While the old Werewolf tribe book series was, for the most part, very well done, the current revised editions of both the Black Fury and Bone Gnawer books were improvements of the original books on both the respective tribes. Sadly, that trend did not continue with the Children of Gaia, the one tribe book I really would have wanted to see an improvement with.

The previous book did not do much to enamour me to the tribe, as the author seemed to be writing as if they were mostly a tribe of free-loving hippies, and while there isn't anything wrong with that in and of itself, it does seem to jibe uncomfortably with the whole concept of being a Rage-filled Garou. As such, the new book could (and does) shatter many of the stereotypes provided by the previous book.

Of course, the authors instead chose to weld the book around a narrative of a pack of Children, and this is where the book falls a bit short. White Wolf can do narrative books effecively, as seen in the revised Mage Tradition books, but they can also fall flat, as seen in the previous edition Tradition books. This one falls flat with a group of Children having issues vaguely defined, which is probably OK as the characters themselves were vaguely defined, and with the exception of the homosexual Ahroun, the group was fairly interchangeable in many respects. What character traits that were present were poorly defined in a couple cases and in others distracting (you mean the very angry Metis was the pack Theurge?!?). Character perspective flips around at the drop of a hat, you can never tell who is present for any given scene, and there even seems to be a hint that the convoluted short story at the beginning of the book was enough to let the reader know who was who and what they could do (it isn't). The overall effect of this distracted me from what should have been the meat of the book: the Children as a tribe and the issues that effect it. It can be difficult to follow the book's pupose if the author's are digressing all the time into the love lives of various characters.

The original tribebook for Children of Gaia was very well done. This one has horrible. The original tribebook made you want to play a Child; this one drives you away from it. As Tom says, the dialogue was lame and the Children just seem like a bunch of slackers. The back of the book section, with new gifts, feats, etc. has very little of worth to add.

If you don't have the previous book, then sure, get it. Otherwise, avoid.

I bought this book with the hope of reading how top contemporary Protestant scholars address the issue of ecclesiology espoused by Rome and the Orthodox. It left me sadly disappointed. The chapter that addresses the four marks of the church defined in the nicene creed did not attempt to reconcile Protestant perceptions of those terms with the historical understanding of the council fathers. None dealt substantially with Eph 5:32. I was further saddened that one author criticized the piety of Catholics on the basis of his understanding rather than taking the time to just ask some of them why they were doing it. All guns trained against Catholicism while the Eastern Orthodox hold nearly identical views on ecclesiology. Perhaps someday a book with less rhetoric and polemic will attempt to address issues that build understanding rather than polarizing divisiveness.

If you are in Secured Credit and are using White's textbook - "Secured Transactions - Teaching Materials" copyright 2000, do not buy his hornbook. He has merely lifted the explanatory text from the textbook and put it together as a hornbook. Furthermore, if you are looking for help on Secured Credit, there are other books that work much harder to make it understandable to the novice. "Understanding Article 9" is one of them.

This book would have made a fine already-been-done 80-page story. The book is 365 pages long, and it is very boring. VERY. It takes till page 300 for anything real to happen. Don't bother.