Anything "Forgotten Realms" that R.A. Salavore writes, I read. Were this not the case, I might well never have bought, let alone read, this particular book. It has in focus the "bad guys" of Salvatore's AD&D storyline, but lacks a certain charm. It is hard to wish the characters well and thus be drawn into their story, and when one of the secondary characters that had been relatively important is suddenly and swiftly dead, one can hardly mourn. It is treated in the text pretty much as a next-to-irrelevant fact.

If you are a die-hard Salvatore fan, you'll want to read this book to keep up with the overall storyline and know what happens with the Crystal Shard. If you're not a part of this "elite" band, then don't bother.

I've never regretted buying this manual. There are many others out there, but none as generally useful and well organized. Buy it and use it!

This is a very readable, brief but good and solid explanation of the core reasons to believe in Jesus as the promised Messiah. Get this book and use it in evangelism and in church projects. Buy it to have on hand to give to prospective members.

Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ" is a readable presentation of the apologetics in favor of the orthodox Christian faith as held by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant communions worldwide since the earliest days of the church. Though the subject matter is somewhat technical at times, it is as understandable as any work of this genre probably can be. Strobel does not explore beyond orthodoxy in his interviews, but then, that was not his purpose in writing this book. It is a defense of the foundational beliefs of the Christian faith, and a successful one at that, in my opinion.

I'm not a member of the LDS church. In fact, I'm a Christian minister who's very convinced that the LDS church isn't true. However, I do enjoy reading much of what the LDS writers produce, including this book. It provides a fascinating look at the mindset of LDS missionaries, and quaint stories about "pre-mission" and "mission" events. A short book and an easy read. Recommended.

Wulfar was always one of the least-interesting characters to me of all the works I've read by R.A. Salvatore...until now.

Literally back from the Abyss, Wulfar tries to curl up at the bottom of a bottle of booze. This is the story of a man's semiconscious struggle to regain or recreate his identity after going through every type of humiliation and torture that a demon can invent.

The torture scene at Luskan and the creative way Salvatore ties the two main threads of the story together at the end mark this book as one of his finest...even without the drow ranger.

This story was an excellent, single volume story based in a city of the Forgotten Realms. The characters were relatively believable, and the author did not get too sappy with the storyline. Corin One-Hand was an especially good character, and his suffering and recovery from a deep personal crisis were great to see.

Now, that said, it behooves me to mention a point in this author's writing that I didn't find altogether agreeable. Mr. Karpyshyn has an odd tendency to tell about an event happening from one character's perspective, and then retell the same even from another character's perspective. He does this even with fight scenes and not particularly dramatic moments. Further, the text of each retelling is so similar - at times word-for-word - that it leads one to suspect that he was trying to fill pages.

As a lover of fantasy novels who is fond of stories that conclude in the same volume, I heartily recommend this book to others despite the above-mentioned flaw. If you appreciate fantasy, I doubt you'll regret buying "Temple Hill".

The two best things about this book are the title and the cover artwork. This book is exceptional only in its mediocrity. Anyone who has read much fantasy and/or played fantasy role-playing games will find this book somewhat unhelpful. The contents deal mostly with medieval customs and clothing, as well as modern witchcraft. If, however, you know next to nothing about fantasy writing and would like to try writing it, this would be a reasonable book among others to buy...though I can't imagine why someone in such a situation would attempt to write fantasy in the first place.

This short book was good, but not great. To be a great book, a real "page turner," it perhaps would have been helpful to make it a little thicker and told in a storytelling style. As a reader, I felt as though I was being barraged with a bewildering array of people and place names that I was expected to consider familiar.

This book might be interesting to someone interested in Mormonism and/or Las Vegas, but is probably best for a member of the LDS church who has a personal acquaintance with modern Las Vegas already.

One last thing, it is WAY overpriced.

This novel, divided into three books in one volume, took me the better part of a year to read. The problem for me was the extensive detail, especially to socio-political theory. Most of the time I felt as though I was merely observing the author talking to himself, setting up one straw man after another and then knocking each one down.

If atheism bothers you and anarcho-capitalism isn't your cup of tea, then this book won't do much for you. The science fiction aspect didn't really become interesting until the third section of the book, after already enduring seemingly endless political tirades. It was, in a word, tedious.

Though I'm glad that I can say I've now read a book by this author, I do not intend to follow up with any of his other work.