KISSTORY II (2000) If you are a new fan of
KISS or a life long fan and have never picked up either
KISSTORY or
KISSTORY II, you should definitely check it out from a friend if they have it. Whereas the first book was everything it was hyped up to be, the second book failed to live up to it. It's not a bad book, but it comes nowhere near the epic proportions of the first.
With the first book we get a ton of never-before-seen photos of the band, on stage and off. We get basically the life of
KISS through the good times and the bad from the members of
KISS themselves. In
KISSTORY II, we get none of that. The book is dedicated to all things memorabilia. You name it, if there is a product with the
KISS image on it, it's in there. It's cool to see some of the stuff I haven't seen in years collected in one book. But it's not something I will revisit anytime soon.
The only thing that was remotely interesting was the genesis of the
KISS Army, as told by the man who started it. Outside of this, you really are basically looking at a very expensive
KISS catalog, one that you can't even order from because it's dated material going all the way back to the mid 70's. Another issue I had with the book is that parts of it were poorly put together in layout form as some images are clearly cut off on the top and bottom as well as the sides and sometimes the description of a image is sandwiched in the spine of the book making it impossible to read. There is also the issue of color choices for text. This makes it very hard to read when the color of the text is only a slight variation of the color in the background. I also have a bone of contention with a majority of handwritten letters by the fans, which are illegible at best.
This is nothing more than a Rent (from a friend, which I was fortunate to borrow from or check at your library for a copy if your lucky). If you're wanting to buy a piece of
KISSTORY, definitely go with the first book.