The Calastian Battle mage is too powerful compaired with the standard wizard....
I would say that S&S is put in a bit of an awkward position by virtue of the fact that the majority of arcane prestige classes are overpowered. (I thought J. Wyatt did a brilliant job in OA with his bonus spells system, unfortunately that has been largely ignored in favor of the you get 95% of the bonus of being a high level wizard (the spells) with additional 'perks'. WotC has become the worst perpetrator of this, with arcane Trickster is a good example. I just perused your review of T&B, do you really think that the Arcane Trickster is balanced against the basic wizard? (to be fair you don't really touch on it specifically simply refering to the PrCs as a group as 'mechanically sound'). Just curious.
( take it M. Uran's art is the stuff on pg. 15,29 etc.?)