Dave's Gaming Rant v2.0 (Revised version):

     Thorns of the Lotus - Feng Shui supplement

CAPSULE

     A lot of good ideas and some engaging reading.  However, there's a lot
more typos and general errors this time around, and some inconsistencies in
style which are jarring, which turn a possible great product into a merely
good one.  Recommended.  $20 or thereabouts.

RANT

     John Tynes is listed as the editor, but I'm not sure we can really lay
much at his feet, given the general shaky condition Daedalus is (hopefully)
recovering from.  While not as bad as, say, a pre-RTal Hero product, Thorns
has possibly as many typos and errors in it as the three previous FS products
have all together.  Spelling errors that got past spellcheckers (like "wile"
instead of "while"), a number of double commas (possibly from search and
replaces), and a few grammar errors (like "an dumb animal").  Possibly the
most humorous error involves the populations of large cities being pasted
into the chart for Divination difficulties..."Okay, it says here the
Difficulty is 282,147...start rolling them sixes!"  Fortunately, the charts
page in the back has the correct numbers.
     [Late note: Tynes confirms that this product got minimal editing due to
Daedalus shakeups, he gave it one pass total and I'd guess no one else really
edited it.]
     Anyway, enough with the proofreading nitpicks.
     The gimmick of this book is that everything before the Appendices is
supposed to be in the form of narratives, journal entries, dialogues and
other "in character" stuff.  We follow a young eunuch through his training
and experiences as the teachers in the Lotus fill him in on their side of the
story.  Meanwhile, journal entries from Hand, Dragon and Netherworld spies
and observers give us the other side of several of the stories, along with
colorful background, myths and other neat stuff.  The only game text (in
theory) is to be found in character writeups in the friendly black boxes.
Players having trouble finding good source material on China of 69AD (and
it's damnably hard to find here in the Midwest, let me tell you) will get a
lot of good stuff from this.
     Unfortunately.
     Yes, there's an "unfortunately."  The main narrative tends to slip in
tone.  A LOT.  There's only a few outright "Talking To The Referee" lapses,
but these ancient eunuchs seem to pull out modern phrases pretty often, as
the writer writes in his own voice, not that of the character.  It's annoying
how often sentences start with "Sure, [etc]."  Way too casual and modern for
these guys.
[Entering revised paragraph]
     Now for the subject of eunuchs.  Eunuchs are a big deal in this book,
being the main characters.  And most readers know what a eunuch is, right?
Well, not quite.  Most readers know what a eunuch is in Western culture,
which is to say a guy who's been gelded.  Fails the testes test.  You know
the drill.  As a result, several lines in Thorns of the Lotus come across as
ignorant, and my original review lambasted those involved for it.
     However, in China the rules of making a eunuch are slightly different,
and pretty much everything goes.  This is, believe it or not, a pretty
important distinction, and one which should have been made in the book
itself, perhaps in one of Dr. Haynes's sidebars.  Something like this:
     "Secret warriors from Western cultures should be aware that in China,
the process of making a eunuch is more...thorough...than in the West.  No
wonder those sorcerors are so cranky."
     - Dr. John Haynes, Full Contact Historian and High-Caliber 
          Anthropologist
     Just cut that out and paste it into your copy.  }->
[End revised section]
     ANYway.
     The appendices have new goodies for just about everyone, with the Hand
coming off the weakest, I suppose.  Lots of new spells and ways to use them,
scads of new Creature Schticks, three new archetypes suited to 69AD, a few
new Unique Schticks for some existing archetypes.  There's also a pile of new
NPC Schticks, like "Stampede" for crowds and "Punch Passage" for powerful
demons and the like to make their own ways through time.  A lot of gaps in
the rules are plugged (gaps as in, "it doesn't say how to do this, ummmm,
gimme a roll and we'll wing it).

     There's a lot of good *content* here.  But the form has numerous flaws,
which is a shame.

     Dave Van Domelen, and the number one reason to join the Lotus, edited
for biological accuracy, is..."You weren't using them anyway."