As the second sourcebook for Eberron, following Sharn: City of Towers, this book had a lot to live up to. Luckily it does and I love it. This is a great book, full of really useful information and hundreds of adventure ideas.

The book is set out in five chapters, each one detailing one of the Five Kingdoms (clever coincidence or shrewd planning I wonder…). In each chapter an interesting picture is painted of these five very different places. We become privy to details on the culture of each country with information about their art, architecture and cuisine. Facts, which allow you to add a little extra flavor (quite literally with the cuisine) to any political or espionage adventure. For example when the party is investigating who is responsible for poisoning the noble, how much better does ‘Dragon Salmon in butter with dark wine sauce’ sound than ‘food’ as final, fateful meal.

After this we move into information about the political factions and plots currently active in these countries. Here we have details of the high ranking rulers, including their objectives and enemies. While some of the information was hinted at in the Campaign Setting book this book expands on them in much greater detail and we also find out how each country feels about the other four nations.

To end these mini sections we are given statistics for some of the major characters, a move I don’t agree with. Why do we need to know the hit points of the Queen of Aundair? Even if a group decided they wanted to fight her, at low levels they couldn’t get passed the royal security and once they are experienced enough to get at her she is only so many pounds of shark bait. In the words of the brilliant writers of Deadlands - if you stat it they will kill it.

Each chapter apart from Mournlands/Cyre has information about the country’s spy network be it the Dark Lanterns of Breland or the Royal Eyes of Aundair. They each have a nice distinct flavor to them and also the important information on how to join each said group. In the case of the Dark Lanterns we get a new Prestige class too, very good for Rogues with a less selfish streak (EDIT: they exist? – Jon).

Next up we get some information on locations in each country both cities and mystic sites as well as some country specific Prestige Classes and some nasty monsters. The five prestige classes are the Knight Phantom (Aundair), the Dark Lantern (Breland), the Cyran Avenger (Cyre), the Bone Knight (Karrnath) and the Silver Pyromancer (Thrane.)

Of these the strongest and most appealing are the Bone Knight and Knight Phantom. The Bone Knight would have been a paladin or fighter/cleric, who now serves Karrnath as officers to this countries undead force. They are required to make their own armor using bones, which at higher levels begin granting Bone Knight immunities similar to Undead. All this and no requirement to be of an evil alignment? Just the thing for player who likes their character dark and broody, but not really evil.

The Knight Phantom is an absolutely wicked fighter/wizard choice with spell progression nearly every level, good attack bonus and a very useful Good Fortitude save. If that wasn’t enough how about the ability to wear light armor and have no chance of spell failure (which for the crafty out there could mean your mage running around in a suit of mithral chain mail… fear me!).

In closing, this is a good little sourcebook with the high standard of very impressive artwork that is continuing throughout all of these books.

My only questions would be leveled at the format of the book. Why can’t WOTC learn a great lesson from some other companies such as AEG and split the books up into DM sections and player sections? The Five Kingdoms is about the worst example of this poor design I’ve seen, as even the Monster and Prestige Classes are scattered throughout the book.

This leaves us with details the players are going to want to check a mere two pages away from information that could blow your next plot twist right out of the water. This is a shame really as some reshuffling of the book would have saved DM’s everywhere having to hope players don’t read something not meant for their eyes accidentally or even deliberately in the case of sneaky players who claim it was an ‘accident’ (I must confess in the past a worrying temptation to pluck out one of the offending eyes as punishment, but given my lack of a seriously good lawyer I’ll just have to stick to in game punishments).

A very good product that will thoroughly enrich your Eberron gaming world, it’s just a shame about the format.

Reviewed By Martin Dye