As any writer can tell you, there’s a stage of the process that comes just after release of a new book. You ask yourself, is it as good as I think it is? Will people like it? Will they see what I was trying to accomplish? Those same writers will also tell you that actually getting people to write reviews is difficult. Lots of readers will enjoy your book, speak positively of it if asked, but won’t trouble themselves to review it.

Nothing wrong with that. I’ve read 83 books this year and haven’t troubled myself to review them either. It’s normal.

So, anyway, I’m rather glad Steven was willing to share his thoughts in the comments to an earlier post. I’ve elevated them to their own post because it’s nice to have detailed feedback. I’d encourage any other readers to share their thoughts, if only casually in the comments. Anyway, here’s the unedited text of Steven’s review. Thanks!

Balls Deep is the story of Nick Krauser, Pick-Up Artist. But who is Nick Krauser? Was he born to be a man that women want to sleep with? And if not, how did he come to be this way? This book goes into the background of the man, his childhood, formative years, his life as a young adult in University and eventually getting into a professional career in finance. But importantly, it gives the reader more than a glimpse into his personality, early romantic relationships, his marriage to an attractive Japanese dancer and how that marriage came to fail, very much against his wishes. This is the backdrop for the journey that follows in which Krauser manages to completely turn his life around.

When his wife walked out on him and wanted the divorce, all his achievements, high intelligence, ambitiousness, natural self-confidence and masculine hard-dominance seemed to count little. The life that he had built and heavily invested in was turned on its head and he finds himself at an absolute emotional low-point that would last for months. Not the least of his concerns nagging him at the time was how to ever get a girlfriend that he could actually like. He was now in his mid-thirties after all, lacking the automatic proximity to attractive women that being in school and University brings. And despite the individual strengths he brought to the table, he was also rather unremarkable in terms of looks, height and athletic talent. Not wanting to succumb to his projected future of involuntary celibacy or maybe worse, a life with an imagined overweight, foul-mouthed, feminist lawyer-girlfriend, he turned to Pick-Up Artistry and Game, the applied sciences of male-female sexual relations. Thus begins an absolute roller-coaster ride between doubt and hope, constant rejection and persistence in the face of it, repeated failure and occasional small successes until the slow, gradual self-improvement lets our hero see light at the end of the tunnel. Having still not succeeded in sleeping with a single girl despite having tried it on with literally hundreds of them, he could however see himself getting ever closer. And eventually the flood gates opened and what followed went far beyond the wildest dreams he may have started out with. But even after finding success, having multiple pretty girls to date and sleep with, among them his first trophy girl, a catwalk model, he still had not found happiness again. So his journey of Pick-Up was to continue…

Krauser makes it easy for the reader to follow him along on his adventure, the writing is clear, lively, humorous and often downright funny. The narration flows seamlessly between recollections of events, insights into his thought-processes at the time and bits of explanation of the theoretical underpinnings of it all. The many stories contained of his womanizing experiences are truly eye-opening and instructive about the sexual nature of women and the dynamics of male-female relations. And yet the book never reads like a dry attempt to be didactic. The learning happens because the story draws you in, you empathize with the characters, you hope for the narrator to overcome his challenges and for happy endings. This is an honest, authentic, fascinating and highly entertaining account of a modern day seducer that did not just get those abilities as a gift by nature. It’s rather a story of a man making the best of the cards he was dealt and being rewarded handsomely for his determination. And yet it is also a reminder about the fleeting nature of happiness and how success is just as much about dealing with your inner demons as it is about taking action and achieving objective results.

I highly recommend this book, it’s well worth the price for 680 pages of great story-telling from a guy with a proven track-record. In case it needed to be said, the production quality of it is excellent, the layout is very professional, the type is well set for readability and the graphics are beautiful. Within the various chapters you’ll find original, not-so-professional photographs, but they accompany the narrative nicely and add to the feeling of authenticity. In conclusion, this is a must-read for players and especially those dealing with the hardships of becoming one. For everyone else this could still be a very entertaining book, if not an educational one.