General: I want a review that tells me about the book in question. This should include general factual information (page count, chapter headings or subjects covered, art, fluff vs crunch, etc.) and then should go into the reviewer's opinion of the book. This should include things like overall impressions, how inspiring the book was, how inspiring the fluff is to the reviewer, how good and relevant the crunch is to the book, and how well the book did it whatever it intended to do.
Basically, I should have a good idea of what I am getting if I decide to buy the book. I should know if I will be able to use it, based on topics it covered and how well the reviewer thought they were covered. I should also get a feel for how well it will work in the game.
Specific to your review: This is strange, to review a review, but I guess that's what you wanted. I found your review a bit unorganized. It starts out with telling us a bit about yourself and your expectations on this book, which is absolutely fine imo, but you don't end on that note. I found that it lacked closure to the format you set up.
You talk about fluff, which is at the beginning, but don't give your conclusion to it until later, when you say "
the first half of the book, however, doesn't include nearly the useful content of the second half" but even then it's not clear if this is about fluff vs crunch. It also seems as if you don't like fluff. Again, that's fine. Do you not like fluff in general? Do you not like *this* fluff? Did it inspire you at all? What stood out as really good and really bad fluff?
When talking about the crunch, you go into some detail but then not enough. For example, you talk about the adventures but not if you think they did a good job at showing off why dragon's are tough, or not. Later, you talk about the crunch, but it's unclear to me if you like it or why you are talking about it.
The vampiric dragon Bloodwind is worth the cost of the book alone. Imagine a huge 23rd level vampiric dragon with an exanguanation breath weapon able to suck the blood out of three victims at once. Bloody brilliant!
As reported, the full statistics for Tiamat are included as well, although I can't see many parties ever facing her and fewer still walking away from it. Overall there are over 80 pages of statistics for new dragons and related monsters.
In the above quotes, you obviously like the crunch of the first but then almost, but not quite, don't like the second thinking it's almost a waste of space. Again, it's not that this isn't good information. It is. It is disorganized, though, and so comes off confusing to me.
Finally, I think you have fallen into the trap of many reviewers in that you have some complaints about the book, indeed don't like the first half of the book. Yet, the "quick review" still gives it an 85%. I would have expected closer to a 60-65% rating based on the reading, so found those two didn't mesh. (Imo, in reading lots of reviews of games, I agree that out of school, a 50% is an average rating, instead of a 75% as in school.)
I hope you found this helpful.
Happy New Year!
edg
