Ancient Legends of Gems and Jewels

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I was quite disappointed--annoyed--with this book. It's actually a 'booklet,' almost a pamphlet, offering only a brief, at times breathless, recounting of this or that legend re a given stone, accompanied with silly, juvenile drawings. Reading level should be listed as 'pre-teen.'

Rating:
Summary: Nice, breezy little book
Review: This is a nice little book; a quick and easy read, it still manages to pass along a fairly large amount of information in a lively manner. It seems as though the authors must have researched a great deal of material, and carefully distilled it down to a clear, easy-to-read summary of legends of the more popular gems and jewels. Not at all stuffy or scholarly, the book still manages to educate, in a nice, easy, entertaining manner.

It is fairly limited in terms of amount of information about the various stones, but if you take it for what it offers, which is a breezy, friendly overview of the legends various societies have had about gems, it's well worth the effort. My only real problem with the book was that I personally felt I wanted more depth and more breadth, but that is not to detract from the nice job the authors did on the book.