As for yours truly... I've only been skimming, but I've seen some cool things, and some lame things. A few things that stuck out:
1) At times, I seem to be misreading some rules. The rituals section mentions that there's no longer a "religion" skill - am I reading that right? In fact, a lot of the book seems to have some gaps that I can't figure out. What is a "stout" weapon?
2) There seems to be some weird little glitches involving coinage, as if the game designers couldn't decide between "gp" and "cp". Most of the game uses the gold piece standard, which makes sense in a broad situation, but not so much in athas. I can live with it. But there are some parts where prices are in 'cp' - I really don't think they meant that it costs only a couple coppers to pay a sorcerer king's levy. Strange.
3) The races. The art for the muls is actually kind of cool, in a cartoony sort of way. I never really imagined female muls could be attractive, but I'm finding I like it. Muls with hair? Not so much. Why do all female muls still need hair? But meh. As for the other races - they're mostly okay. And to answer an old argument here, the new Eladrins don't bug me that much as presented, but I still won't be using them. I really had more of a problem with the new tieflings - they just don't feel right within the setting.
4) Wild Talents as an option is pretty cool. Random Wild Talents is even cooler. I grinned when I saw that. Very nice touch.
5) The atlas part of the book seems really well done, so far. The maps look halfway decent, and there's a lot of good stuff in there. I really like how they focused on making each city take up a good chunk of page space - they really should be the focal point of almost any dark sun campaign. The "Cities at a glance" sidebar was pretty nice. Also, dividing the map up into regions as they did was a great way to organize the text. A lot of the new locations (at least, I've never heard of them) were pretty imaginative, and seamlessly mixed in with old gems.
6) Themes look alright, though the recycled art for a couple of them bugged me. Especially the athasian minstrel - I really don't see athasian minstrels as happy go lucky musicians, but more of the dark poisoners and political fiends that they were in 2e. I think they presented that theme in the wrong way, but whatever. Most of the themes had a pretty good fit.
7) Templars as arcane casters is suprisingly a good touch, that reinforces some of the campaign themes. I approve. Didn't think I would, but turns out that I do.
8) Monsters are generally pretty cool. Silt Horror is especially nice, and I really like the "personages of athas" chapter - a nice touch. I have to wonder about a few of the choices thrown in, but that's to be expected. Tareks as an orc analog is a surprisingly good choice. The art for the kirre (one of my favourite 2e Dark Sun monsters, for the simple reason that it was in the Monstrous Manual and not the unavailable to me at the time Dark Sun MM) absolutely blows - it just looks goofy. While I'm on the subject of monsters - why were gnolls thrown in as one of the monstrous races? Is there any particular reason? I'm not necessarily appalled at it, but it just seems like they were put in because wotc has been really big on using gnolls over the last few years.
9) So far, the feywild looks like it could have been handled a lot worse. Renaming it was a step in the right direction, I have to say. I still see no reason for it to be there except as a means to put in "fey" creatures and I won't be using it in my campaign, but they could have done a lot worse.
10) Kalidnay. Not sure whether I think it's suddenly gone up about ten points on the awesome scale, or dropped ten points on the awesome scale. Really have to think on that one.
11) The "adventures in Athas" part was good - I really like how they have sample adventure ideas in there. The skill challenges, just from a cursory glance, make sense, though I wish they wouldn't throw skill challenges in books, as I use the (MUCH BETTER) Obsidian system which just makes WotC's SC's a waste of space. Still, I can't really complain with how they were set up.
12) And finally... is it just me, or does it feel like the tone of the game isn't quite right? It still seems like the PCs are "heroes" and really feels like it's a lot less gritty than it should be. I realize tone is kind of ephemeral, but from the way the book reads, the tone doesn't seem necessarily right. Mind you, I've really only been skimming so far, so maybe it's just a bad first impression.
