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Rating: 
Summary: Not Worth the Effort
Review: I rarely don't finish a book once started but I just couldn't get into this one. Gave up at page 96. I'm sure there are others that enjoy it, but I'm not one of them.
Rating: 
Summary: You have to read it twice ;-)
Review: Its funny but its true it takes a while to enjoy this book but after a while i really liked it.
So many things happen in the book, Disch made me wonder what would happen if there was really something like a magic staff.
What would i do with such power.For me it is a book with some really new interesting things and plots.
I am sure i will read this book again and again This is the only book i have read by Disch but if he has more horror stories like this i will definitely read them. groetjes from Holland
Rating: 
Summary: a good beginning, but didn't quite finish it right
Review: The first four parts of this book were superbly done. I mean, Disch did an excellent job telling this story, but then the fifth part came. It was a major letdown. Disch couldn't "close the deal." Maybe if he had started the story off in this future he had created, it would have been a better ending, though i think it would have been better if he had just kept on the same vein he was in. Disch was trying to go for a deeper shock value, a deeper sense of outrage and wrong, but his style in the final section of the book just didn't keep up with the rest of the story.
Rating:
Summary: Not Worth the Effort
Review: The Greek god gave 6 year old Billy a magic stick that could heal or kill.He made bad things happen to his Granny and his brother. Bad things happen to his parents and he lives with relatives whose daughter has Billy's son, Judge, a crazy. Billy becomes a Doctor and finds a cure for Aids but creates a far worse plague, ORVIDS. Bad things eventually happen to Billy and Judge takes over and I can't believe I really waded through this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not the usual medical thriller; imaginative and magical
Review: Young Billy lives with his father and stepmother and younger half-brother Ned. Billy is a loner, and different from other children. He thinks a lot, and has a greater imagination. He also has a streak of meanness, and when he is given a magical stick, with a dead bird tied to it, he finds that he can make things happen. Occasionally, Billy will make something good happen, but most of the time his desires, in the form of poems, are mischievous to downright cruel. After crippling his brother, causing his Grandma's hair to fall out, and stopping his step-mother from drinking by making her vomit every time she tastes alcohol. Billy's odd obsession with bizarre games in his mind, starting with bowling pin armies and ending with his visions over the stick, fuel his imagination and need to keep using his "powers". He gifts members of his family with good health, but his father dies in an accident. Staying with his stepmother, he becomes a Doctor and has an affair with his step-sister, and decides that as a medical professional he can use his "magic". But, will he use it for the good of mankind, or will his tendency towards cruelty lead him down a more sinister path? Only the "confusion" at the end of the story stops this from being a 5 star book, it just seemed a little like Mr. Disch didn't quite know how to finish it.
This is a great book, jumping large time frames at times, and long on prose occasionally, but still manages to be a quick read for medical thriller lovers.
Rating:
Summary: Not the usual medical thriller; imaginative and magical
Review: Young Billy lives with his father and stepmother and younger half-brother Ned. Billy is a loner, and different from other children. He thinks a lot, and has a greater imagination. He also has a streak of meanness, and when he is given a magical stick, with a dead bird tied to it, he finds that he can make things happen. Occasionally, Billy will make something good happen, but most of the time his desires, in the form of poems, are mischievous to downright cruel. After crippling his brother, causing his Grandma's hair to fall out, and stopping his step-mother from drinking by making her vomit every time she tastes alcohol. Billy's odd obsession with bizarre games in his mind, starting with bowling pin armies and ending with his visions over the stick, fuel his imagination and need to keep using his "powers". He gifts members of his family with good health, but his father dies in an accident. Staying with his stepmother, he becomes a Doctor and has an affair with his step-sister, and decides that as a medical professional he can use his "magic". But, will he use it for the good of mankind, or will his tendency towards cruelty lead him down a more sinister path? Only the "confusion" at the end of the story stops this from being a 5 star book, it just seemed a little like Mr. Disch didn't quite know how to finish it.
This is a great book, jumping large time frames at times, and long on prose occasionally, but still manages to be a quick read for medical thriller lovers.
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