Currently, I'm practicing for the MCATs. I've compared the tests in this book to the sample exams in Barron, Kaplan, and Princeton. It rates lower than the others, if edition 2001 or recent. The passages are highly quantitative and not qualitative. If you want to test your foundation, give this book a shot. The verbal passages are definetely too easy in this book for the real deal. The physical sciences introduce common experiments, graphs, etc seen thru college coursework. Sadly, this won't be on the exam. Nevertheless, it helped me clear up certain areas which I misunderstood. If you're really running out of sources than I recommend u refer to this book, otherwise look into the Kaplan 45. Those passages will twist your brain into knots.

This was Bradley's third published book, originally published in slightly abridged format in 1963, later re-issued in 1983 in its complete form. Readers picking up the later release may be surprised by the relative unsophistication of this book compared to other works she was writing in eighties.

Technically, this is a semi-juvenile, with a protagonist, Bart Steele, who has just graduated from the Space Academy, ready to return to his Vegan home, where his father manages a fleet of inter-planetary space ships. Interstellar travel is the sole province of the alien Lhari, and humans can only ride as passengers in cold sleep in their vessels, supposedly due to the inability of the human body to withstand the stresses of hyperspace travel. The Lhari have formed a simple relationship with the Mentorians, humans who have had a slight genetic shift that allows them to withstand very high light illumination levels. The Lhari, who are also color blind, normally prefer these high light levels, matching their home world's level of illumination. Bart, who is half Mentorian, can also see farther into the optical spectrum than normal, allowing him to see an eighth 'color'. This provides the basis for the book's title, and plays a role in the final plot resolution. The Mentorians provide translation, color interpretation, and other services for the Lhari, setting them somewhat apart from the rest of humanity, who look upon them with some suspiscion.

The story revolves around Bart being co-opted to find the secret of the Lhari warp-drive fueling material by surgically changing his appearance so he could pass as a Lhari and having him ship out as a crew member on a Lhari ship that is home world bound. During the trip, he naturally finds that many of his Lhari crewmates are neither ogres nor saints, and comes to question the moral rightness of 'stealing' this secret. The story is told as a very straight line progression, without any real surprises, and is therefore quite predictable in terms of final outcome, both in external society sense and in terms of Bart's development. Thematically, this book restricts itself to 'different is not necessarily bad' and 'the end does not justify the means', providing little in the way of fresh insight.

In general, a pretty standard space-opera plot typical of the late fifties and early sixties in science fiction, good for some mild entertainment, but also clearly showing that Bradley had not yet found her unique and powerful voice.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

The book seems to be oriented towards students learning about information systems in the healthcare context and is quite elementary in the topics covered. I didn't learn very much and preferred "Information Technology for Integrated Health Systems" (an Errnst and Young book) edited by Kerry Kinsinger and Sandra Borchardt.

I already took the MCAT and decided to retake it. This book gives a cursory glance at important info. and sometimes completely leaves out vital concepts. The examples are a little too easy especially for the verbal section. Also, the verbal section has not been updated for the 2003 test as advertised (they have 65 ques. instead of 60). Despite this, I did like the study tips that they give, most of which you can find in the AAMC student manual. It's an "OK" book to have, but the MCAT is way too important for you to risk depending solely on this book.

This book is a collection of the private letters between Henry Louis Mencken and Sara Haardt during their long courtship. In these letters, one will find much that will interest the Mencken fan, but little of much true interest. There is no dirt to be had here, just the reflections of a couple of people who are very fond of each other and very fond of writing. One may gain an insight into the times in which they live and the hardships of Prohibition and of life in the 1920's in general, but a thorough reading of Mencken's other works is far more revealing.

This book is more of a therapist's guide to dealing with a few particular narcisstic marriages. The only thing this book does is to discuss certain narcisstic personalities in a marriage situation. That's about as far as the author takes the topic. Narcissism is only talked about in a marriage setting, not in terms of any love or relationships outside of a marriage. While the author does give some interesting examples and does well comparing and contrasting narcisstic and non-narcisstic personalities, the examples are few and are very particular to certain types of marriges and are hard apply to anything else. The author also doesn't give any clues on how to go about changing narcisstic patterns if you're stuck in them, which is what I was hoping to find when I bought the book.

Chesney's characters are delightful, adorable, and funny. The situations she creates rival Jane Austen's. In this book, I found Belinda's circumstances wholly uncreditable. After four previous sisters have gone through such contretemps to retrieve the house of Mannerling, I would think that it was time o stop. After the third book I thought perhaps she had expounded on the subject to its full extent. I would recommend one of Chesney's other sextets before continuing this one. Specifically the one about the Tribbles and their School of Manners.

While reading this book, I continually had to check the cover to verify it had been Marion Zimmer Bradley who produced this twaddle. The authors she uses are continually getting younger and the quality is dropping.

This book is by far not the best book that I have read on pirates. It is written more for a woman who is feeling bad about her sexuality. The book is an effort to list every woman, fictional and otherwise, that has ever had a role in maritime history. The book starts out by talking about ancient gods (yes, female gods) that related to the sea. This discussion is better saved for a book on mythology because it was a good summary of female gods but it did not pertain to pirates. The book moves on and talks about female pirates through the ages all over the world. While this is somewhat informative I believe that the significance of these woman pirates in history is way overstated. Female pirates were very few and far between, and many really shouldn't be considered pirates. The best part of the book was the discussion of the most netorious women pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. These two chapters were interesting and informative but they were also burried in the book. I would suggest a book that includes but is not limited to woman pirates because the fact is that there were very few woman pirates in history. The last quarter of the book focused on the politics of the Jolly Roger. This section helped to save the book but it often repeated and contradicted the first part of the book. I noticed a few inaccurate statements in this section, but on the whole this section was well done. This book is not a total waste of time, but it gets off topic and overstates things in my opinion. Women have played a huge part in world history, just not as pirates.

Ditto what the previous reviewer said, I've got another thing that was wrong - the fact that in this book it was stated that all Comyn with laran were red haired and grey eyed when she previously described Dyan Ardais (who no one would doubt his telepathic power) as dark haired. Also, she made Danilo (among other things) red haired in this book, and in Heritage, he was dark haired. =] Just some additions to the previous reviewer's list!

Of all the Darkover books, this is the one that should have been either rewritten completely (a la Sword of Aldones becoming Sharra's Exile) or never reprinted. It was written early, before the development of many Darkovan characters and plots, and it quite simply does not make any sense given later novels.

Among the worst examples:

1. At the end of Sharra's Exile, Darkover has joined the Terran Empire (which turns out to be a democracy, not a monolithic Evil Empire out to destroy primitive planets). Given this, there is no reason for the World Wreckers to attempt to destroy the planet.

2. In Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile, Regis Hastur is depicted as bisexual with a preference for men (or rather, for *a* man, Danilo Syrtis). Danilo is his own age, and is his best friend as well as his lover. The romance with Linnea may just *barely* make sense (it's foreshadowed in Heritage of Hastur), but Danilo's complete lack of jealousy (and his apparent age!) are absurd.

3. The "sex settles everything" ending worked *once*, in Forbidden Tower. It comes across as very, very dated and early 70s.

4. Given that the Comyn have officially surrendured power on Darkover at the end of Sharra's exile, the attempts to kill what Comyn are left should rather be directed at the non-Comyn authorities, such as the Renunciates.

5. Andrea Closson is supposedly out to kill the Comyn because they displaced the chieri. However, considering that chieri intermarried with the Comyn, and that chieri features such as polydactylity and laran are dominant, destroying the Comyn means that she's destroying the last remnants of the chieri. Huh?

If the Chosen Continuators such as Adrienne Martine-Barnes *really* want to do Darkover a service, they should rewrite this. Right now it's probably the weakest of the MZB-written books, and that includes some mighty weak books.....

There were some very good ideas here, and I suppose that theoretically the other (later and better!) books should have been written to be more consistent with this one, but...

Ditto on what the previous reviewers said about inconsistencies, and another one I noticed - Regis is described as fairly short in World Wreckers, while in Heritage he's 5'10" at 15 (and presumably expected to grow some more).

The romance between David and Keral was written well enough and with enough sensitivity to keep this from being a one-star review, but damn, I wish this had been rewritten as The Bloody Sun was....