Much like the inner sea world guide, Paizo has delivered us some fantastic insights to the world of Golarion, and some incontrovertible proof as to why the bad guys never, ever win.
Red Mantis Assassins and Shadowcasters seem to have something in common after all... they both have THE WORST POSSIBLE OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO MAN! Let me break the book down for you section by section...
1: Magic of the Inner Sea: This section contains some wonderful descriptive text about the areas of the inner sea, how magic is used in each of them, and what magical features would attract anyone's attention. It also has level and alignment breakdowns for 50 of the worlds most famous spellcasters, including Razmir, Nex, the Runelords, and Baba Yaga. Good section. 5/5
2. Variant Magic: All about what magic is, False Divine Magic, Fleshwarping, Primal Magic, Riffle Scrolls, Shadow Casting, Tattoo Magic, and Thassilonian Sin Magic Specialization.
The first four sections are wonderful, flavorful, mechanically interesting, and I would certainly include them in my game. Then we come to the pile of mechanical trash that explains why the minions of Zon Kuthon can't magic their way out of a paper bag, and why they mostly wiggle their fingers ineffectually and fail to get anything done.
Shadow magic consists of four feats and an archetype which allows the casting of 'shadow magic'. The first feat allows an illusion to be ended prematurely to do poor damage. The second is a metamagic feat that requires the other two metamagic feats in this chapter, and entangles creatures with spells of the darkness descriptor for one level. The third is the base metamagic feat for the set, which gives a +1 save dc in the dark, but necessitates a concentration check to cast in the light for one spell level. The last feat is the middle metamagic which makes a spell into a darkness spell, causing any creature to shed 10' of darkness in the spells effect as long as it is an ongoing effect... for two spell levels. And it's generally pointless.
Tattoo Magic has a LOT of stuff which does NOTHING. For a new feat, you can add magical tatoos which... do... pretty much nothing at all. A one per day use no-slot metamagic still/silent rod, a resevoir tatoo which, as far as I can tell, ACTUALLY DOES NOTHING AT ALL, and a spell tatoo, which is an incredibly painful and expensive way of scribing a scroll for no benefit other than having a scroll at 4x the normal cost look pretty on your skin. To compound this, they add the Tattooed Sorcerer archetype, of which Seoni is apparently a member, which does... basically nothing. You have a familiar who turns into a tattoo, and can add 1 caster level to a scribed spell tattoo? Which as we already noted, could have been done at HALF that cost without the feat by buying a scroll from someone else.
Thassilonian Magic specialization takes your choices away from which spell schools are your opposition, and basically moves back to 3.5 specialization, where you cannot so much as spell-complete magic items from those schools, but you get two of the same spell in that specialty slot, rather than one spell for your specialty school. Neatish. Some people might actually try that.
All in all? 2.5/5
3: Magic Schools: Watered down factions, but otherwise very neat flavor and mechanics for membership in schools. Just make sure your GM uses the auto-level rule from the sidebar, or you waste your time and money trying to graduate during downtime while you out-level the school in a scant few weeks of adventuring.
4/5
4: Spellcasters of the Inner Sea: Some helpful examinations and explorations of where the APG and UM archetypes are common, and a double-handful of new archetypes, some of which are neat, some of which are trash. This is arguably the most important part of the book, where all the player customization comes into play, and half of it is useable only for die-hard flavor enthusiasts, in much the same way as the Vow of Poverty Monk. I can say this for certain: "I'm looking forward to trashing an enemy Shadowcaster and mocking his choice of archetype in play..."
There's also the Cyphermage, which is completely pointless, with worthless special mechanics which will virtually never be useful between levels 6 and 12, and the Divine Scion, who is a worth-while prestige class trading domain abilities or paladin advancement for diety favored weapon specialization, dire opposition against a single alignment component (EVIL IS BAD! or END ALL CHAOS!) and auto-self-healing and skill buffs for domain-appropriate skills.
This section has good with the bad, for 3/5.
5: Spells: 39 spells over 12 pages, ranging from good to bad, depending on how creative you are in using them. Some gems include a mortal kombat-esque bladed dash, a concentration-duration wall that explodes when destroyed, the ability to transform into a genie, an annoying defensive/debuffing enchantment spell to use on your threatening enemies, some undead summoning, and the ability to melt your wand into the weapon you're wielding! Magus are going to have a field day with that last one... 4/5
The art and layout are Pathfinder standard, which is to say: Excellent. A few editing mistakes, but nothing they can't clear up on a second run through, and really minor stuff unless they got some mechanical words wrong. 5/5
Grand Total: 3.9/5
