Sunday, December 2, 2012

My Review of The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 1

I got this book because my son is quickly approaching the age of being able to play a lot with LEGO and I figured it would be a handy reference to have. I know when I was a kid, I was always wondering what I could build with my LEGOs but just wasn't creative enough and didn't have anything handy to use as a reference and ended up giving up not long after.
So, with this book, they state there are about 200 models with about 25 brick by brick breakdowns and I would say, that is definitely the case. I didn't realize there were only 25 brick by brick breakdowns and was disappointed after I went through it all. The 25 or so cases where there was a nice breakdown, I was very happy with as it did a pretty good job detailing how to build each model. I did notice some inconsistencies as I went through the models as some had detailed pictures of what pieces you needed while some were a little lacking. I chalked it up to laziness at first to the author until I realized that this was a collaborative effort by many people, hence the differences from build to build. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that but it again took me by surprise, mainly because of my lack of attention. I would have preferred a little more consistency and thoroughness on the "brick by brick" builds of some as they weren't close to brick by brick, especially the more complicated ones but overall, they did a good job.
I guess in some ways, this book is great because it does give some brick by brick breakdowns. With that, you get the base knowledge and then you can make slight modifications on your own. In fact, that is probably better because it forces you to be more creative yourself and learn how to adapt.
The hardest part about this book is if you wanted to build most of the items in the book, you're going to have to have a VERY LARGE set of LEGO bricks to play with. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to make most of the models. Hopefully you have a big set.
I did like the color pictures and they did add a lot to the builds. I think that was great.
I'm going to give this 4 stars. It's not perfect but they did a lot of good things that given the resources, would really help any budding LEGOmaniac.

Disclaimer: This book was received as part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program. All comments represent my thoughts and opinions.

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