Book review: Extreme Bricks by Sarah Herman

Many LEGO fans can also remember the frustration of reaching for the last brick to complete a challenging, two-day creation only to discover that the bin is empty and your masterpiece will never be completed.

So imagine the sheer exhilarating joy of having at your disposal an unlimited supply of LEGO, the toy that has successfully transcended generations, in whatever piece you want and every colour. Of course, these lucky few are not children but adult collectors eager to build models based on their wildest imaginings and on a scale never seen before.

And now you can enjoy some of these spectacular, record-breaking and amazing LEGO projects from around the world in a full-colour and fascinating book which lifts the lid on extreme builds.

Sarah Herman, a British writer, editor and LEGO lover, has collected together an amazing assortment of projects which test the limits of the bricks’ capabilities and push the power of plastic to jaw-dropping levels.

The results are truly spectacular and prove that the LEGO builders of the 21st century are no different to the spirit of the ancients who undertook extreme building challenges like the Great Pyramid of Giza, Stonehenge, the Colosseum and the Taj Mahal.

Whether they are re-creating these centuries-old works in brick form, building life-size superheroes, breaking world records with skyscraping towers or firmly adjusting their thinking caps to making plastic robots, some LEGO fans are taking their passion for plastic to new heights and lengths.

Herman showcases some of the world’s most ambitious builders in her exciting and fact-filled gallery of mind-blowing models. She chronicles the first attempts at large-scale models embarked on by the LEGO Group as well as the early work of LEGOLAND artists and builders and contemporary LEGO Certified Professionals who build big for a living.

Extreme Bricks, with its 200 colour photographs, also charts the rise of AFOLS (adult fans of LEGO) and their increasingly spectacular models and gargantuan collections, and explores the popular building competitions.

Fans – young and old – can also take a closer look at the shockingly smart LEGO MINDSTORMS robots which can do everything from solving a Rubik’s Cube to building their own LEGO models.

Complete with incredible statistics about the number of bricks used, time taken and records broken, this is a book to dumbfound, delight... and inspire.

(Michael O’Mara, paperback, £12.99)