Product Description
A pictorial book of the murals of Toppenish, WA. Heavy weight paper. ... Read more

Product Description
The Star Kingdom's ally Erewhon is growing restive as the regime ignores its needs. In desperation the queen sends a mission to Erewhon led by Captain Zilwicki and a princess. Their mission is undermined by a radical freed slave organization, led by a notorious killer, Jeremy X. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

Horrible, boring drivel
I have read almost the entire Honor Harrington series.I'm reading them in order and figured I would read this series as more honorverse back story.WOW IS THIS BOOK BAD.

All of the characters are the greatest in the world (well the book say they are over and over and over).Evertyhing they do is a matter of fact with very little real immagination.You don't have to figure anything out.The characters are bland and just not well developed.

Heck the editors must have been bored reading this book as it's littered with items where the word used is the wrong word, just off by a letter or two.

I'm only reading this book for backstory and forcing my way through it.The other books in the serises I would read in a day or two.After 3 weeks on this one I'm not even 1/2 way through .... it's THAT BAD.

If it's Eric Flint's influnce please don't ever write another book with him.

IMO, save your money, buy The Shadow of Saganami and get the 1 paragraph recap of the entire book.

Worst of Weber
I have all of the "Honor Harrington" books and a total of 35 Weber titles all together."Crown of slaves" is the worst book I've read from him.Sorry I bought it.I only read it to the end because I kept expecting something worth reading would eventually emerge.It never did.The entire story is covered well enough in his other books.

Crown of Hmm...
First things first- I'm a big Honorverse fan; have read all the novels and am just about done with the last of the anthologies. I'm pretty much sold on anything with David Weber's name on it, so naturally I picked this one up as well. Crown of Slaves is a continuation of the short story 'From the Highlands' in the Changer of Worlds anthology. That one was written by Eric Flint, and it's immediately obvious that although Weber's name appears on this novel's cover, he wrote very little of it (being very familiar with his prose and style, I would say he wrote exactly one chapter, in fact- and it's the shortest one).

There's several key differences between this and other Honorverse works. The most important and obvious one is that it's almost entirely devoid of any sort of space battle. There's little to no technological lingo, physics calculations, and wily tactics in 'Crown,' which is... different, but not necessarily bad. The storyline and characters do fit in quite well with previous works mentioning them, and into the Honorverse as a whole, but the pacing of this story and the shift to local political intrigue and cloak-and-dagger mayhem as opposed to galactic diplomacy and impeller-drive missiles is immediately apparent. In short, if you're accustomed to the flavor of Honor Harrington novels (and, by the way, there's hardly any mention of our favorite RMN lady commander here) be prepared for something else here.

As noted above, different isn't necessarily bad. Where it does get a bit dubious is in terms of the characterization and plot. There's enough skullduggery here to make your head spin- it seems everyone is trying to kill everyone else, and it's hard to keep score of who is 'winning.' That's definitely not something you'd be used to after reading classic Weber, who usually tells you precisely what the score is- even down to how many missile tubes in each broadside of each vessel are still operating. As for the characters, as a reviewer in the front cover points out, they are 'larger than life.' Flint goes to extreme lengths to convince the reader just how dangerous Victor Cachat, Thandi Palane, and Anton Zilwicki are, and how comparatively innocent Berry Zilwicki is. In fact, he literally spends scores of pages hammering home- sometimes in almost the exact same terms- these character attributes. It gets to the point where you're really tempted to just skip it over and say 'yeah, I know.' The unfortunate result is that none of the main characters is particularly believable- they really are 'larger than life,' and unlike most of the core Honorverse characters, you really can't imagine anyone actually being like this. A lot of the plot, although certainly imaginative, is also a bit unbelievable. As Cachat himself notes, his plans are way too complex. Well, he's right- after finishing the novel I know what happened, but not really how it happened.

Crown of Slaves also lacks a lot of the driving action you'd expect from a Honorverse installment of this length. There is some, and sometimes quite visceral in description, but if you're looking for a heart-pounding showdown and lots of exciting skirmishes to tantalize you on the way, you're going to be disappointed. In fact, I really believe this story would have been much improved by cutting its length by at least a third. It starts to drag on around the middle, and the conclusion is somewhat lacking. It's almost as if this novel was written as a matter of course and duty- there had to be a fill-in on these characters and this plotline with Mesa as the primary enemy, leading into 'Shadow of Saganami' and 'At All Costs,' both of which pick up major plot points from here. Thus 'Crown' duly depicts Mesa in all its badness, shows how Torch came to be founded, and fills out the gory details of what happened on Erewhon during the last days of its alliance with Manticore. But I find it somewhat amusing that in the following two novels, nothing is really mentioned about 'Crown' except the final conclusion. When questioned about it, Helen Zilwicki merely states that it's a long story.

Well, it is. Although I wouldn't say 'Crown' is a bad read, I must admit that it was more of a chore getting through than an enjoyment. To date, there's very little published Honorverse work where I can say the same. I suppose if you're more into the political and espionage side of Weber's work, then this might strike you as more interesting. Personally, I tend to agree with Admiral Harrington herself- politics is something you've unfortunately got to deal with, in the course of being about serious business like blowing Peeps out of space with multi-drive missiles.

Tooting your own horn, over.. and over.. and over..
To make it brief, I also wanted to like this book, but the more into it I got, the more obvious it became that Weber wasn't going to stop showing everyone how clever and machiavellian all his characters were.

It's like someone dropped 50 James Bonds into the mix and every one of them was going to outsmart the others and let the audience KNOW it..far too many "wink wink inside jokes" by the people in the story.It's almost becoming a stereotype that every female character is going to be able to conquer the universe with a pair of coconuts and bubble gum.

It just got real tired, real fast, no matter what situation the characters were in, you just knew they were going to beat the stupid bad guy and save the day.

Please, please go back to the old Honorverse style, where, yeah sure Honor was a kickass Navy Xena, but at least she made the occasional mistake as well and that made her human, these new characters are just nauseatingly SUPERIOR.... uggg...

A Fine Addition to the Honorverse
Although Honor Harrington plays a peripheral role in this book, it's great to visit the Honorverse. ... Read more

Product Description
From microchips and iPods to robots in the human bloodstream, Cool Stuff and How It Works takes the reader on an eye-opening journey through the world of modern technology. Tech-savvy kids will love learning all about today's most innovative inventions-where they came from, how they do what they do, and where they might take us in the future.a ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Great Book!
My 7 year old son kept asking me how something is made or works.(especially electronics and about current technology) This should help to answer his technical questions that I can't completely answer. I was very impressed with the detailed photos and short but informative basic descriptions on how these gadgets work. I think I will learn a lot from this as well. Can't wait for story time!

Great for preteens!
Cool Stuff and How it Works is a quality book.The large pages of photos and descriptive text make it attractive to my almost-twelve-year-old.He pulls it out and peruses it almost daily.I like that he's learning at the same time as entertaining himself.The one problem is that now he wants to own one of everything in the book!I told him to get a job...

Clear Explainations
I really enjoy how this book explains things through a combination of words, pictures, and diagrams. I'd recommend it over other similar books.

Great Book
This was bought as a Christmas gift for my 9-year-old son and it has been a big hit. The book is big and colorful and has great photo layouts of the "insides" of all kinds of neat devices. The photos and captions explain how the devices work. If you have a child who is always asking "How do they do that?" or "How does that work?" then this book is a great choice.

Excellent book for introducing kids to technology
Kids are surrounded by technology these days, but unfortunately fewer and fewer of them appear to know how their gadgets or the world around them works.

This book is a good introduction, even if it is a bit lightweight.

There's a mix of ordinary things like electric shavers and guitars, the somewhat exotic like fiber optics and things mostly on the drawing board like fuel-cell cars. In all, more than 90 objects, processes and technologies are described.

The explanations are all essentially superficial and profusely illustrated. It's enough to get a young person interested and perhaps move them along to considering learning more about technology.

Jerry ... Read more

Product Description
Unlike any other fashion designer at work today, Paul Smith has managed to combine a flair for eccentric, subversive detail, a dedication to the highest standards of craftmanship, and a business and marketing sense that has made him simply the most successful designer in British history. But this publication is not a fashion monograph; it is not a catalogue of suits. Rather,imagine Paul Smith's brain on a page: cleverly original and often humorous thoughts and ideas, perfectly executed, not just on the back of a man or a woman, but in shop windows, in advertising campaigns, in toys, photographs, and souvenirs brought back from travels throughout the world that became the inspiration for the look of a season. Words and images crash together in striking contrast to reveal the passions and amusements of a designer committed to both modesty in his pursuits and stunning innovation. Designed by Alan Aboud, Art Director for Paul Smith for more than a decade, and with a slipcase designed by Jonathan Ive (famed designer of the iMac), this publication will bring together observations, images, and, in its own unique design and production, all of the extraordinary qualities possessed by Paul Smith himself.

"Paul Smith's designs seem to emanate from some extraordinary and encyclopaedic awareness of the intensely codified nature of 'Britishness.' ...There is a species of poetry at work here, the equivalent of the literary awareness of the weight of the absent word. It is at once subtle and very strong, this quality, and to it I attribute the fact that many of my favorite garments, of the past twenty years, were designed by Paul Smith." William Gibson, from the Introduction

Introduction by William Gibson. Designed by Alan Aboud, Jonathan Ive and Michael Hodgson. Texts by Paul Smith, Richard Williams and James Flint. Interview by Richard Wentworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Illustrations by Glen Baxter, Paul Slater, and Mich Brownfield.

500 color.
10 x 8.25 in. ... Read more