Mary Louise Pratt has a lot of fresh and important things to say, but her writing style makes this book tough to read. I consider myself a good reader, I can usually pick out main ideas and meanings quite easily, but I found this book really frustratingly hard to read! Pratt flip-flops between a readable, clear style and one in which she employs almost indeciperable sentences. I think her message is really important and structurally, "Imperial Eyes" is smartly organized, but it takes a lot of patience and re-reading to understand it.

It is interessting to read how a modern city like Berlin is undermined and controlled by vampires. Unfortunately it has some mistakes according Berlin's history. For example after WW2 till 1961 people could almost freely cross the border between east and west, and even after the erection of the Berlin Wall cainites could have gone to the other side. The diverse struggles for power between two princes of the city and the clans, the sects and who ever is fighting are pictured tensing. The idea of powerful elders controlling the city from torpor sounds rather strange.
The book contents a history of the city through the ages, descriptions of all districts, a couple of special quarters and several places of interest. It includes long and detailed portrays of most of the kindred in Berlin. However, if you don't know anything about Berlin and Germany, it might be difficult to role-play only by this book. It provides no hints which Clans control the places of power (Police, Government, Mafia, etc.) Many things changed over the past decade but others are still up to date.
The second part of the book contains a weird story. Some details seem to indicate that the authors never visited Berlin themselves. The old Gedaechtniskirche (Memorial Church) where the meetings are held is almost tiny inside. Not a quarter of space you need to gather Berlin's Kindred society. The Kurfuerstendamm is never, never free of mortals, even during heavy rainstorms. The story itself neither elaborated nor intriguing. A sad story!

...

Berlin by night sets up a lot of good potential story ideas. The political conflicts and the struggle between the princes is presented in an interesting fashion. The kindred are all fascinating. A few of them are even historical figures. The description of the city could have used more work as well as the general culture. Based on the descriptions it could have been any generic city. It really didn't provide a feel for the area. The sample story was a bit silly but entertaining. It did introduce a fascinating Setite character and her awesome plans. Storytellers should do some research on their own to supplement this book if they plan to use Berlin for their games.

The book is not meant for a programmer. Very few examples, ... most of them are excerpts anyway. Perhaps this book would be useful as a text book for a "weed-out-the-juniors" class. The included executables work as shown, but there is not much else you can do with them. Bottom Line: Don't waste your money.

This book is a waste of time. It tells you nothing that a basic business book couldn't. It is all common sense: Be nice to people... Duh! Call people and...OK? To pay [money]is unreal for a book that could have been written by a high school kid. This tells me that anyone with enough effort can be published.

Unfortunately, this book was not very good for what I was looking for (or for anything else I imagine). The topics are covered from such a high and vague level that it proves un-actionable. She ends up writing roughly 2-3 pages on each topic and in that amount of time you don't really learn anything. I suspect you would learn more from just hanging out at a cocktail party at your local community art center.

I looked at this book when i was searching for a science project. I tried to do the one project on diffusion on water molecules, but it didnt work!!!! I ended up using a project from another book. I do not reccommend this book. If anyone wants to do a project that does not work, buy the book.

I hate to be rough, on a supposedly funny book, but look out! This little girl doesn't follow her bosses rules, lies to her master of the house and dances all day. What kind of lessons are those for a child. She even lies to a stranger on his way over for dinne, because she eats everything, glutton. I don't get this. I took this out from the library and it went back. Even my kids didn't think it was funny.