The good news is that the book provides excellent information on all kinds of bodily trauma in a good mixture of layman's terms and medical jargon.

The bad news is that it could have been better and covered more topics.

I'm not talking about rare diseases or highly unusual circumstances. I'm talking about the fact that in the section about the chest trauma, there is nothing about heart attacks (but it addresses "cafe coronaries," which mimic heart attacks). The section about animal attacks discusses bite wounds from dogs to horses, but has nothing about claw attacks or trampling. The writing at times is awkward, too, and works too hard to hand ideas or scenarios directly to the reader. Um, no. I'm reading this to flesh out scenes already written. If I want writing prompts, I can find them here on my own (give the reader some credit!) or get a book specifically on prompts.

However, it's still an excellent resource books for writers of any genre or anyone who needs to understand some basic instances of trauma. I found the chapter on head trauma to be especially good for my own research purposes, but I littered the entire book with post-tab tab bookmarks for future reference. I thought the last chapter on organ transplants seemed unnecessary, but as I read it, I added a bookmark there, too. I'll be keeping this book in my library, with the hope that someday a new, more comprehensive (and less patronizing) edition will be released. ( )

This is one of the most useful books I own. It helps a writer pick out just the right horrible injury to almost, but not quite, kill the fictional character in a way most useful to the story. ( )