uris' "Trinity" and a Roth's "Sabbath's Theatre" I was looking for something entertaining but not heavy or with four pages devoted to the innerpsyche of each character. While the book was sometimes predictable, I enjoyed the redeeming qualities of the lead character Jay contrasted to the Krisos' family members. Indeed, from the pedophile homosexual elderly brothers to the classic bullfighter, each character was a contrast that moved the book through the somewhat tired plot

I thought that it was a wonderful Manga except for the fact that he beats the enemies quickly with one move where the enemies have been pounding him for 1/2 hour. and he could have beat them a lot earlier, but he did not for no reason. The book would be a lot better if there were more battles that were drwn out a lot longer, but they aren't. However the animation is good and so is the storyline.

This is one of the most awesome mangas out there! If you don't have it I would definitely say you should get it. Awesome storyline and cool robots and ofcourse GUNS! heeheehee

Overall gives a good run down on biotechnology. I do find some of the topics over simplified and I do find the general material somewhat dated. Still, not a bad addition to your library.

I thought that this book was wonderful, it's content was direct and to the point while still telling a wonderful story of this woman's struggles of keeping secrect among the Union soldiers. I love this story and I would recomend it to anyone that has an inerest in the Civil War.

This book is a welcome addition to the literature concerning China's role in the new global order. It serves as a good counterpoint to literature such as Bernstein and Munroe's the Coming Conflict with China, in that it takes a much more rational, historically grounded analysis of China's impact on global politics.

The early chapters survey modern Chinese history, and later chapters detail Chinese relationships with various key states. The final chapters discuss emerging global regimes and explore some of the reasons that China has been unable to clarify its own role in international relations.

The strength of the book lies in its integrated, broad-based approach. It should provide a realistic, even-handed introduction to the issues involved with China's role in the future.

I loved this book, although there were some slow points that lowered the rate, and it was just a wee bit too moral for me (also known as Christina Faust, also known as High Priestess of The Elder Gods). But I loved it, anyway. Faust is just so cool. This story makes soul-dealing really fashionable (which probably wasn't what Mr Marlowe meant in the first place). In fact, if I hadn't read it at the impressionable age of eleven, I would surely just be another bored small-town student today, instead of having infinite power over all shattered souls in this insane swirl of chaos that is Azathoths realm.

This book is well-written and contains fascinating information, especially in the early sections dealing with Berlin's pre-Germanic, Slavic history. Later on, the bloody Soviet assault on the city in 1945 against ferocious resistance is depicted magnificiently, while Richie's account of atrocities committed by Soviet troops is truly horrifying. Where Faust's Metropolis runs into trouble is in the author's tendency to slip into factual errors and in her more pronounced tendency to present her reactionary political interpretations as indisputable depictions of reality. Some of the factual errors are relatively minor; an example would be her assertion that during World War I the expensive German battleships were never used. Actually, they were used - against the British at Jutland, one of the most spectacular naval battles ever fought. In addition, she actually believes, or claims to believe, that Britain entered World War I to protect the neutrality rights of Belgium. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the War knows that the British themselves initially planned to invade neutral Holland in order to strike at Germany; the plan was abandoned out of military considerations, not legal or ethical ones. More serious are the errors brought on by the author's hatred of Marxism. One need not be an admirer of Stalin in order to realize that her claim that he spurned Britain and France in order to sign a pact with Hitler is pure nonsense. Stalin signed the pact only after the Western allies refused to sign an alliance with him, hoping that the Germans would attack the U.S.S.R. rather than Poland and France. Another area in which she substitutes fantasy for history is in her treatment of Generals Montgomery and Patton and their conflicts with Eisenhower. Both are presented as heroic in their eagerness to provoke a confrontation with the Soviets; Patton, she tells us, was fired "because the Americans would not allow anyone to sour relations with Stalin." Actually, Eisenhower removed Patton from his command after he disobeyed direct orders to stop associating with Nazis and openly planning for World War III. Montgomery, another head case, is lauded for his plan to dash accross Germany and seize Berlin just as it was in the grasp of the Soviets. Somehow he emerges as the hero of the Battle of the Bulge; Richie contends that Eisenhower "hid in his headquarters" during the battle because he feared that the Germans would try to assassinate him. Richie's treatment of the G.D.R. after the War reads like one of those pamphlets I was given to read in grade school - the ones written by J.Edgar Hoover or Cardinal Spellman. She finds nothing good about East Germany, not even free, guaranteed medical care or daycare for children, which are described as "rigid social benefits." What are non-rigid social benefits? The kind you get in the form of a trust account or monthly checks from an affluent mommy and daddy? Sometimes her denunciations take on a hysterical tone, as when she declares that the Evangelical Church of the G.D.R. (which made a point of attacking racism and human inequality) was "was very much the successor of Hitler's 'National Church.'" Ravings like this pass beyond the borders of muddled thinking and sloppy scholarlship and enter that of ideological fanaticism. Richie sides with every cold war hardliner she comes accross, from Richard Pipes to James Baker. Detente was a big mistake, we are assured, because it gave the Soviets military superiority in Europe; why they didn't use it to evict the West is not explained. Willy Brandt's opening to the East was also a no-no; he should have followed the Christian Democrats in blindly following the U.S. Ronald Reagan is a big hero; his absurd Star Wars plan, Richie thinks, is what led to the fall of the Soviet Union and the G.D.R. One has to wonder about the judgement of an author who believes that Reagan, whose government financed the Guatemalan and Salvadoran death squads, stood for international freedom and justice. In a lengthy and sanctimonious afterward the author's right-wing agenda becomes even more explicit. she lectures West Berliners that "the road away from the United States is the road to disaster" and insults Willy Brandt's widow as "pathetic" for begging to differ. She also lumps the Greens ("dreamy environmentalists") and Berlin's new leftists in with vicious neo-Nazis as opponents of U.S. leadership. At some points in this book Richie seems to reject the concept of collective guilt for the Holocaust, at other points she wants the Communists, who themselves were murdered, jailed or forced into exile by the Nazis, to assume responsibility for it. In the afterward she encourages "all Berliners ... to try to be worthy of forgiveness." This will probably happen around the same time that British Tories accept responsibility for Britain's leading role in the slave trade and for the genocical witholding of food during the Irish Potato Famine. One last point. For someone who throws around so many phrases about freedom and democracy, Richie seems to have a rather odd idea of how this works out in practice. As a sign of "hope and optimism" she notes that "hard-line East German teachers were barred from schools" after reunification. In other words, Marxist teachers were fired, as they were in the U.S. in the McCarthy Era. The old Tory interpretation of individual rights - Of course you have freedom of speech. All we ask is that you don't try to exercise it.

The heart of this book is its all encompassing nature. Ms. Richie describes many aspects of Berlin's history from the mightiest ruler to the lowliest peasant. Her portrayal of the central role that Berlin and Berliners played in Nazi Germany is the most even-handed account that I have read. If there are any flaws in this work it is Ms. Richie's over-emphasis of 20th century events. Not enough space is devoted to the pre-Bismarck history of Berlin.

The part of Richie's book that was truly about Berlin was good. The problem was that she spent too much time and space discussing the history of Prussia/Germany. What I wanted -- and what I assume you are looking for -- is a history of the city of Berlin. That is, when buildings were constructed, details of municipal government, urban planning, major social events pertaining to the city, etc.