Going borderline here, between I love it and it's good - I've been sitting on the fence for a while, waitin' to see if it was any good, turns out it was definetly better than good. They did example characters the right way (in the Classes section, anyways - PrC section just had mechanical examples, but the examples they made of the base classes were nothing but flavor, just the way I like an example). The magic items were very cool (Quori designed dragon shard implants for psionic characters? Sign me up for a Kalashtar Fist of Errrr.... (Let's just call it a Psychic Fist, instead, given Zuken's lack of, yaknow, existance), with Ectoplasmic Fist Quori shards implanted along the backs of my hands.
The amount of detail that seems to have gone into the basics of the setting, too, really makes me happy - the 'common magic' is helped along by the fact that there are lots (in general, not relative, terms) of low level characters with the ability to create magical effects, be it adepts, magewrights or people with a dragonmark, all contribute to the ability to make use of magic on a wide-spread, if low, level. The economy seems to have been given alot of thought as well - the peasents and surf-type commoners seem to have been brought up in the world somewhat, being expected to have somewhere in the area of 50 pieces of silver at any given time (their life savings), while the other 40% of the population is dealing a few hundred in gold - justifying the prices in the PHB and the setting book somewhat.
Of course, one of the biggest things I've seen had to be the fantastic plot devices: Specifically the Eldritch Machines. Artifacts that basicly function as limited use wish spells - want commoner 1 to have his own army of damned souls? Perhaps he came across a (to make up names), Death Engine, an Eldritch Machine create by his towns insane founder, and kept a secret by the town counciler as a sort of a last resort - the fact that it never saw use during the Last War meant that it's lain there, most likely forgotten by now (assuming the council change members a few times in the past 102 years), until discovered.... and now insert Night of the Living Dead theme of choice and start. Or something like that, anyways.
In the end, I'm sure that you knew all this stuff, Stone Dog, being one of the biggest supportters, evanglists, guy-who-talks-a-heck-of-alot-about-it-and-seems-to-know-everything of this setting, but what the heck. Reccently, I've just felt the need to splat out all my thoughts on my latest purchases on the internet for some reason.
