DISCLAIMER: The weapons depicted in this book are realistic and not suitable for children under 12. Brandishing these handguns in public could get you killed, seriously.

I'm not a huge fan of guns or gun culture, but I do appreciate a good prop replica, and the guns in this book are remarkably accurate. Jeff Boen has built a reputation as one of the premiere gun builders in the AFOL community. Now he brings his building and weapon knowledge to you with The BrickGun Book. At it's heart, this book is an instruction manual, but it's very well done. Building, documenting and illustrating black MOCs is difficult, but this book succeeds with ease. With step-by-step instructions, this book will be familiar with anyone who has built a LEGO model before. Four of the guns are just display models, but the MAC-11 is a functional rubber band gun.

The book starts with a brief introduction, some handy building tips and history, but gets right to the meat of it quickly. All five of the guns featured start with both a visual inventory as well as a text list, perfect for both kind of organizational personalities. The building instructions looks and feel like actual LEGO instructions, and are very high quality. Anyone familiar with building 6+ sets should have no problem following them. There are moments of confusion though, but I believe it's more because of difficult to convey concepts than problems with the instructions. Even LEGO suffers from this on occasion. If I have one problem with the book is it feels a bit redundant, at least to my untrained eyes. Three of the guns are very similar, almost too similar. I would have liked to have seen a little more variety. The book itself is the same high quality we've come to expect from No Starch Press.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in guns, LEGO or prop replicas. It's high quality with excellent models and great techniques. I give it 4 out of 5 Nerdly's