Book Review: Just Brick It

RRP $29.99.
Available at most bookstores.

Unlike a lot of the books that I have been lucky enough to review, this one is targeted at the adult LEGO fan community. While I don’t mind the occasional trip to Heartlake City or the world of Ninjago, I was looking forward to something written for somebody like me.

The Just Brick It book doesn’t muck around with who it’s marketed towards – the introduction features the term AFOL with no explanation of what that term means. It assumes that you know what it means because you are an AFOL.

The book comprises of 20 different LEGO projects that you can recreate and the contents details where to find each. This isn’t a book you have to read from cover to cover, you can easily start with a build that catches your interest.

The layout of the book is quite easy to follow. The parts list is presented at the start of each model. This book is not an officially licensed product so unfortunately the parts list lacks detail like element IDs, which would make ordering parts online a lot easier. Having more detail on the parts would also help with colours – there are different shades of grey coloured bricks for example.

One thing I picked up very early on in my read-through of the book is that all of the projects rely on a collection of basic bricks; think 2×4 bricks, 1×2 bricks etc. While it might be nostalgic to just use those basic elements, I think it somewhat limits the creative possibilities. LEGO produce some really interesting parts these days.

There are certainly some builds in the book that work well with the concept of the basic bricks. The Zombie pen holder is a good example. The design works well with the blocky aesthetic giving it a pixel art type appearance.

Just Brick It Zombie

There are other models that just seem very basic. The Santa decoration is an example of something that seems overly simple. It’s just a collection of bricks stacked on top of each other to look like a 2D Santa. I guess it’s kind of cute and does look like Santa, but there are some wonderful Christmas tree ornament builds available online that use a variety of parts and techniques to produce beautiful results.

Just Brick It Santa

There isn’t really a lot of advanced building techniques in this book at all. It almost exclusively uses bricks stacked vertically in different configurations. There wasn’t a single point in this book where I thought “that’s cool, how did they do that?” There isn’t exactly anything wrong with this way of doing things but for an AFOL book it would be nice to see something technically challenging.

There are also a few things in the book that I worry hadn’t been well tested in the real world. For example the giant key holder looks cool but sees you hanging your keys from a stack of four 1×1 bricks connected horizontally to the base of the model with a single stud connection. Sure LEGO has great clutch power but if you try and hang a decent set of keys on a single stud connection it’s going to fail. You could achieve the same results using a 1x1x5 brick in the base and it would be stronger.

Just Brick It Key Holder

There are other design decisions that seemed a bit off to me such as the ghost, which features ten 1×2 bricks stacked on top of each other and placed on the side of the model. It looks alright in a picture but in practice if you have ten bricks stacked with nothing holding them to the body of the model then they can break off fairly easily. It also uses two headlight bricks for ‘hanging’ the ghost. Something like a Round Plate 2×2 W/Eye seems like it would be a better choice.

Just Brick It Ghost

The models that I liked the most are the ones that didn’t attempt to be a practical object. The ones that just exist as a cool sculpture. The mounted deer head featured on the front cover looks pretty impressive. It still has some single stud connection related structural concerns but it looks cool. The models that try and be something you can “use” didn’t appeal to me. I’m not sure why I’d want to have a LEGO toast rack or coasters. That seems like a recipe of damaged bricks. I liked the bear-skin rug build but I’d never use it as a placemat.

Just Brick It Bearskin Rug

I have never claimed to be an amazing LEGO builder myself, which is why I always take so much pleasure from checking out the incredible builds on display at LEGO shows. Despite my lack of skill I still found myself thinking that there should be better ways to do a lot of the things in this book.

When I found out I was going to be getting a LEGO book for AFOLs I was pretty excited. There are so many talented LEGO fans in the community that I was expecting great things. I was hoping to be inspired and amazed. After finishing the book I was disappointed. I honestly felt like this book didn’t know what it wanted to be; the cover proudly declares that these are projects for adult LEGO fans but some of the builds are so simple I would assume they’d been designed by a child if I saw them outside of this book. I always try to judge books by considering who they are for. While some of the books I review are aimed at kids this book is for adults. On that criteria I don’t think this book represents what AFOLs are capable of or expect.

Bricking Around was sent a copy of the book to review by Hardie Grant Books.

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