well, I ask because I have loved praying mantis from the very moment i began studying it…however my sifu must travel 3 hours from his kwoon to teach my class in my hometown…and thus can only manage to do it once a week…so i find myself starved for information. I have purchased numerous books on prior arts (i studied goju kara-te and yang style tai chi) and so when it came to praying mantis…i expected to do the same…only to find that there are practically no praying mantis books. As for the seven star, that is of no consequence. My sifu told me that our longfist mantis is based off of Longfist kungfu and Seven Star Praying Mantis kungfu (which is what makes us different from the longfist mantis in taiwan) and so i was hoping to pick up some material on seven star…like i said once i get the taste of it i just want to keep going and going and going…but find myself without options…i was hoping to get a feel for these books and their relative value as instructional supplements…I dont actually have them…i am running a “used book check” on amazon.com to see if i could turn up a copy. I hope this better explains my current position. thank you for the information! if you have any more, please feel free to post, or write me!
I have read both books and I feel that they are worth getting. They are very informative and also have some excercises in the beginning. I don’t recommend learning from books though.