Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely No New Concepts
Review: There are no new concepts put forth in this book, and worse, it's filled with painful stabs at humor, practically worthless information (most of which seemingly to get the reader from one picture to the next). I just don't think many people realize that Meadows has rewritten existing ideas as little "revelations" he has had himself, and so, I advise any prospective shoppers to move on, look toward online journals or monthly magazines in this field (like Speculative Reviews of Narrative, etc). There's nothing to see here.
Rating:
Summary: Completely shallow
Review: This book is completely shallow. What a horrible hate crime against the rain forest to waste paper on a book like this. The author clearly thinks he's a complete genius but all he is doing is wrapping obvious observations about art and narrative in fancy text and adding artsy-fartst pictures. Spend you're hard-earned money elsewhere!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, but lacking in history and context
Review: This is a beautiful book, worth buying simply for the gorgeous design and the case studies and interviews of interactive works and creators. It's lacking as a theoretical discussion of interactive narrative, though. The book proposes a theory of interactive narrative that shows hardly any awareness at all of other work in the field. The use of visual metaphors and theory is often inspiring, as in the discussion of perspective as a way of thinking about interactive works. I would have liked to see a lot more knowledge of narrative genres and theory in a work attempting to analyse interactive narrative. I would also have liked to see more awareness of the history of interactive narrative and the theories of these works. Where to start? Try The New Media Reader, Cybertext, Hamlet on the Holodeck and see where that takes you.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for the eye, bad for the brain, okay for the stomach
Review: This is a beautiful text visually, and the author has done an excellent job of bringing together very interesting experiments in interactive design. However, his analysis, as several other reviewers have noted, really is best described as "shallow." His interpretations lack insight and the details examined seem selected randomly. The interviews he includes often lack proper contextualization, and I think he stretches the term "narrative" far too much, trying to subsume things like games and theater as narratives only, without attending to their game-ness or theatricality. The problem is that there aren't many other books dealing with this genre of work yet, so some readers will find it useful for the excellent example of interesting case studies at least until someone with better analysis writes a book. Theoretically, Marie Laure-Ryan's book on Narrative as Virtual Reality is also a good selection.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read for anyone who wants to tell a story
Review: This is a must read for game designers, theoreticians, and anyone interested in how to tell a story in which the listener can influence the outcome. It's a how-to book, and a how-did-it-get-that-way book. Its range is wide enough to swim in, yet deep enough to go diving. And if the book doesn't get dog-eared from becoming an essential reference manual to those who design interactive environments, it certainly will from the flipbook comic in the upper corner that tells a story of one funky looking skeleton. Excellent. Mark Meadows has proven himself over and over again to be at the forefront of the intersection of art and technology in the Internet age. From his now classic 3D comic 'Crutch', museum installations that interact between the real and virtual worlds, to narrative architecture experiments at Xerox-PARC, Mr. Meadows has consistently challenged notions of perception in the art of storytelling. Pause and Effect takes all that he has gleaned from his experiences to create a remarkable contribution to the burgeoning field of interactive narrative. The book's premise is deceivingly simple: narrative and perception are equivalent terms, and since our notions of perception are changing with the use of a networked world, so too must our narratives. When video games are matching Hollywood in financial returns, and as increasingly novel ways are being created to distribute, explore and exchange information, this point of view is both timely and forward-looking. Mr. Meadows takes us through from basic principles to 2D and 3D imagery, and on to the development of interactive environments. With his interdisciplinary approach, he provides a wealth of examples, including analyses of medieval Christian paintings, eye physiology, color theory, software UI design, video games and comic books. And in keeping with the interactive spirit of the topic, he interviews people exploring this new terrain, from theater to books to online gaming, including Scott McCloud, Marcos Novak, and the creators of DeusEx2.
Rating:
Summary: an impressive book, said a jaded silicon valley designer
Review: this is probably one of the most important you will ever read if you are involved with interactive design and visual story-telling. more than that, it is an important book about art and representation suggesting many directions that art might go. this book suggests that there are such things as historical contexts, that form communicates, that thoughtfulness is good. the author did his homework.
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