I love knitting lace. I mean, I love knitting most things, but lace is one of my favorite things. It looks so delicate and fragile, but it isn't. It's complicated, but in a way that suits me. It comes out looking beautiful, and you do have to do some detail work when you're blocking it to get everything just right. I've done several lace shawls, and I've got a few currently in progress, but I've never done anything in the Orenberg style.
Gossamer Webs is a book that both covers the history of Orenberg lace knitting (a style local to a small town in the former Soviet Union -- under the USSR, people who were lace knitters had to turn out 24 shawls a year, and that was often very difficult for a single person, so daughters were often recruited to help) and shows a few pattern options, but this is more a book about how to design your own shawl than how to follow a specific pattern. (The same author, Gamina Khmeleva, also put together a pamphlet called "The Gossamer Webs Design Collection" that does have three gorgeous shawls in it.)
I'd recommend this book to lace lovers, and anyone who's really interested in the international history of knitting, but if you're just looking for lace patterns, this probably isn't the book for you.