Diane Kagan is an actress with a long history on the stage and a respectable amount of appearances in film and television. She is also, evidence this book, completely fucking crazy. This was published by Random House for chrissakes. What was going on in 1975?

"Who Won Second Place at Omaha?" is a surreal journey through a private house/museum filled with dolls and puppets and mannequins. It is a showcase for a series of black and white photographs depicting dolls ranked on shelves and staircases, in cabinets, in pieces, in looming clusters, and pressed against window panes. The narration is in vignettes and is sheer lunacy.

We were visiting a friend's bookstore and he greeted us by saying he had something for my husband - something completely creepy. I was expecting either an ordinary doll collector's book, because everyone thinks all dolls are creepy, or some twee faux-macabre art book.

Nope. It was this.

Our narrator greets visitors at the door - all persons are off-camera - and reassures them that they have the right time. It takes so long to come up from the workshop, you understand. The voice is mostly this host/collector explaining the various personalities of the dolls and cryptically commenting every so often about a stray second place award ribbon from Omaha. Who does it belong to? Everyone is a winner here....

We never do find out who this particular winner is, perhaps the Jumeau from the cover, but we do hear many tales of woe - laments about loneliness, missing arms, abandonment anxieties, and decaying clothing. Some are happy - Raggedy Ann and Andy are just fine in their plastic bags - suffocation is not a problem for them the narrator assures you. They've been lying there for five years and haven't said a word.

The photographs are often stunning and the collection itself is impressive, with many photos of rare and obscure items arranged in an interesting fashion. The text is gleefully demented, but it may not impress anyone who isn't also a doll hoarder like my husband. He was in tears from laughing over this thing.

In his words: "Every. line. exposes her psychosis more. This is amazing. This is insane."

Fans have labeled this 'The Big Book of Bad Art', and for good reason. This book is large format, almost coffee-table sized, and I'm sorry to say there is no reason even a die-hard fan should pick this up.

'World' was released after 'A Crown of Swords' so there are many unanswered questions and plot lines hanging in the air. Reading this, years after the entire series is complete, I read this with the eye of spotting information that wasn't otherwise duplicated elsewhere in the official series.

There's nothing. Well, almost nothing. There are fragments of information about the Seanchan and other lands beyond "Randland" (the main setting of the series, the continent and the world were never given a name, so it was dubbed "Randland", woof.) Even that information gets repeated in the novels themselves.

The text itself couldn't decide if this were a mock-history of Randland from a fictitious scholar, an arch commentary on the book series, or...what? It worked on no level. The text was riddled with awkward sentences and typos as well, which was unfortunate.

With the text out, that leaves the art.

It's bad. If you, as a reader, have ever done a quick internet search about a character or a plot point to refresh yourself (which is acceptable in a 14-volume series with hundreds of characters) pictures will pop up. For years I'd dismissed them as fan art, which has its place, but it turns out they were from this book. Muddy portraits with doubtful anatomy and melting features. Even the landscapes and buildings, such as the White Tower, were terrible. This was an official product of a best-selling fantasy franchise from the premier fantasy publisher. Presumably Jordan signed off on this? I was so appalled, I could only laugh.

The only redeemable art in the whole book was the double page spreads of Darryl K. Sweet's cover art for the first seven books. I've never been a fan of his figure drawing, but the landscapes were beautiful.

That, however, does not make up for the cover price. You're better off picking up only 'The Wheel of Time Companion' and letting this one fade into legend, myth, etc.

The Wheel of Time

This rating reflects the art. For the text - click here.

Beautiful illustrations, some better choices. I had more words about the illustrated editions, but they got lost somewhere along the way. I only noticed they were gone when I started trying to fix some of the more important dead links in the thousand-odd reviews I imported into the site.

They're dead through my deleting of my Goodreads account, the import function on Booklikes is fantastic. I suspect any lost reviews are user error (i.e. my fault), and shouldn't reflect on this site.

Anyway, I expect to have an illustrated 'Goblet of Fire' ready for my better half under the tree, and I'll try to do a more thorough critique.

Harry Potter

Next: 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Illustrated'

Previous: 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Illustrated'

This review is more about the art. For a review of the text: click here.

I've been collecting these the past few years as Christmas presents for my husband. They're beautifully done, but as a crazy fan, I of course have some issues. Kay is a fine artist, but its seems like many of his choices of subject were arbitrary, if not bizarre. I was also disappointed in how long it took for any female character at all to be illustrated - Mrs. Dursely doesn't count and you know it!

Throughout the book there are a lot of extra touches, ink blots on the 'parchment' pages and so on, that help make up for it, but only a little.

This makes for a nice present, but I expected something better from a deluxe illustrated edition.

Harry Potter

Next: 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Illustrated'

This rating refers to the art, not the text. It is a relief to get rid of those ugly covers, but I still have some issues with Kay's illustration choices. Of course, the 20th Anniversary covers (on yet another edition) by the otherwise talented Brian Selznick leaves much to be desired. Don't even get me started.

For my thoughts on the text of the book itself - click here.

Harry Potter

Next: 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Illustrated'

Previous: 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Illustrated'