L itibaren Okulovo, Ivanovskaya oblast', Rusko, 155307
Bert Grant basically summarizes his life's work in a thin little book with big type. See where I'm going with this? For a man whose recollections should fill volumes (according to his boasts in the autobiography), I really wished he had included said memories. Now, I've never imbibed any of Mr. Grant's brews, but that is probably because I'm just not living in the right distrubition area. That being said, I can't really comment on how accurate he is when he claims to have instigated a new trend during the early/mid-eighties with his microbrewery and top-shelf-quality ales. He does give credit where credit is due: Maytag really started the show with Anchor Steam out in California, and big beer companies (Budweiser, Miller, etc.) really are trying to convince the public to drink beer that accomodates the lower common denominators. And after reading as much beer history as I have, everything Grant claims does, more or less, ring true. So I guess my only problems with this book are that it is short, and it did not come with a sampler pack of beer for me.
By this point in time, the only characters that the reader cares about are the Forsaken. With Moiraine ejected from the series, the remaining protagonists are all too immature, and the majority of each book is taken up by the younger characters who don't have a clue what they're doing and aren't able to formulate their own plans until the last ten pages of each book. The only characters who set goals and try to achieve them are the Forsaken, so, if you're going to read the rest of the series, get ready to root for the bad guys.