We felt like we wasted our money on this guide. The authors tried to cover too much ground in one book -- in doing so, the reader is left with a feeling that the info is incomplete and inadequate. We did not visit Latvia or Lithania, but we did see some of Moscow and St. Petersburg before taking the Finnish Sibelius train to Helsinki. We also visited Tallinn, Estonia by Silja's wonderful "Super Seacat IV" ferry. (The two of us traveled on our own -- avoiding the tour groups.) Russia/Finland/Estonia is a wonderful trip to for younger and older adults (leave the small kids at home). The title of the book is somewhat misleading, as the authors focus on and cram Helsinki, Tallinn, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and Riga into 138 pages. Page 42, "Eating in Helsinki" only received 2/3 of a page (five short paragraphs). The chapter on Tallinn, Estonia is only 15 pages and is sadly incomplete -- as we walked around Tallinn, we wondered if Rick Steves had actually ever visited Estonia.

Simply stated, this book borders on useless. If you buy this book and are planning to go to the Baltics, I hope you only want to see the capital cities. There is no mention of the beautiful seaside resort towns, eco-tourism spots which are very popular there, or even the major cities other than Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn. Similarly, with Russia, don't plan on learning any useful info beyond what's written on Moscow & St. Petes. Even the info which *is* presented is so minimalistic that you it would not aide anyone. Advice such as "ask a native speaker to help you get a taxi" isnt exactly helpful, is it? No, and neither are the handdrawn maps. One saving grace with this book: it has good bus information (but the most recent info given is for 1997!). Want a good guide on the Baltics? Check out the "Lonely Planet" guide for this region, which I would give at least 4 out of 5 stars. I hope Amazon lets me "return" Rick Steve's book.

This book covers the gateway that you'll probably use (in my case Helsinki), the cities you'll probably go to (Moscow and St. Petersburg), and the Baltics. Steves separated the wheat from the chaff, and this tiny guide was all I needed for 2 weeks in Russia and the Baltics. Others may be bigger, but they will have you working overtime to determine where to go, and what to do. This tiny little guide covered everything needed for the independent traveler. The only thing I have to criticize is: whenever possible use trains, not buses.

Boy was I suprised to find out how horrible this book was, especially after how good the first two in the series were. The impression that I had was that Mr. Watson grew board of writing this book and just gave up. This book leaves the reader with more loose ends than a cheap afghan, and its characters devolve to cardboard simpletons, however I lack the superlatives to to describe how poor the ending was. My advise read the first and second books .....then STOP.

I will keep it short and very un-sweet. The first book in this trilogy is awesome. The second book was so-so and naturally I thought the final book of the trilogy would boost the worthiness of reading the second book. I got to a point when reading this book that I just wanted to discard it and move onto something better. I do not expect spectacular dialogue or likeable characters from the Warhammer universe because it is a very dark and depressing atmosphere. This book made Watsons work with that horrible A.I. flick seem genius. My greatest problem with the book is that none of the storylines from the trilogy come to a conclusion. I am not going to put up spoilers.

My suggestion is to read Jaq Draco(First book) and be happy with how that one ends and forget the other two were ever made.

After this series started out with the excellent Draco and then onto the above average Harlequin, Chaos Child is very disappointing. Nothing in this book was extraordinary, the plot, the characters, nothing. There are interesting things that do happen but they're barely covered while relatively mundane events receive top notch coverage. All of the subplots, the intrigue, everything is abandoned except Jaq's personal quest. Half of the time this book seems to be rushing to finish and then it feels like it's dragging it's feet just to extend the book. Horrible job, the only reason this gets 3 stars is because it finished Jaq Draco's story.

Sadly dissapointing. Unlike the title I was hoping for some hard questions to be raised and answers offered, they were not. Instead we get a mediocre chase adventure of characters chasing after a stolen laptop with a fridge connected to it (cooling system) very much like the forgetable budget TV series where they leap in and out of different dimensions/reality. all done before and better Hainlen, Start Trek ect. Even the ending is flat. Dissapointing for book that came recommended. Sorry about the spelling english is my second language.

Although the back cover optimistically refers to six stories, there are only two present. In "On Active Service" Watson tells "young" Stamford of his Mycroft-assigned job to dog the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, to keep him from giving away to his Arab cohorts the British plans to betray them. In "The Report," Mycroft tells Stamford about an earlier mission of Watson to Russia, to investigate the situation of the Tsar and his family, just before and just after the Tsar's overthrow. These stories make up only about 1/5 of the book. The remaining material is "backstory" on Holmes, Watson and Stamford. Holmes never actually appears in either of the stories.

The narrative structure of the tales is almost absurdly complicated. For example, "The Report" is as told by Mycroft, but in parts Watson speaks in the first person, while other parts are in the third person. It seems to me, as in the case of the author's earlier book ELEMENTARY CASES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, that the various parts of the book were written at widely separated times with no overall plan in view, and stitched together with the minimum possible revision.

With Holmes off-stage, the focus is on Watson just before, during and just after WWI. Can you picture Watson driving racing cars as a hobby? He does here, even though he is poor enough to have had to pawn his pocket watch. Can you picture Watson as a rugby three-quarter? He was, here.

I think readers will be mainly interested in "The Solitary Student," which gives some speculative details of Holmes' family situation and university days. It's a good guess by Charnock that he would have started out studying theology, because of his frequent, quite peculiar theological references as recorded by Watson.

Don't expect too much here and you won't be let down. This is in no way a collection of stories involving the adventures of Holmes, of Watson, or of Holmes and Watson together. It's more of a scrapbook than anything else.

The srory is about a future space expedtion sent to a planet lightyears away to investigate the loss of contact with the earlier colony ship. the crew find the earlier colonists living in a world based around a medieval painting depicting heaven and hell.
the plot is not convincing, it is obvious the author is trying to deal with the inconsistencies in the christian doctrine by supeimposing it on a science fiction background, alas he is not successful. besides, There are no new ideas here at all.
If you are looking for science fiction, dont read this one.