The physical book is acceptable. The binding seems reasonably sturdy, though the pages feel very thin and cheap, and the coating on the cover has some imperfections. The art is good, and incredibly abundant. This is a case where public art domain works very well -- while it's not always a perfect match for the content, it's generally a surprisingly good fit, and all the historical pieces provide visual reinforcement of the period.

The text starts with a solid summary of the book's goals, then dives into a gazetteer that covers the various regions of Albion (fantasy 15th century England), with quick summaries of the various population centers (villages or larger), major players, and so forth. It's a good overview, though it's fairly high level. The continent is even less detailed, though it's a decent summary of the major political events occurring offshore. Overall, the setting is largely historical, with fantasy as a subtle gloss. Though it would have been a good idea to provide a more detailed, ready-to-play starting area that zooms down from the regional level to a small area or town, filled with lots of immediate hooks and potential adventures.

I like that there are many maps, but they're less useful than they could be. The big maps are hard to read, because they're way too busy, use hard-to-read fonts, and tend to blur into undifferentiated masses (the grayscale interior version looks faded, while the color map on the back cover looks like a green blob). The regional maps are much easier to read, but not all the regions are mapped and I had a hard time figuring out how they connect -- letting us know explicitly which areas aren't covered, and how the rest join together, would have helped a lot.

But the history and list of personalities is where the book falls down. I want concise, ready-to-use personality summaries for the major figures; roleplaying advice on how to bring them to life; and tips on how to handle the vast cast of characters. But instead, I got an incredibly tedious chronology of lords and events, like the ones we all had to memorize, in school. It's really hard (i.e. the work of s specialist) to pull together events scattered over decades, and divine the personality behind them, so this is mostly useless to anyone who isn't already an expert. And it certainly doesn't help that the information is in multiple places, or that the same figures are referred to differently in different locations (Salisbury vs. Neville, for instance -- please, please say both every time). There's also almost no advice on how to integrate the PCs into the campaign, like how their actions might change things, pivotal moments, plot hooks for integrating them into the year's events, and so on. This section should be the centerpiece and selling point of the book, but it fails.

There's also a faction/organization system for the noble houses, though it's poorly designed. For instance, unless you have an extraordinary amount of political power, wielding it is counter productive -- not only will you likely fail, but you'll lose political power in the bargain, further reducing your chances in the future. On the other hand, a house with immense political power will probably succeed, and that success will further increase their chances in the future. So the system reinforces the haves and have-nots, and discourages everyone except the major powers from doing anything. It's also very vague and hand-wavy, so the GM might as well just make judgment calls instead.

The section on character creation is decent, with random tables to determine social class, where your PC calls home, and a significant personal event; as well as advice on which character classes are appropriate, and various lists of names. The lists of equipment and costs are also functional, and the summary of taxes is fairly good. There's also a list of allowed spells (fireball and similarly flashy blasts are forbidden), and exceptional items (particularly herbs and alchemical concoctions, which generally aren't very interesting).

The law section, with the focus on social class and alien (to us) concepts of justice and punishment, is excellent, and helps highlight how different the 15th century is from today. The section on traveling is also quite good, but misplaced -- because a lot of the encounters aren't just encounters, they're essential elements of the setting. The chapter covers abjurers of the realms, crowners, and other aspects of late medieval life that probably should be part of a general overview, instead of buried in a random encounter table. But that said, it's one of the best sections, and provides a good feel for what kind of encounters a GM can throw at PCs. The table for rolling the current situation in a town or city the PCs visit is also good. There are also a handful of mapped and (mostly) detailed small adventure sites, covering the typical "dungeons" of Albion.

Demons are another of the book's strengths. They are rooted in medieval views of Christianity, with horrifically variable appearances reminiscent of things like the works of Hieronymus Bosch or the descriptions in Revelations. The rules for summoning and controlling demons are more goetic and risky than D&D's standard pop-wiz miracles, and the list of powers that can be acquired, while often fairly abstract, are more in keeping with myth and legend than the more defined spells of D&D.

The appendices are odd, with a set of house rules for OSR games and an adaptation for Fantastic Heroes & Witchery. Neither seems all that closely linked to the rest of the book -- the house rules diverge very heavily from the standard OSR system (and that wasn't even hinted at, earlier in the book), for instance completely replacing the level system (while characters will gain a level or 2 every adventure until mid levels, hit points or attack bonuses don't improve unless specifically rolled or chosen, and so on), and the FH&W adaptation isn't just an adaptation but has completely new concepts and expansions of the setting (like rules for a cosmology).

Overall, I got a good feel for the setting and period. But the organization is a bit scattered, the rules are mixed, and the timeline and personalities of the Rose War itself are unplayable without a lot of work.