I'll buy hardcovers of books by authors I really like, including Steven Brust, Lawrence Watt-Evans and Robert Jordan, without hesitation because they are worth it. On a side note I got the ARC of Issola on Ebay, which was interesting, but I still purchased the hardcover when it came out a couple of weeks later. Now Tolkien's maps, though beautifully done, irritate me. He basicly said anything off to the east and south, off the map, were "darklands" and home to barbarians so everytime I looked at the map south of Gondor I always thought he should have written THIS IS WHERE THE WORLD ENDS. The maps in Yendi kind of made me scratch my head out the time. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was perplexed by them. -------- Read The World at the Edge of Time, my new book! http://homepage.mac.com/christurkel