After taking time to read the PDF of this product (my hardback copy is coming), a feel that this product, on the whole, is a good summary of the Border kingdoms and their inhabitants, and will be useful for anyone wanting to run a game in that part of the Forgotten Realms. It has decently detailed entries on almost all the settlements in the area and is a good guide to the potential mysteries and drama that could unfold for any campaigns set here. I will even be looking to use it for an upcoming campaign I'll be running. It does seem aimed at DMs rather than players, so keep that in mind if you are buying this that your DM may want to use the info here in their campaign too.
Unfortunately, where the product falls down is it's editing. Reading through it, I am struck by the idea that just one or two more editing passes of this book could really have made it perfect. Be it through time constraints, a lack of availability/funds or some other reason, it seems this product didn't receive the last bit of love it needed to make it perfect. For example, there are numerous obvious spelling errors, grammar issues and simply areas where a space wasn't included to separate two words. The tone also swings wildly around, from a formal tone similar to WotC official products to a sort of nudge nudge wink wink tone of your mates telling you a story to straight up almost breaking the 4th wall. The sentence structure is also a little wobbly in some places, with attempts at a clever turn of phrase conversely making it harder to understand the information being set out. The way information about each settlement is also quite different, whereas a similar format for each place, breaking down facts and figures and maybe listing points of interest before launching into the story of a place would have made it easier to digest and use in a game. Ultimately all of these issues could have been solved by another look by an editor, a competent proofreader (or even just having another look with a word processors spell checker for the basic stuff), but that doesn't seem to have happened here, and the product quality suffers for it.
There is also a couple of issues where elements of a description don't match the map provided, for example, the text seemed to indicate Emrys is at the immediate south of Emrysar Lake, but the map puts it 15 miles south of there, it's also meant to be on the Sheep Road, but that is labelled on a different road 20 miles west of the road Emrys is on. Ingletar and Ambrees are marked on the map as ruins but the text only mentions them as active thorps. The labels for some of the realms are unclear or not on the map, such as the Realm of the Ready Sword not having a label or Middle Mukshar being to the east of Nether Muskar despite the text seeming to indicate it is either to the south or nestled between High Mukshar and Nether Muckshar. I could go on, but I imagine you get the picture. It's not a bad map, and I always enjoy having one, being an amature cartographer myself, but the disparity between the text and the map can leave things a little confused. The map maker (Mike Schley) works on the official D&D 5e products so I know their quality is good, so maybe there was a disconnect in some communication somewhere? Regardless, the map is useful, and quite pretty, but may need a little work by a DM to make it clear where everything is.
Finally, some of the content is a little, I'm not sure how to say it, non-pc? It just seems like the descriptions are much more what would have been expected from a product written in the 80s and 90s and not something from the late 2010s. It's nothing bad, just something about representation that I picked up on personally that I found a little uncomfortable, but many may not notice or even care, so I didn't let it affect the rating I gave.
Overall, what I have mentioned are mostly quality checking issues. As I said at the start, the content of the product overall is good and will be useful for my upcoming game, but it’s quality did bug me as I read, hence the rating.
(Edited for spelling and grammar, ironically)
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