We once again check out an instalment in the lives of Butch Karp, Chief Assistant District Attorney and his wife, Marlene Ciampi, a director of an international security agency. Butch finds himself faced with challenge after challenge, both professional and personal.

On the professional front, cases are being assigned priority in the DA's office based on their political appeal rather on their prosecutorial merits. A police cover-up is being rushed through the system, much to Butch's disgust. And a man faces the death penalty for a crime that he probably didn't commit.

The problems on the personal side are just as worrying for Butch. Lucy, his 17 year-old daughter is ditching school and choosing to hang out at the local soup kitchen, helping the homeless. Marlene has just become independently wealthy and uses this newfound wealth to go on outlandish buying sprees by day and drinking binges by night.

Quite a good deal of the book deals with the political aspects of Butch's position as Chief Assistant District Attorney. This doesn't exactly make for edge-of-the-seat thrill a minute drama. Between dwelling on the psychological problems faced by Butch, Marlene and Lucy, there is not a lot of time left to actually expand on the mystery side of the plot, that is, who is the bum-slasher. As a result, the bum-slasher was virtually revealed as an afterthought and just as quickly, dismissed.

This really is an update of the story so far of a day in the lives of Butch Karp and family. Consequently, I would recommend this for people who have read previous books by Tanenbaum and are aware of what has happened in the past.

This may not be the Butch and Marlene story that Tanenbaum has written, but mediocre Tanenbaum is better than the best of John Grisham. Marlene goes on a tangent that is one of the best parts of this book when she gets filthy rich and cannot get enough shopping or enough vintage wine. Lucy is her mother's daughter all the way. Butch is really left more confused than usual, but manages to cope. If you are not yet a Butch and Marlene fan, start with the first and read them in order. Wouldn't you love to see Cher play Marlene in a movie!

At his worst, Robert K. Tanenbaum is a good read. At his best, he is a fabulous read. The Enemy Within is neither his worst nor his best. In his latest book, the plot relies heavily on coincidence, and the closing sequence is nothing short of surreal.

Nonetheless Tanenbaum is still excruciatingly funny. Had I ever entertained ambitions to belong to New York's social glitterati, Marlene's brief sojourn therein would have cured me forever. Marlene has regressed back into a character rather more unlovely than she has been for some time, and the scope of her exploits makes even Nancy Drew sound plausible. But at her strangest (and with questionable motivation) Marlene is still fun and funny to read about.

And Tanenbaum manages to make Butch and Marlene Karp's daughter Lucy palatable which is no small feat since she has evolved from being not merely a linguistic phenomenon but additionally a mystic one. Not content with conquering the world's spoken languages, Lucy is now tuning in words that no one else can hear. I do care about the compelling Lucy, but Marlene is more interesting, just as in Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan is the more engaging, at least in a literary sense.

Tanenbaum has an annoying tendency to toss his secondary protagonists aside before their time, which is not fair when all of them are so vivid and so well defined. If he absolutely promises to live forever and never to stop writing, he may yet redeem himself (Tran is thankfully brought back here in one of the book's many coincidences) but the author had better eat all his veggies and otherwise look after his health, because otherwise even his fans will find certain omissions unbearable. Quick, how long till the next Tanenbaum?

I buy this book to help learn .NET to take MicroSoft tests. Did not know book is writen for beta .NET. I did not pass test since I learned from wrong version.

DO NOT BUY. Is old and no help.

Forget this book, unless you application the same as theirs.

This book provides an exellence big picture of .NET in developing an e-commerce website. It will definitely save you a lot of time in developing a website. It does not provide in detail on how do you implement it though. You would need specific books on asp.net and on VB.net or C# to complement it.

...it's good as a fill-in. The series seems to be drawing too slow, and there could be too many books written before they hit the end of the L5R Clan War storyline. Great work was done with Tadaka but too little with the others and their corruptions. And contrary to popular belief, namely victor_kuo, the L5R product line is not being ended. Rather it is being sold, and rumors are all pointing to Alderac, who owns the RPG, Clan Wars miniatures and who have contributed much to the L5R history. I'm eagerly waiting for the Crab novel and hope it comes on time. Anyway, as the story of Isawa Tadaka this book is fantastic. As the story of the Phoenix it lacked. Much too similar to the Scorpion novel. While it worked for the Scorpion, as the Coup was essentially the story of Bayushi Shoju, it fails at the Phoenix. At least the fan fics can have some character development to play off of. Definitely a drop from the best book in the series, The Crane.

I gave the first 3 books 4 stars and gave this one 3 stars only because it doesn't wrap up a story like the other previous books. That would have been nice...

Having said that, I guess you'd have to say that "The Empire Strikes Back" was a terrible movie because it didn't have a satisfying 'good guys win' sort of ending. Or that the first two books of "The Lord of the Rings" were weak because they didn't wrap things up at the end of each.

Wrong.

This series is (I think) 7 books long. ...Like LOTR, you can't take one of these books and read it alone except for maybe "The Scorpion". Legend Of The Five Rings:Clan Wars" is a huge story that is slowly developed through each book. There are major plot elements from the previous 2 books that are described in this book and make it clear what the heck has been behind them. Specifically where the plague came from and who's sending out all these monsters and undead to wreak havok on the land. That alone is worth the price of the book.

This book takes place during the same period of time that books 2 and 3 take place. Although events from those books are only briefly touched upon just to give you some bearing as to when things are, I didn't mind. I read those events already and don't need to read about them again. "Unicorn" and "Crane" seem intertwined, but "Phoenix" is pretty much independent.

There is a lot of action in this book. Since the Phoenix use sorcery, there are a lot of battles that are not just desciption of what a guys sword was doing... although there is a lot of that too. This time there is a good deal of magic doing the fighting. Armies burst into flame, strong winds push bad guys around, rocks suddenly jut out of the ground to impale bad guys. Very cool stuff.

Some things someone posted that I thought were misleading:

1- "Then, magically, Tadaka is transformed into something EVIL. No mucking about here; Tadaka goes from an obsessed, but good, priest to a demon-worshipping man who murders his best friend."

This is not really true. Tadaka is changing, but he's not worshiping any demons. He's doing something else with demons, but not worshiping them. He also doesn't kill his best friend. It wasn't like this "friend" was someone he knew all his life... let alone was 'friendly' with. It is shocking when he kills him, but not completely out of character. I believe he did half-heartedly attack him earlier in the book (to make him go away... not something you would do to a 'best friend'). Tadaka is changing. He's been tainted by evil because he's accessed the Black Scrolls and is slowly being consumed by that evil. Using a Black Scroll is something that caused another character in the first chapter to turn evil. It's all spelled out... not coming from out of nowhere. Killing his friend is more like a device to show that he's not the same anymore. What's more, there's no telling if he really killed his 'friend' or not. Read the book and you'll probably see what I mean.

2- "He befriends natives of the Shadowlands, the hellish locale where Junzo lurks, but they somehow prove inept at surviving their own front lawn."

Not really. It wasn't their front lawn. They were actually taking Tadaka to a region that they are afraid of and don't go to. The trek took many days to get there, so it wasn't exactly their neighborhood. When some die, they are taken by surprise or natural selection takes over and they die because they were stupid. Only one in the group actually knows the terrain and that character DOES survive.

Although I liked this book a lot, there were two things that bothered me:

1- The word "cool" was used to describe something as being good. This was done by a character whose speech is a lot closer to an American than a denizen of ancient Japan, but it still seemed wrong. You could assume, however that there was a Japanese term like it that he used and that translates into English as "Cool". It still seemed wrong.

2- I think the author is running out of decriptions. He tends to use the same words to describe things over and over. I'm really tired of reading the word 'sinews'. There's always something going on with 'sinews'. Would it kill him to use the word 'tendon' once in a while? Also, there were two situations only a couple chapters apart (or so it seemed) where 2 different characters did the same thing. They stuck their swords through the eye and out the back of the skull of a zombie. I could be wrong about the sword going throught the back of the head in both cases, but jeezz. Another one through the Eye? Maybe there was a reason for this, but it seemed random enough to me that another body part could have been used. There are also a lot of other descritpions that you know you've just read a bunch of times already. There could have been different ways to describe the same thing if it had to be described again. When I read what appears to be the same sentence over again... sometimes just on the next page... it pops me out of the story and I'm reminded that there was an author to this book. It's not really happening, it was written.

Those are pretty small gripes. Other than that, it was a good read. I wouldn't recommend it unless you've read the previous books, though. But I wouldn't recommend "LOTR: Two Towers" without reading "LOTR: Fellowship of the Rings" first... This is a huge epic that requires you to read all the books to get the whole story...

Right off the thing I loved about this book was that the author, Stephen Sullivan, was able to bring the world of Rokugan into mind so clearly that you didn't read the book, you lived it. His attention to detail was just so that you could see the waterfalls and feel the atmosphere, (I could see the entire book played out as a John Woo or Akira Kurosawa film).

Like the other L5R books this one played it's piece in the grand scheme of things by introducing the mystical pheonix clan. Every book in the Clan War series is "tainted" with a clans very biased perspective, which only makes the series better, and the Pheonix is no exception. The main character, a shugenja named Isawa Tadaka, is a great character told as an adventurous type who basically becomes a martyr for his clan (as any good samurai should). I'd tell you more about it but you should just get yourself a copy and read it!

This is a good book for any fan of Forgotten Realms, Planescape and Ravenloft and a must read for anyone who owns a copy of the Ninja Scroll!!

A must own!!

First, the good news. Steve Sullivan introduces the reader to (or reminds him of) such legendary glamour girls as Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield. In addition, Mr. Sullivan hasn't neglected such less well-known lovelies as Barbara Nichols.

Now, for the bad news, which outweighs the good. There aren't 1,000 glamour girls -- one would be hard pressed to find 100 truly worthy of the title. Equally misguided is Mr. Sullivan's gratuitous and hopelessly arbitrary attempt to rate these women in descending order. Why not just list them chronologically? Last, but not least, Mr. Sullivan's assessment of what glamour is leaves an enormous amount to be desired. For example, what on earth is Madonna, that apotheosis of vulgarity, doing in a book about glamour girls? And what's with including porn stars, who are the very antithesis of glamour?

Too bad, because it could have been so good.

Anyone with an interest in beautiful, glamorous women past and present is urged to check out "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" by Steve Sullivan. Whether you're looking for incisive biographical sketches or merely gorgeous photographs, you'll find them here.

The research that went into this book was staggering, with biographical entries on 1,750 women from the 1890s right up to today. Many of these women have never been covered in any previous book, to my knowledge. This goes far, far beyond the obvious glamour superstars of the past century. You'll also learn about an amazing array of cult movie starlets, burlesque queens, figure and fashion models, Broadway performers, singers and dancers...virtually any category of female entertainers that you can name is represented in this remarkable volume.

One of the many pleasurable things about the book is that it's a broswer's delight. Pop it open to any page (320 pages in all), and you'll find something to genuinely engage the mind or please the eye. The biographical entries are detailed enough to be extremely informative--date and place of birth, date of death if applicable, vital statistics, career summary, key movie or TV appearances, major magazine appearances--but also concise and to the point. And the book's 400-plus photos include some real stunners, including a color section.

It is very clear that author Steve Sullivan wrote this book out of deep affection and admiration for the women he profiles. He set out to pay tribute to many hundreds of women who have never received proper appreciation in print before. That goal was achieved, and then some. "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia" is fully worthy of a 5-star recommendation!

I loved this book! I've been collecting books on movies, popular entertainment, glamour and pin-ups for many years, and I'd always been a bit frustrated that none of these books really covered the full range of beautiful women who made contributions to our pop culture. That huge gap has at last been filled--with style and beauty--by "Glamour Girls: The Illustrated Encyclopedia."

All the obvious names--Monroe, Mansfield, Jean Harlow, Raquel Welch, Kim Basinger, Sharon Stone, Tyra Banks--are of course covered with brisk, informative biographies and striking photos. But perhaps half of the 1,700-plus women in this amazing book are exactly the kind of gorgeous, intriguing women who had NEVER been included in any previous movie or entertainment reference book. That fact alone makes this book a must-have for any serious fan.

For example, I'd vaguely recalled seeing photos in Life magazine in the '50s of a beautiful blonde starlet who drove all over Hollywood in a crazy convertible covered in pink rugging. That starlet was Sandra Giles, who (I learn in this book) appeared in films with Elvis and Raquel Welch and had an interesting, colorful career. There's also a terrific photo, and an address to write to her. A blonde bombshell of more recent vintage, Heather Elizabeth Parkhurst, co-starred in the sexy Showtime series "Sherman Oaks" a couple of years ago; here I learn about her other movie/TV credits and magazine appearances, along with her fan-mail address and a sizzling photo. Just about every page has something--either a piece of trivia, anecdote, or photo--that will "grab" just about any reader.

Author Steve Sullivan has really created something special here. This is the ultimate reference book for any fan of glamorous gals past and present.

The most striking aspect of Andrew Sullivan's latest book, "Love Undetectable," is its personal subtext. It's markedly different from his landmark book, "Virtually Normal," in that Sullivan shares with us his own life.

In the first essay, "When Plagues End," he discusses his own sexual journey and how becoming HIV-positive reshaped his life. But not only that--Sullivan captures the feelings, moments and memories associated with his romances, spirituality and struggle for identity. It's a keyhole to a side of Sullivan we have never really seen, and it makes his writing more real and persuasive than ever.

"Virtually Abnormal," his second essay, is not as personal, but thoughtfully and persuasively articulated. Here he delves into the most current media debate about gays--the origins of homosexuality and whether it can be changed through psychotherapy. Sullivan presents several theories and arguments, from both sides of the fence (here his writing style does resemble "Virtually Normal"). No matter where he turns, from the "genetic" to the "environmental" theory, we see that each position holds a piece of the truth, and there are no hard answers. Sullivan concludes that even though homosexuality is neither strictly "normal" or "abnormal," we should pay attention to society's reaction toward it, since "its treatment is a critical indicator of the endurance of...liberty in a free society."

Friendship is the topic of "If Love Were All," in which Sullivan challenges us to reconsider and even resurrect the value of friendship. Gay friendships can be a model for straights, he says, since gay men are particularly good at forming lifelong bonds with each other. Sullivan argues that popular culture's notion of love has turned out to be "the great modern enemy of friendship," and we ought not discount the gift of true friendship--where candor and camaraderie are perhaps even more prevalent than in romantic relationships.

Finally, we glimpse into his personal world again, as Sullivan remembers his best friend's death. Sullivan admits that Love Undetectable is "a very Christian book," but not in the sense of fanatical fundamentalism or evangelistic Christianity. He fuses his discussions of spirituality with humanity, reminding us in a powerful way that we participate in our own destinies.

By the end of the book, we craved a fourth essay, perhaps tying the piece together (as he did in Virtually Normal's "What are Homosexuals For?") But he left us with the haunting images of death, life, and friendship, and we're left to wrestle with the meaning of all three.

In his book "Love Undetectable" gay political columnist Andrew Sullivan shares the pain he felt upon the death from AIDS of a close friend. The friendship was cemented when the two told each other that they were HIV positive. Sullivan weaves this story and confessions of his traumas, loves, sex life, faith and philosophies through the three essays in the book. He adds his observations of the gay world and illumines the experiences with the ideas of great thinkers from ancient and modern times.

The first essay, entitled "When Plagues End", contains a slightly less optimistic version of an article Sullivan published in 1996 in the New York Times magazine. After depicting the horror of illness and death from AIDS, Sullivan describes the release from impending doom provided by the new anti-viral drugs. He draws on Camus for inspiration. In the second essay, Sullivan turns to the psychologists' views of homosexuality. He does this in response to the recent vocal claims by reparative therapists and "ex-gays". By exploring this issue, Sullivan ventures into the no-man's land between those who want to abolish homosexuality by curing it and those who won't tolerate any mention of pathology in connection with being gay. Although Sullivan seeks a "teleology of homosexuality, to answer the question, 'What are homosexuals for?' ", he devotes the essay to presentation of theories of its origin and causes. He concisely summarizes Freud's ideas and those of recent psychotherapists. Sullivan follows Freud's example by not proposing an explanation for the causes of homosexuality. He challenges the gay reader to use the presentation of various theories to spur self-examination.

The third essay deals with the definition of friendship, a relationship whose significance, Sullivan argues, has been lost in modern times. Sullivan brings to us the categories of philia from Aristotle and the pensees of Montaigne, Augustine and Cicero. He describes the tenderness in the friendships between Jesus and his followers. To Sullivan, the modern preoccupation with eros is the greatest threat to friendship. Friends, he opines, give each other breathing room, which lovers do not. Through forging friendships in the face of societal opprobrium and suffering from AIDS, gays present a lesson to society. It is in these friendships, Sullivan proposes, that the gays today can acquire a worthy purpose.

Andrew Sullivan is impelled by his emotional pain and his desire for healthier public and institutional policies towards gays and lesbians. He disciplines his motivation and stays within the boundaries of his arguments. His Waughian prose is poetic; powerful yet restrained. In "Love Undetectable" he has created a precious account of his recent life and thoughts.

Excerpted from: Journal of the Post-Plague Years By Katie Roiphe Thursday, November 12, 1998; Page C02It is admirable that in an era hungry for memoirs and straightforward journalism, Andrew Sullivan writes difficult, abstract essays in the tradition of previous centuries. But he writes them about topics of pressing, contemporary concern. "Love Undetectable" is a collection of three extraordinary, long essays. The book is many things: a classical rumination on the nature of friendship, a psychological reflection on what it means to be gay, a religious discussion of homosexuality, a breathtaking personal account of a crisis of faith, a cultural analysis of the gay world as the plague of AIDS begins to lift, and a love story... These essays are so clear that they show you the mechanism of his thought-process, like a watch with a clear face that allows you to see the clockworks. You see Sullivan thinking things through, sorting through his impressions, struggling with conflicts. Even though there are relatively few autobiographical details in this book, one feels as if one knows him more fully and satisfyingly than if he had written a straightforward memoir. Part of what makes these dense, complicated essays so readable is the strong sense of a person behind them; they are filled with a passion and heat that most cultural criticism lacks. At their best, these essays remind us of what would happen if Susan Sontag went out and experienced the world. By Katie Roiphe, author of "The Morning After: Fear, Sex, and Feminism on College Campuses."

Simply put... This book lost its integrity with its first incorrect solution.

This book's title is misleading. It should be titled something like "The Big Book of Brain Teasers". It should NOT have the words "IQ Tests" in its title. If you want an accurate assessment of your IQ, look elsewhere. Here's why:

1) It contains too many culture-specific questions. A valid IQ test (i.e., one that "accurately" measures one's intelligence quotient) should contain few, if any, culture-specific questions. This book contains a lot of them.

2) It also contains too many questions that have multiple "correct" answers. Once again, in a properly constructed IQ test, for each question there will be one, and ONLY one, correct answer. This book contains numerous questions that could be answered "correctly" in more than one way.

In short, if you enjoy solving puzzles, etc., for fun, then you MIGHT enjoy this book (I say "might" because you may very well end up being frustrated by the multitude of questions which could be answered "correctly" a number of ways), but if you're looking for a properly constructed IQ test that will give you an accurate measurement of your intelligence, you'll likely be disappointed. I sure was.

This book's title is misleading. It should be titled something like "The Big Book of Brain Teasers". It should NOT have the words "IQ Tests" in its title. If you want an accurate assessment of your IQ, look elsewhere. Here's why:

1) It contains too many culture-specific questions. A valid IQ test (i.e., one that "accurately" measures one's intelligence quotient) should contain few, if any, culture-specific questions. This book contains a lot of them.

2) It also contains too many questions that have multiple "correct" answers. Once again, in a properly constructed IQ test, for each question there will be one, and ONLY one, correct answer. This book contains numerous questions that could be answered "correctly" in more than one way.

In short, if you enjoy solving puzzles, etc., for fun, then you MIGHT enjoy this book (I say "might" because you may very well end up being frustrated by the multitude of questions which could be answered "correctly" a number of ways), but if you're looking for a properly constructed IQ test that will give you an accurate measurement of your intelligence, you'll likely be disappointed. I sure was.

This is a complete take-off on Thomas Tryon's great
"Harvest Home."
Now, I read and really appreciate Robert McCammon but this book...save your time and get "Harvest Home."
Jude

My second Mccammon book after the wonders of Boy's Life and i knew not to expect much from this early attempt at a horror novel It starts ok-ish but ends up as some James bond story that is just beyond belief. The characters are tame and I just couldnt care how it was going to end. He tried hard to make it creepy but really over did it making everything appear scary and therefore taking away the surprise element. what got me was how he tried to introduce a quaint Englishness into the dialect by saying 'by God' all the time. But this is Middle America Robert ?

After reading the reviews posted here, I approached Bethany's Sin with a degree of caution as it wasn't that highly rated. But having enjoyed almost every other Robert McCammon book I've read, I didn't think it could be all bad. I'm happy to say that I found this book most enjoyable. Bethany's Sin is a small Pennsylvania town where the main character Evan, his wife Kay, and his daughter Laurie move. It's soon apparent that life in this town is not as quaint and peaceful as it first appeared. Kay begins having horrific and violent nightmares after meeting the towns mayor and primary antagonist, Kathryn Drago. It's up to Evan to unravel the dark secrets of the town before its too late to save himself and his family from the horrors of the coming "killing month". Sin is fairly quick read and has an interesting slant on the legend of the Amazon women and their hostile relationship with men. Some of the descriptions of this are downright brutal. It's a good horror story with some very creepy moments. Well worth reading in my opinion.

I have this book,but I don't have listening casettes .How can I get them.please help me. thanks

Hi, I have the Toefl book, but I need the listenning comprehension cassette tapes. If anybody has an idea how to order them in Europe( e.g. Germany), as soon as possible, please email me: flight33@hotmail.com, thank you very much

Good book specially (the testing points) which help the person be familiar with the type of questions he will answer, but the probelm is that there are no cassettes for the listening section, the person has to read rather than listen, to be able to get that book's benifit you need to buy the cassette from the ARCO CO who publish it.(I try to look for these cassettes on the AMAZON but it is not). Regarding the cd which is comes with I can say it is excellent, because you can take test as much as you want while you will not face the same questions again in short time.also that cd has a builder skill program, a program helps the user to recognize his progress.actually the book alone worth 3 stars rating but I give it 4 because of that cd. finally if that book came with the cassettes it will get 5 stars with no dout.by the way I'm 28 years old but there is no space for that age in the selection so I take one.

Well, pretty boring, all in all. Politically correct mixed sexuality (yawn)... different typefaces (yawn)... lots of yak yak yak. About the only interesting thing is that it is somewhat different from the normal run of... well, abnormal whatevers. Should we be intrigued, at this point, by gender flexibility? Hey, why not... although that was a lot more radical when S. Delany did it in Trouble on Triton, a loooong time ago....

Nearly Roadkill, by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein, attempts to explore issues of gender and how that affects perception and expectation. Told mostly from the point of view of a teenage boy named Toobe, it follows the story of two genderless web users, Scratch and Winc, who keep meeting up in various chat rooms. The freedom of the online environment allows them to explore what gender is and how it affects their relationship. One night they might be a boy and a girl, the next two women, the night after that a vampire and a young woman.
The book succeeds in exploring the themes of gender and how everyone is affected by it, as well as how perceptions can change based on one's gender. The story, however, is almost nonexistent, with a too perfect ending. By revealing Scatch and Winc's genders, the point of gender exploration is somewhat negated. To make matters worse, the font is nearly impossible to read and there are too many graphic cyber sex exchanges, which detract from the book's message.
If you are looking for a study in gender roles, this book will serve your purpose. However, if you are looking for a book with a storyline and well-developed believable characters, Nearly Roadkill is not the book for you.

Great characters, inventive plot, excellent storyline, good writing, so much fun to read, and a lot of hot sex to boot. What could be bad?

This book was difficult to read. Maybe I just have a brain tumor or something but I couldn't stay awake while reading this one. Tricia starts her book off with way too much jargon and slang for her setting. The characters don't make any sense when there is dialog. Maybe there is some reason for this in the book but I didn't make it that far.

On a hostile planet filled with fast-evolving bacterial life, a group of would-be colonists are endangered when their ship AI goes on the blink.

Though the worldbuilding was full of original detail and the plot featured a lot of action, I found this book nearly impossible to finish. The writing was awkward and full of unnecessary exposition and "telling". The characters' behavior seemed nonsensical, unconnected to what was happening around them--often their reactions seemed weirdly casual, and at other times just inappropriate and lacking perceptible motivation. I couldn't relate to them, and because of that it became hard to focus on the convoluted plot.

I like the author's Someone to Watch Over Me, but I don't recommend this book.

I enjoyed this book. At times the science behind the story was explained in a very technical way, which made my head spin. And, it left me wishing I had a degree in microbiology so I'd know if the scientific stuff came out of the authors imagination or if the algaes (algi ?) and other parasitic microrganisms described were derived from real life. This made parts of the book difficult to visualize. But the main characters Kalypso, Ganesh and Marcsson were very tangible and hoping they would make it out "alive" kept me reading non-stop. I did feel that the book ended too fast. I believe the author wanted to tell us a bigger story, but may have been advised (ill-advised) to trim it down. Overall, I liked the story alot.