I have loved the bard class since its crazy inception in D&D 1E. Skills, fighting prowess, magic: they've always been a little bit of everything. They've evolved on their way to Pathfinder, losing their druidic roots a bit and coming into their own.
This title for Pathfinder 1E clocks in at 35 pages of goodness (does not count stardard boilerplate, table of contents, etc.). It begins with the overview of the legendary bard class. Much of it is the same chassis as the 1E bard. But a few additions form the foundation of a greater bard.
First, their spellcasting transitions into an arcanist-type casting: they prepare a certain number of spells each day but mix and match them against their spell slots. I will note that unlike a wizard, the bard has no spellbook though he can learn every spell on his list if he desires. Bards also gain bardic fame, an increasing bonus over a larger and larger area to Diplomacy and Intimidate. Perhaps the most telling addition though are schools. Schools give a bard even greater flexibility than before. At 3rd level and every 4 levels after, the bard may pick a school and gain an ability. Bonus combat feats, sneak attack, bonus spells known, and other options can be taken over the bard's career to give them something of a focus. Are you more interested in fighting and swashbuckling? School of the blade gives you combat feats. You the party face and skill master? School of the socialite gives a selection of vigilante talents while the school of the expert gives Skill Focus. Taken together, the bard goes from flexible to more flexible in no time.
The most important change, however, are performances. Inspirations are split off, giving you two separate sets of abilities. A bard over their career can pick up a variety of performances, from old standby dirge of doom to the means to divine the future to calling down lightning. There are plenty of new options here to keep bards busy for years. On the other side, inspirations include friends like inspire courage and new friends that can grant allies DR and energy resistance, help casters, or just be heroic.
Did I mention flexibility? There are new favored class options for all races, boosting the power of inspirations (who doesn't love more inspire courage?), to rounds of performance. Then each bardic class ability has alternates you can pick and choose. Some have been seen before for archetypes, but all of them are fairly solid if sometimes boring, such as changes to the skills affected by loremaster.
New archetypes come with all this. Two of note are the warrior poet, who forgoes all spellcasting to gain improved combat prowess, and my personal favorite, the scholar of legends. The scholar drops down to 1/2 BAB and d6 hit dice in exchange for full nine-level casting. Remember that flexibility? The scholar gets one of two paths: arcana or nature. If arcana is chosen, you're now an Intelligence-based caster complete with new spells for levels 7-9. If nature, you move over to use the druid spell list instead complete with Wisdom-based casting.
Just for giggles, there are a few new feats to let your performances and inspirations work on creatures not affected by mind-affecting abilities, let you change which ability score affects your magic, and so on. A couple new magic items and a prestige class appear as well, just to round things out.
Overall, there were few problems with the writing and editing of the book (places where the pdf hyperlinks were not visible, which are still important to some; I have the actual book as well as the pdf). The ideas are sound: make the bard even more flexible without being overpowered. If you want to build that old-school bard, you can do it. You want a bard from D&D 2E, you might manage that too (school of the mage will help here). Whichever part of the bard class you love most, there's something for you here. I'd love to convert my arcane duelst using this book, as well as several of my other old bard characters. The dings from the editing notwithstanding, this book is excellent all-around...just like bards.
