It's a beautiful little book with gorgeous pictures of people and places. Unfortunately, the food and hotel guide is minimal; this could be due to the size of the islands, but I feel this book is best suited for those who want to know more about the history and culture of Tahiti (hence why it's a publication in conjunction with the Discovery Channel). If culture and history are what you're looking for, this little book does a great job.

This book is ok for snorkeling advice. Mostly geared to diving. A lot of the descriptions of the locations for snorkeling where not accurate. I would recommend since you really do not have a choice.

An excellent guide with supurb photos, invaluable to anyone planning to dive these islands. The layout is intelligent and very easy to follow, and the practical advice is well up to the standards I expect of LP.

Buy it well before you go to plan out that dream vacation

This met my expectations quite well. A good overview of the area, followed by a review of the key dive spots in French Polynesia. Excellent phtography, including a good critter guide at the end.

The only downside I can find is that there's no real overview of good snorkeling sites . . . they're lumped in with diving sites.

Overall, I'd recommend . . . I know it will be useful for my trip!

I was expecting more from lonely planet but aside from the maps, the book is obsolete. It also reads like a text book, no passion, no flavor, very boring. The sections on each area are not very big at all. ...

This book did a wonderful job of not only preparing us for the journey, but help us get around. We have now been there three times to three difference islands, and each time it preformed well. Although with all travel books they get out to date in a year or two, you should always call a head to verify critical information.

This book is very comprehensive. It will help you find all of the places you want to go, and will give you an overview of what to expect. Some of the items could have been a little more detailed though. Directions were OK. Luckily the islands are easy to get around. We found the combination of this book, Jan Prince's book, and the Moon book to be the perfect combination for our trip in November of 1998. Read more about our trip and how we used these books at DiveAtlas.com.

This review replaces the out of date one that already exists.

While plagued with clunky metaphors and an over-long set-up, Island Games is a worthy first novel. The premise - of a Survivor-type game where the stakes are deadly real - is a increasingly plausible concept in these times. My read-through was fraught with morbid fascination.

The plot: a quartet of bored rich men plan the perfect hunt, after the delights of elk trophies and putting greens pall. When stalking newlywed husbands marooned on a tropical paradise becomes too easy, a more complex game entices - why not see if regular people can be induced to kill a man? The older hunters have the grace to feel slighly abashed at playing God, a good foil to the young dotcomer's intoxication with his own amoral omnipotence. Helm's exploration on the corruption of morals in alpha-types with unlimited power is certainly plausable. The victims - normal people conned into playing contestants in a macabre reality show - engage in acts of increasing depravity, as the nature of the games escalate.

Hunting men as prey is hardly new territory - witness the cult following of Scharznegger's Predator. Helm lends the concept a sense of contemporary realism. In the wake of reality programs and shock-TV, one wonders whether the Ultimate Game is actually on the agenda, somewhere in Hollywood.

Helm slips into passive prose in expository passages, but does better with action sequences. The author's overburdened analogies distract at times from the plot, self-indulgently revealing the author's "cleverness." The tikki spirituality was also ill-handled; it's as if Helm was trying so hard for surrealism that he became merely incomprehensible.

The innocent contestants caught up in the demented games were well-drawn once they reached the island, after diddling in their home habitats for far too long.

In spite of Helm's new-author mistakes (nothing good editing couldn't cure), I was gripped, devouring the book in a single sitting. I even felt vaguely guilty for my own gruesome fascination in the deadly contests. With his adeptness at handling climactic plot threads, Helm should only mature as a writer. It will be interesting to see what other contemporary rabbits he can pull from his hat.