Robbie & de Kruiper - Raymond E. Feist

In May last year Magician's End, the final book in Feist's long running Riftwar series, appeared. It was the final chapter in a series that had been going for over thirty years. Earlier that year, Feist published the novella Jimmy and the Crawler to tie up a loose end in the series. As usual with Feist, I read it in Dutch translation. One of the earlier translators of Feist's works, I think translator Mat Schifferstein is the fourth to have a go at Riftwar material, has decided to rename the character Jimmy the Hand, hence the Dutch title Robbie & de Kruiper.

This novella is part of the Riftwar Legacy subseries, which is tied to the PC games Betrayal at Krondor (1993) and Return to Krondor (1998) which are based on Feist's Midkemian setting. Three full novels have appeared in this series, two of which are novelizations of the RPG storylines in the computer games. Originally two more full length novels were planned, with working titles Krondor: The Crawler and Krondor: The Dark Mage. Due to a conflict wit Sierra, the developer of the computer games, these novels were never written. Feist has alluded to events taking places in these novels in several places in his other books, leaving an obvious hole in the series. It seems clear now that the novels will never be written but this novella does attempt to tie up the dangling story lines.

Jimmy and the Crawler is set some time after Krondor: Tear of the Gods. The precious artefact has been recovered but the mysterious Crawler still hasn't been taken out. Arutha, Prince of Krondor, is worried about this threat and puts his thief-come-nobleman Jimmy the Hand on the case with. To make sure he lives though the assignment he is accompanied by William, soldier and son of Pug the Magician and court magician Jazhara with him. The trail leads to Durbin, a port city nominally part of the empire of Great Kesh and notorious for the slave trade and pirating that goes on in the city. Jimmy soon reaches the conclusion that everything they thought they knew about the Crawler is incorrect.

The Riftwar Legacy series features some of the poorest novels in the entire Riftwar cycle. Most of them read like a poorly worked out scenario for a role playing game, with a strong emphasis on action at very little room for such things as characterization and overarching story lines. I guess, given their origins as RPG computer games it is not entirely surprising but they still disappointed me at the time. Jimmy and the Crawler doesn't really escape this. Feist is obviously in a hurry to finish an constantly refers to earlier books to keep from having to elaborate too much. I have a feeling that some continuity errors creep up in this book as well. Since the later books are riddled with them, it shouldn't bother the reader who has stuck with Feist for this long too much though.

Feist usually uses multiple points of view to tell his story, enabling him to depict events at several locations and tell the story from the mundane level al the way up to the gods. This novella focuses entirely on Jimmy's exploits. His point of view is dominant. Feist switches once or twice when he needs to depict events taking place outside Jimmy's line of sight but for the most part we stick with him. The multi-layered approach is entirely sacrificed. It results in a very straightforward tale with a rather high dungeons and dragons level.

It doesn't help that to the reader who has already completed most of the other books in the series, what needs to happen in this story is obvious. There is very little surprise in it. To make matters worse Feist reuses one of the more important plot devices in the first book of the Darkwar Saga, Flight of the Nighthawks (2005). He attempts some twists and turns but nothing the experienced Feist reader hasn't seen before. With all the references to other books it's is not a good place to start the series either.

In the end, Jimmy and the Crawler feels like a novella Feist felt he owed his readers but was not particularly inspired to write. While I could enjoy and appreciate Magician's End at some level, this work reminded me again why I was so disappointed by the earlier Krondor books. It's so straightforward, hasty and uninspired that only the completist will want to read it. Maybe with a bit more fleshed out plot it could have been a worthwhile addition but as it is, it achieves nothing other than plugging a plot hole.

Book Details
Title: Robbie & de Kruiper
Author: Raymond E. Feist
Publisher: Luithingh Fantasy
Pages: 155
Year: 2013
Language: Dutch
Translation: Mat Schifferstein
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-90-245-6288-6
First published: 2013

Astra - Naomi Foyle

A couple of weeks ago I won a copy of this novel over at Worlds Without End. The nice things about book giveaways is that you tend to take a chance more easily on books that you wouldn't have purchased or the release of which you most likely wouldn't have noticed. This is one such book. Although the premise appealed to me I probably would have missed it without the giveaway. Foyle is a relatively new name in genre fiction. As far as I have been able to determine, this is her second published novel after Seoul Survivors (2013). Astra is the first novel in the Gaia Chronicles and it doesn't appear to be related to Seoul Survivors. It set in a post apocalyptic world, with a generous helping of genetic engineering and social experiments mixed in. The premise and style of the novel are very interesting but I must admit that at times, the book tried my patience.

Growing up in Is-Land, seven year old Astra's greatest wish is to do service in IMBOD, the agency that defends Is-Land's borders against intruders an terrorists. To do that she needs her Security Shot, a serum that will  make her more receptive to the training she will have to follow, more resistant to doubt and closer to the children she grows up with. One of her shelter mothers, Dr. Hokma Blesser, disagrees with Is-Land's policies in this regards and fears that it will take away something of Astra's intelligence and curiosity. The excel in science, she needs these qualities in tact. She offers Astra a choice to conspire to refuse the mandatory shot. Reluctantly Astra accepts.

The entire story is told from Astra's perspective and revolves around the unfair choice she has been offered. The novel is divided into three parts. The first is set when Astra is seven years old, the second part shows us a twelve year old Astra and in the final part she is a girl of sixteen. Astra's upbringing is very sheltered in a way, she lives in a small and somewhat isolated community, allowing Foyle to slowly introduce elements of the nation of Is-Land and the wider world. On the surface, the community Astra grows up in appears idyllic but it is obvious from the start that all is not well in Is-Land. The feeling that things are being hidden from the children is present from the very first pages of the book and finding out what, is what keeps the tension up in this novel. There are things that will make the reader feel unease throughout the book.

Their religion, or perhaps I should say philosophy, revolves around respect for the planet. Killing an animal, no matter how insignificant is an almost impossible act in Astra's seven year old mind. It's a crime, something that hurts Gaia. At the same time, radically altering crops, animals and even humans is everyday practice in the community. Many weaknesses in the human genetic code have been fixed and radically altered versions of animals that went extinct before the crises humanity barely survived are being introduced. On top of all that, the Gaians are now raising a new generation of humans with the aid of the serum. An experiment they believe will safeguard their nation for generations to come. There is something fundamentally contradictory in those two approaches. There is a kind of respect for the natural world, life is sacred, but at the same time it is manipulated to an unprecedented extent to suit human needs.

Foyle cleverly used a number of unreliable sources to lay out the history of her world. From what little we get to see about what befell the planet, a large conflict, partially caused by oil and food shortages, ended the world as we know it. Gaian communities were already in existence then, combining a reverence for the planet with advanced knowledge of genetics, they tried to forge a new way of living independent of fossil fuels. According to official Gaian history, their communities suffered terribly during the conflict but in a post apocalyptic world, their genetic resources prove invaluable. So much so, that they've been able to found their own nation, protected by a treaty with the outside world. This sanitized version of history hides a lot of ugliness and power politics. Their knowledge gives the Gaians and edge they exploit to enable to build a community based on their principles. It is not until the twelve year old Astra meets a dissident that she starts to seriously doubt the stories she's been fed all her life.

It's doubt that plagues Astra throughout the novel. Where the serum makes her playmates more susceptible to the stories they are told, more ready to conform and accept, Astra questions. As Hokma feared, the serum changes children in ways that may lead to the creation of good border guards, they loose something in the process as well. Astra is constantly forced to try an suppress her natural curiosity. As she grows up, the gap between her and the other children widens but interesting enough it's her relationship with the adults that suffers. The strain that hiding her secret puts on Astra intensifies as the demands being made on her grow. Gaian education is thorough and all-encompassing, it has little patience with those who question the tenets of Gaian society. The conflict between her curiosity and her desire to fit in  is central to Astra's development and it makes her a fascinating character.

Foyle puts a lot in this novel but it is still not a book for impatient readers. I think the book dragged, especially in the middle section. The section dealing with the twelve year old Astra deals for a large part with the structure of Gaian society on all levels. Their family structure is complex and beyond anything that existed before the conflict that ended our way of life. Sexuality plays a large part in that. Although something that could be considered a marriage exists and some taboos remain, individuals enjoy a much larger sexual freedom from puberty onwards, than would be considered acceptable in just about any culture in our world. With Astra's own sexual maturity approaching, quite a lot of her time and energy is devoted to the subject. There is an elaborate rite of passage being described that appears to be only loosely connected to the central conflict in the novel. Foyle's description of the Gaian look on sexuality, bonding and family is interesting but I couldn't help but feel she overexpanded that bit of worldbuiling.

What I felt Astra has going for it, is the way Foyle handles what to reveal to the reader and how. The limited perception of the young Astra and the numerous unreliable tales spread throughout the novel make the reader feel uneasy about the true nature of Gaian society but also prevented me from jumping to conclusions. I don't think the pacing of the novel is perfect, Foyle does tend to elaborate on some aspects of the community Astra lives in, but the tension present in the mail character is very well built up. The climax of the novel left me curious about which challenges Astra would be facing next. I probably would have missed the release of this book without the giveaway but I'm going to be keeping an eye out for volume two.

Book Details
Title: Astra
Author: Naomi Foyle
Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books
Pages: 379
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-78087-634-4
First published: 2014

The Mount - Carol Emshwiller

I read Carol Emshwiller's The Secret City last year as part of a reading challenge. It's an interesting little novel and one of the better ones I've read in 2013. After reading it I wondered what Emshwiller could do in the short format, as her style seems more suited to that. I was planning on reading a collection by her this year but somehow ended up with a copy of her novel The Mount instead. It was published in 2002 and won the Philip K. Dick Award that year, beating, among others, China Miéville's impressive Bas-Lag novel The Scar. The Mount is quite a different story than the one told in The Secret City but both are fascinating reads.

The Mount is the story of Charley, a boy nearing adolescence who is bred and brought up as a mount for a race of aliens. The Hoots, as they are referred to are intellectually superior to humans but, although endowed with formidably strong hands, are incapable of walking any significant distance. Instead they rely on their mounts to get around, which they control with their hands. Humans are ideal for the task. Smart enough to be trained, just the right size, endowed with strong legs and capable of understanding the threat posed by the hands of their riders around their necks. Charley doesn't need to be threatened though. He wants to be a good mount. Until, that is, wild humans raid his settlement and he comes into contact with his father and a different way of life.

Emshwiller does a number of very interesting things in this novel. She has stated that she was originally inspired by a class she'd taken in the psychology of pray animals versus predators. The Mount turns these rolls around with the prey eventually enslaving the predator. There are lots of little signs of the origins of the Hoot as prey. Most notably their tendency to seek out small enclosed spaces to hide for shelter. I'm not entirely sure how much sense this makes biologically speaking but in the story it makes Hoots and their response to danger quite unique. Their control often seems tenuous at best, although Charley doesn't seem to think so, and is mostly based on the image of benevolence and superiority. When it comes to physical violence they are only dangerous in very specific situations.

We see almost the entire story through Charley's eyes and over the course of the novel his view of the world changes drastically. In the early stages of the novel he just wants to be a good mount and has a close relationship with his master. He wants to please and he wants his master to take good care of him. In fact the devotion he shows to his master gave me the creeps in the opening chapters of the novel. It would have been easy to have him radically change his mind when he is exposed to freedom for the first time but Emshwiller takes her characters down a different path. His conditioning doesn't break easily and his relationship with his master remains strong. Charley is torn between wanting to make his own choices and being protected by his master. Eventually the slave/master relationship shifts into something harder to define.

Many readers will be so used to their freedom that they'll find it hard to imagine how Charley might not be all that interested. The wild humans he is first exposed to are to be pitied in his opinion. Their lives are misery, devoid of even the smallest of comforts. Charley wonders why they would want to live this way when they can have the Hoots take care of them. It's a naive view from a young boy who hasn't seen the full extent of the treatment humans get from the Hoots. It clashes so violently with the freedom western society takes for granted that many readers will have a hard time swallowing it. I thought it was a brilliant bit of writing however. Emshwiller shows us Charley's level of maturity and challenges the reader to think of oppression and the psychology of the oppressed in one move.

Like The Secret City the story is told in fairly straightforward language but it makes the reader work to get the full picture nevertheless. Charley's views are often childish but portrayed in such a way that the reader can get more meaning out of it than Charley does himself. His Hoot master, although in a similar state of development himself, is usually a few steps ahead of him but puts things into an alien framework. Another important character in the novel, Charley's father, has problems expressing himself in clear language. His body language and the way he vents his frustration are an important part of how he communicates with Charley and the reader. All these very limited views combined can be interpreted in a number of ways, making the book deceptively challenging. It's one of those books that rewards the reader for looking beyond the superficial and diving into the characters.

The Mount is clearly a science fiction novel but the focus is very much on psychology. The alien invasion is not the center of the story, there are no epic space battles or explorations of strange alien cultures. Readers looking for that type of science fiction will be disappointed. The novel is something of an allegory for slavery or oppression and can be interpreted or applied to many different situations. Some reviewers have suggested it comments on the way we treat animals ourselves for instance and, although I don't think that was Emshwiller's intent, it fits well enough. It's a very effective text really, I'm impressed with how much Emshwiller has packed into such a short novel. It is challenging the reader's convictions about freedom and oppression and invites them to pick the characters brains to understand their motivations. I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten all out of this novel yet after one reading. I'm going to have to revisit it in a few years.

Book Details
Title: The Mount
Author: Carol Emshwiller
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Pages: 232
Year: 2002
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 1-931520-03-8
First published: 2002

The Shelters of Stone - Jean M. Auel

I have done reviews of the first four books and the final book  in Auel Earth's Children series. The Shelters of Stone is the fifth in the series and not having reviewed if feels like a loose end. Since I was ahead of schedule and waiting for another recently ordered batch of books to arrive I decided to do something about it. I've read this book once before, shortly after it was released in 2002. From what I remember I wasn't that impressed with it and I suspect Auel disappointed quite a few readers with this book. It appeared 12 years after The Plains of Passage and does little other than repeating all that has gone before. While I didn't think it was as dreadful as The Land of Painted Caves, it's most certainly not the highlight of my reading year.

After a year long trek across Europe, Alya and Jondalar finally arrive at the home of his people, where the plan to mate and settle. Ayla is apprehensive about meeting his people. She worries they may not accept her and wonders if it was a mistake to leave the Mamutoi who have adopted her. She quickly finds her place among the Zelandonii though. Her unusual background ant talents gain her the attention of Zelandonii, the people's spiritual leader who intends to induct her in the mysteries of the great mother. Ayla doesn't only make friends however. The speed with which she gains the attention of the high status members of the Zelandonii gains her her share of enemies as well.

Jondalar's people occupy what is today a part of France, more specifically the Dordogne. The region is well known for its prehistoric sites and from the way Auel descibes in, it must have been very densely populated by the standards of the time. I've visited the region when I was a child, I think it was the summer of 1984 but I might be a year off. One of the places we visited was Lascaux, famous for its cave paintings. Back then the original paintings were already closed to the public to prevent them from further deteriorating but we did see the replicas in Lascaux II. I also remember seeing some of the overhanging cliffs that serve as a shelter for the Zelandonii. As usual Auel's research has been meticulous, even if she is stuck with some of her earlier choices regarding Neanderthals in particular, that by the time his novel was published were already outdated. I probably would look at the landscape with different eyes if I would visit this region again. Not everybody is enamored with Auel's tendency to describe landscapes in detail but she does have an eye for it.

One of the things that seriously annoyed me in this series as a whole is how much human development and technological advances come together in Ayla and Jondalar. The list of their inventions and discoveries is much too long to be plausible and I suspect that Auel took some liberties with the archaeological record is some cases. Fortunately Auel manages to limit herself to just one in this novel. She has Ayla discover the Lascaux caves. The paintings that have been found there are several thousand years younger than the time Ayla's story is set in, so I didn't really see the need for it. I guess we should be grateful she didn't paint them herself.

Most of the book is not about prehistoric life though, it is about status. Like among the Mamutoi, status is important among the Zelandonii. Jondalar is a high status male, son of a leader, attractive, talented and well connected. For Ayla to be suitable mate, she should match him. High status almost comes naturally to Ayla. She is, after all, practically perfect in every way. The challenges to her position mostly come from people who are jealous of her. Either low status man or women who desire something she has. They never really pose a serious challenge in this novel, as much as I disliked The Mammoth Hunters, at least Auel managed to create tension within the Lion Camp generated by her presence.

With so many people meeting Ayla for the first time, every significant event in her life up to that point is rehashed in this novel. Some events several times. Auel seems to think that because she took twelve years to write this novel, the reader will have forgotten all about Ayla. Take out the repetition and the superfluous introduction rituals and there is enough plot left to fill a novella. With so much emphasis on Ayla's position in Zelandonii society the focus of the novel also shifts away a bit from topics such as ice age ecology and techniques of survival in the paleolithic. While a lot of people feel the detailed descriptions of everyday life are tiresome, they are much more the strength of this series than dialogues or the petty drama Auel puts into her story.

Auel achieves very little in this book. You could say the only thing she does manage in this 750 page doorstopper is convince Ayla she belongs among the spiritual elite of the Zelandonii and that puts her in a position to force the loss of innocence (or in less cryptic terms the realization that sex and reproduction are linked) described in The Land of the Painted Caves on these unfortunate hunter-gatherers. Ayla brings change, she is like a storm waiting the break loose but it doesn't happen in this book. In fact, Auel would need many more pages to get to that point. With a little better plotting it might have been worth reading but as it is The Shelters of Stone is mostly filler. Not many people would be willing to plow though that many pages of ineffective writing. The only thing that saves this book for being the worst in the series is that Auel manages to outdo herself in in the final volume. It's very sad to see that a series that started with such a special novel as The Clan of the Cave Bear sinks to these depths in the final volumes.

Book Details
Title: The Shelters of Stone
Author: Jean M. Auel
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Pages: 769
Year: 2002
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-340-82195-7
First published: 2001

Forty Signs of Rain - Kim Stanley Robinson

Forty Signs of Rain is the first volume in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital series. I got my first copy of this book, a mass market paperback, in a book store in Gothenburg, Sweden in June 2005. Unfortunately it turned out to be a misprint, the order of the pages was very mixed up so that the first pages in the book dealt with the storm that was supposed to be the climax of the novel. Of course I was back in the Netherlands by the time I found out and you don't exactly hop on a plane to Sweden to get your money back. I read it anyway but trying to figure out what goes where in the story was a bit of a challenge. A few years later I replaced it with a hardcover, which made for a lot easier reading.

The novel centers on the National Science Foundation, a US government agency that funds all sorts of fundamental research. Thee main characters, all with a connection to the NSF, try to tackle the problem of rapid climate change in their own way. Signs of climate change appear everywhere in the novel and the world has gotten to the point where not acting on it is a luxury that it can no longer afford. While Charlie Quibler tries to get legislation sponsored by Senator Phil Chase to pass, his wife Anna and her colleague Frank Vanderwal realize that science will be pivotal in dealing with the crisis and that the NSF cannot afford to maintain its passive attitude.

Robinson sets the tone early in this novel, indicating that it opens shortly after the Arctic polar ice starts breaking up in summer, one of the many warning signs that the world's climate is about to change drastically. There are no firm indicators as to when this novel is set, although the presence of Phil Chase is a firm link to Robinson's 1997 novel Antarctica, in which he is a minor character. That novel is set two years after the expiration of the Antarctic Treaty which was renewed for 50 years in 1991. That would mean Antarctica is set in 2043. Forty Signs of Rain doesn't have that much of a futuristic feel to it, although cars seem to have come a long way. If it is indeed meant to have been set in the 2040s, it looks like Robinson underestimated the speed with which the Arctic ice cover is breaking up. Since the turn of the century new record lows for the Arctic ice cover had been recorded with depressing frequency. Somehow, setting it sometime in this decade seems more fitting.

What Robinson describes in this trilogy are so called trigger events. Occurrences that suddenly and drastically change the climate in a matter of years rather than the long time frames we are used to when dealing with climate. A lot of possibilities are mentioned in the book but there are two that stand out. The first is what Robinson calls a Hyperniño, an extended El Niño event that in the novel sends big storms barrelling into the coast of California. The most important one is the stalling of the oceanic conveyor belt. A system of currents in the worlds ocean driven by differences in water temperature and salinity. Without the Arctic ice cover to provide a sinking of cold and saline water, the system stalls, severely distorting the heat distribution in many places on Earth. This last threat is noticed at the end of the first novel and will be an important element in the following books.

Climate is a notoriously complex scientific issue and changes to it are surrounded by uncertainties. Just about all available evidence points in the direction that the world is warming up however, and the world is currently ignoring the problem at its peril. Without a decent education in the natural sciences it is very easy to fall for misinformation being spread about the issue. One persistent and to scientists intensely annoying error is to mistake weather for climate. I think this XKCD comic illustrates it perfectly.  The point Robinson makes in this book is that policy surrounding this issue should be based on scientific observation and evidence rather than be dictated by the short term interests of capitalism. It is quite a bold statement given the current political climate. One that probably would sent more than one US senator into a rage.

One could say the attitudes of both Frank and Charlie border on being undemocratic at times. There is a sense of frustration in these characters at the political process and what they perceive as the sheer stupidity of people refusing to re-examine their convictions in the light of scientific evidence. Robinson's characters are great believers in the scientific method, something that returns time and again in his entire body of work. Where the scientists in Red Mars have a blank slate (or at least that is how Sax would see it) to work with and politics are months of space travel away, scientists in the capital run into the political realities of Washington on a daily basis. Although the thoughts of the characters can be quite vehement in opinion of the way politics deals with climate change, the novel as a whole advocates a different role for science in a more diplomatic way.

Robinson also includes different fields of science. Frank's sections in particular focus on them. He is very much into game theory and a sociobiology, often seeing real world situations in terms of either discipline. On the one hand it is enlightening at times, but he also tends overlook the limitations of game theory in particular. The novel also includes brief descriptions of scientific knowledge, usually related to climate at the front of each part that help the reader understand the issue at hand. With those he manages to avoid having to include too much information in the issue into the thoughts or discussions of his characters. Interior monologues are still very common in this book but they don't tend to contain as much information as the ones in the Mars trilogy do.

That doesn't mean this book is all ratio. Robinson introduces a group of Tibetan monks, living in exile on the fictional  island of Kembalung into the story. They are both the window on the rest of the world in a city that is very focused on the US and American interests, as well as the spiritual part of the novel. Robinson has included Tibetan Buddhism in his work before. Most notably in his alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), which is based on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation. The plight of the Tibetans, whose new home is threatened by sea level rise, runs parallel to that of the inhabitants of Washington, getting their first taste of the radical changes climate change in the closing pages of this novel. Their response is one of the many ways in which people adapt in this novel. Despite the grimness of the situation no book of Robinson would be complete with a healthy dose of optimism.

Like the Mars trilogy, the Science in the Capital series is more of a long novel than a trilogy in the classical sense. Robinson is building in this novel and some readers my find the story arc in this novel somewhat unsatisfying. Robinson is outlining the threat, building his characters, setting the stage. Personally I enjoyed reading it but that is partly because for me, this was a reread and I know where he is taking it. I very much enjoyed reading Frank's sections for instance because I can already see some of this paranoid traits starting to appear that wil become important in the next novel. Charlie's part on the other hand became less enjoyable as I think the eventual resolution of his storyline is unrealistically optimistic. An opinion that has been shaped in part by the Obama presidency, which of course Robinson didn't know about in 2004.

After my first read of this trilogy I didn't think this was Robinson's best work. After this reread of Forty Signs of Rain I'm still of that opinion. The novel deals with a challenge humanity is facing and at the moment refusing to address in any meaningful way. In that sense I appreciate this work. On the other hand I can't really share Robinson's optimism that the various parts of government in Washington can be made to disengage from the financial interests of those who wish to downplay the problem. I do not doubt that humanity can tackle the problem through science, I just don't see it happening any time soon. The world is not made up of Robinson's highly intelligent characters, resistance to the radical change in thinking he advocates is fierce. Somehow it is easier to see Robinson's optimism and social ideas put into practice in space than in the world of dirty politics we're familiar with. That doesn't mean we should stop trying though, and it most certainly doesn't mean you shouldn't read this book. The ideas it contains are fascinating. Despite my reservations, I am looking forward to my reread of Fifty Degrees Below.

Book Details
Title: Forty Signs of Rain
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Pages: 358
Year: 2004
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-553-80311-5
First published: 2004