As evident from my e-mail address I am a Martha Wells fan. It began with City of Bones (which is my favorite book of hers thus far) and still hasn't ended. I found The Element of Fire and complelety loved it. Death of the Necromancer was excellent, so is it no wonder that I expected having to pull some all-nighters to read Wheel of the Infinite? That the book would become glued to my hand and I would be in a race to finish it? I still did enjoy the book but it was not what I was expecting. I realize that one of Wells strengths comes from her beautiful and complete storytelling. She is very exact and it isn't difficult to find yourself in her worlds because they are created almost seamlessly. Everything fits. However Wells is also very detailed with her characters. I think there is a balance between the setting and the characters that makes her books so believable. You need both. In Wheel I got the impression that this balance was horribly upset. The world where the book takes place was INCREDIBLY detailed. But the characters weren't. Maybe Maskelle's past was suppose to be that enigmatic but if it was it didn't work. Near the end of the book I found myself skimming paragraphs ( I thought I would never do that in a Martha Wells book) that I felt were merely useless discriptions that didn't pertain to the storyline. I was getting desperate for more of the story and desperate to learn more about the characters, and not just the major characters. I couldn't believe that some of the relationships between characters were barely explained and in some cases ignored. That is not like the Martha Wells books I know. By not explaining some of the relationships between characters there was a gap in the story that her setting couldn't cover. For example I found it difficult to believe that the two main characters could find such love, trust and loyalty after sleeping together the second night they knew each other. ( I didn't just give away some of the story because it happens in the second chapter.) With her other books full of complete, three dimentional, complex characters, it was almost an insult to read the seemingly overnight bond of Maskelle and Rian. Comparing it to her other books Wheel seems to be more of a short story. The setting wasn't cut short but the characters were. I would recommend this book though. Wheel does provide an interesting storyline and a surprise ending but I would also recommend not starting it with as high expectations as you would reading her other books. This is not her best.

In WHEEL OF THE INFINITE, Martha Wells has created a fascinating world and belief structure. Each year, the priests and 'voices' must create a microcosm of the world. The connection between the 'wheel' and the world is causal. If they are unable to recreate the world, chaos may result. Maskelle, voice of the Adversary, has lost faith in herself at the same time as the wheel is threatened by a powerful over-writing. Unless Maskelle can overcome her doubts, the world may be destroyed.

Maskelle is an intriguing protagonist. Her doubts are understandable as she killed her husband in response to a false prophecy. For the most part, however, the other characters lack the dimensions shown by Maskelle. The motivation of Maskelle's love interest, in particular, is unclear.

Still, Wells' writing moves the story along with a good mix of adventure, magic, and a world you'll want to return to. ....

I've had Martha Wells tagged as an author to watch ever since I read "City of Bones". Her latest book, "Wheel of the Infinite", is a big, ambitious fantasy story; don't be fooled by its relatviely small page count. It includes a lot if imagination, excellent world-building, and better characters than her previous efforts. After this, I'm really hoping that Wells will get the recognition she deserves as one of the premier fantasy authors alive today.

The story focuses on Maskelle,a priestess who went to exile in disgrace after she misinterpreted a message from 'the Adversary', an ancient spirit that protects the world from evil, and on Rian, her bodyguard, who barely managed to escape a gruesome death in a foreign land. The society where the story takes place seems roughly based on ancient civilzations in Southeast Asia, a welcome break from the typical Mideivel Europe setting in much of modern fantasy. A rite known as 'the wheel of the Infinite' is performed every year, and Maskelle's knowledge is needed to combat an apparent attempt to destroy the wheel. The plot events is this book are densely crammed together, yet it has one of those brilliant "aha!" conclusions where everything comes together and makes sense in the end. I also liked the fact that many of the characters and concepts are highly imaginative. My personal favorite is Gisar, an evil puppet who is constantly attempting to escape from the band of traveling actors that owns him.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, the final hundred pages or so of the book are outstanding. There aren't many fantasy authors who can write sequences that are genuinely frightening, but Wells pulls it off with grand style. It's interesting that fantasy genre is currently dominated by big, bulky series that are generally incoherent and filled with lousy writing. Many of the more talented authors, however, are sticking to relatively short solitary books. Martha Wells can create more engaging characters, build a better realized world, and spin a more exciting story in three-hundred fifty pages that Jordan, Goodkind, or Lackey can do in thousands.

I have just finished an undergradute course which used this book as the main text. I agree with the previous reviewer that there is considerable overlap and occasional contradiction. The early chapters tend to use a lot of technical jargon, and seem to be written for people who already understand the material. I was not so impressed with phylogenic descriptions which frequently failed to discuss unifying characteristics within families. Later sections, including locomotion, water balance, and mate selection are well written. This book would benefit from a glossary, more relevant tables and figures, and a more inclusive index. Overall, editing is rather sketchy.

This is easily the best herpetology text book out there. It is informative, yet not full of the boringness (if that's a word...) of many textbooks. You might say that it's...fun to read.

Despite some fairly serious errors and omissions, this book is the best academic treatment of the field of herpetology yet written. It is a multi-authored text which allows people to write on what they know best, rather than making authors stretch well beyond their fields of expertise. This unfortunately means there's a lot of repetition between chapters, and some flat-out contradictions. It does a fairly good of reviewing the literature in a number of sub-fields of herpetology, and so provides more up-to-date reviews than you're likely to find in "Biology of the Reptilia". It is a good choice for a herpetology course for undergraduates--in fact I plan to use it for such a course in summer 1999. Amazing omissions: dinosaurs!! birds!! biogeography!! Notable inclusions: good chapters on foraging ecology, classification (too short), & thermoregulation.