Amazing Vehicles Book Review

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy a good cup of coffee, long walks on the beach, and you’ve faked your own death and changed your name to avoid paying for cable. Allegidly. You also get asked to do book reviews occasionally. My case in point, the good folks over at No Starch Press asked me to review The LEGO Build It Book: Amazing Vehicles. Our very own LUGNuts member and LEGO Technic designer Nathanaël Kuipers wrote the book while Mattia Zamboni lays out the graphic design and step-by-step instructions. Together they make a cohesive team...the book is well laid out and, with tips and suggestions, it is fun to follow.

It works on the notion that...what if you were a builder on a budget? What could you do if you had a small LEGO collection? Or better yet, what could you do if you only had one LEGO set? Like say...set # 5867. With the limitless imagination of Nathanaël Kuipers, Amazing Vehicles takes you through ten different vehicles of varying degrees of difficulty...everything from a baby stroller to a rescue truck. Seasoned builders may not get a lot out of it but the section on advanced build techniques has valuable tips that can turn any novice into a pro.
My only gripe, even hot off the press, this book is outdated, somewhat. Ideally it would be neat to buy the LEGO set along with the book, but set number 5867 has long been out of production and is no longer available at the LEGO store or Shop-At-Home. You’d have to pay exorbitant prices on Ebay or Amazon to obtain it, but this is remedied by a list of parts at the beginning of the book. Most parts are common and can be easily ordered...it was even encouraged to improvise with an alternate part or color if you can’t obtain the necessary pieces from your collection.
After awhile I wished everything wasn’t so...oh, I don’t know...red, but Nathanaël Kuipers, does what he does best by creating alternate models from an existing set and shows us ten vastly different possibilities from not a lot of parts. If you like this book, then Volume II comes out later this month.
My thanks goes to No Starch Press for my copy and thanks to Amazon for the photos cuz I was too half-assed to take photos myself what with running from the law and all. Plus Brothers Brick posted their review on like the same day I was gonna do mine so I had to wait awhile. What the hell is up with that?! Anyway...
Now about that cable bill. I think I’ll go with Damien this time. It has a good ring to it. Thanks for reading.