Lots of fire and very little smoke
I got the MM2 recently. I was suprised at how low quality the book was over-all and considered writing a review or a message board about how unfortunate it was. Somebody else has done it for me.
Crothian wrote a servicable review hitting some key points and giving it a harsh grade. I'm a bit surprised to see so many luminaries out bagging him for it.
Its a low quality product from Wizards. While you might like it more or less than some other product you hated recently there are some things not to like:
Art
the arts gotten worse not better (MofF or MM) -- WotC (or at least RD) made a big push to create a new style of art for 3e. Someof there stronger competitors have really responded. They have to live up to that standard now.
Repeats
many of the monsters have been in print before (gem dragons, avolakia, etc). having more monsters you already own doesn't really make a strong selling point.
Unintelligent (or motivationless)
many are of the ravening-killers-who-hate-everything-and-live-only-to-kill type. Do we need a paragraph talking about how ravinous and obsessed with destroying everything this monster is?
Is the book a 2? not to my mind
(in my imaginary review it was going to be but the yakmen, of all things, convinced me that it was too harsh).
but I wouldn't say it was better than a 3 either.
they did a great job with the mid-to-high level focus. The higher CR monsters are fine, if anything epic level gamers will be disappointed. (The Monsternomicon had things with CR 40+ so I don't really follow this though)