I must admit, that as I am a fan of using devils and the Hells as the focus of my campaigns I’m a bit bias towards liking this book.

The book is a 64 page, softcover book focused on a specific topic which comes in at only $20; just how I like my supplement material. The layout and artwork are both impressive and the Book of the Damned Vol. 1 provides a wealth of exciting material as well as a handful of new options for players and GMs alike, including spells, magic items, and even a prestige class. The book also contains a few new and cool devils. Much of the book is fluff, however, but while it seems both well written and well thought out, many people might not appreciate having less usable material in favor of flavor.

In my personal campaigns I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this book, but it will likely not appeal to anyone who isn’t running or playing a game centered around devious and devilish foes. For anyone who is I strongly recommend this book.

First volume in Books of the Damned - a series on Evil outsiders - concerns with Devils, the good old manipulative LE schemers of the D&D world. Wes Schneider tackles the job of improving over 3.5ed Fiendish Codex II, which wasn't all that great. Let's see how it goes.

Chapter 1 describes the archdevils (Asmodeus included) and their realms, the layers of hell. No statblocks are given, due to Pathfinder not having epic rules to handle that yet.

Chapter 2 provides information on the ecology of the regular devils, as well as some information on other denizens of hell. I really liked the Whore Queens idea, I must admit.

Chapter 3 presents rules for mortal involvement with devils. Infernal contracts, devil binding, fiendish spells and magic items and a Prestige Class - the Diabolist - are all here. I think it's the best chapter in this book, one that I've actually used.

Chapter 4 is the compulsory bestiary section. Four new devils to pit against your players.

Now, what's my conclusion? Honestly, the style of writing puts me off. The author sinks into Dante/Milton inspiration somewhat too deeply and the result borders on purple prose, with superfluous passages that feel like taken out of some Romantism novel.

The maledictions of the archdevils and their personal histories and drama are are all very well thought out, but this book has very little substance for a GM that runs something less...dramatic. I didn't get that much use out of this book as I hoped for.

For a primer on how to write such book as to make it a worakble source for the GM, refer to the next volume in series, Lords of Chaos, which is far better.

I was highly disappointed with this book - the 3.5e WotC Fiendish Codices 1-2 are MUCH MUCH BETTER.

The authors of both Volume 1 and 2 made a good effort, with an obvious desire to show off their vast vocabulary or thesaurus skills (some of their word choices were bizarre, I mean seriously, I don't want to pick up a dictionary on every page). I get it - you guys like big words. Exciting details of the realms governed by the Lords were poor to say the least, no maps are provided, and the excerpts from the Book of the Damned uses a font extremely difficult to read.

Volume 1 made no mention of this but Volume 2 states that statistics for the Lords are not needed as they would completely destroy any heroes (other than Epic) that dared to challenge them. This was disappointing and one of the few running complaints I have had with the Pathfinder books as a whole, including stats for the Gods.

The artwork is for the most part very good. Graz'zt and other of my favorites were not carried over for IP/proprietary reasons I assume.

Having played D&D for ~ 31 years now...I'm hypercritical of course, but Paizo/Pathfinder has saved D&D for me. WOTC's 4e was the last straw. With that being said, these two books were my first two disappointments in the Pathfinder texts.
The 1e Manual of the Planes about the Infernal Realms was riveting, I read those sections over and over. I have always wanted to run an Infernal campaign "Paladin in Hell" etc. but these books don't provide enough detail to significantly help this project - if anything is emphasized, it's the politics of the Infernal Realms. The Blood War is hardly touched upon either.
The books are short, also disappointing.

This is basically the same review I posted for Volume 2.

I hope in the future these are redesigned, reworked, expanded with numerous maps and statistics, and re-released using new authors.

This book has some very nice background material on Hell in the Pathfinder setting, as well as information on the ruling beings of Hell, its layers, and how it works.

Reading through the book makes you really want to find a way to work this information into your campaign. There are disturbing planar cities as well as interesting sites and terrain.

Not only is all of that in place, but the PFRPG rules in the book are a good support to the information, such as the Diabolist PrC, and the rather nasty spells and monsters in the book.

One of the things I really like is that the secret events of the beginnings of the universe MAY be explained, but may not, depending on how reliably you adhere to the source of the information. Wonderful way to expand large scale setting information of this sort.

This book is very useful and detailed without being over the top. They give you a great new prestige class, fantastic artwork, a gazetteer of everything you could ever want to know about Hell, and flavorful and useful new magic. I was also relieved to see that they didn't try to stat up the archdevils--in my opinion, that's where 3.5 went wrong.
They do, however, give you a nice gallery of new devils to use in your game. As a GM, this is a very helpful tool for any game that involves Infernal powers.

A very flavourful product that will be useful to both NPC's and PC's of a diabolical bent. Information is presented on each of the levels of the Nine Hells, and the archdevils who rule them. There's also extended information on the hierarchy of devils, and some new LE fiends to unleash on your players. Add in some new spells and magical goodies, and this is a great package.

There's also information on literally dozens of powerful devils, from the arches on down, who accept worshippers - which can add some new devilish options to spice up an evil cult, or give you some new character concepts.

I must say that I like this better than the stuff I've found in the Book of Vile Darkness and the Manual of the Planes. This thing doesn't look that sterile. I'd appreciate more details on various layers, but the space is limited There is enough to tip the DM's imagination toward the right direction. Maps of infinite layers are impossible to make, but some vaugue illustrtions of the hellscape would support the text nicely IMO. It's good that there are no details on the lords of hell stats, because like gods, they should be nearly allmighty in thir layers and not meant to physically enter the fight against the PCs. Some manifestations, perhaps a template for the lord of hell posessing a humanoid or an outsider would be nice. More detail on the lords of hell personality and way of things would, again, be good to have.

I won't comment on the rules, I didn't play-test them, but I appreciate that there are some basic mechanics describing basic workings of the hell's machinery.

I must say, that I'm pleased overall with this book.

I realize that the Chronicles are stat light and fluff heavy, but I was very disappointed in this product for the simple reason that a book titled 'Princes of Darkness' didn't have stats for the archdevils.

This seems to be a trend in PF so far, with no high level content released or even scheduled for release from Paizo. While the Beastiery had stats for some high level monsters (pit fiend, Tarrasque) overall high level stats are few and far between so far from Paizo.

I can only hope Paizo rectifies this once they finally create epic rules for the Pathfinder system, as the archdevils would certainly qualify.

On the plus side, the narrative concerning the devils is well written and informative. I'd have given this product 4.5 or 5 stars had there been some attempt to stat the archdevils, even without solid PF epic rules in place.

Being a fan of everything related to hell, Asmodeus and that entire aspect of roleplaying, I simply had to get this book. And I can't say that I regret it now, on the third day since picking it up from postal delivery.
I enjoy the stories and flavour in the start and ending, the content is great and very rich on details.
The diabolist prestige class covers an area I have missed proper coverage of and has exactly the right feeling of both the great powers a pact with hell has - as well as the ultimate damnation it includes.
A great thanks for the notes on the Pathfinder version of the Archdukes as well. I am generally very happy that the take manage to have all that I loved and adored about earlier versions of hell, while still being uniquely pathfinder.

At the end of the day all I can say about this is: I wish, burningly, that there was more. And well, I must say a more detailed description of the individual layers of hell, with drawings, maps and more of the (already adorable) interesting locations would definitely be an adorable addition to this book. Especially for GM, who like me, find the urge to send the players on a visit to the plane of LE-alignment nearly irresistible (this book certainly doesn't make that urge smaller!)