Book of the Shadowlands (4/17/98)
Reviewed by Kenneth Hite, Roleplaying Columnist, MANIA! (www.mania.com/mania)

Let me begin by getting something out front: this book is relatively pricy, and perhaps too expensive. Kindred of the East, for example, was the same price for half again the pages, and the large margins and decorative fonts in the Book of the Shadowlands make me think there are less words per page here, to boot. However, the Book of the Shadowlands triumphs as a splendid combination of "monster manual" (describing all manner of sundry pseudo-Japanese awfuls from goblins, ogres and trolls to the fearsomely demonic oni) and "dark land, only darker" setting book (covering the Shadowlands taint, geography, and mythography). As an example of how to work horror into a non-horror roleplaying game, the Book of the Shadowlands is matched perhaps only by Ravenloft. The art, by Cris Dornaus and Carl Frank, is delightfully reminiscent of Japanese pen-and-ink at times; the rest is in a very effective mix of some kind of charcoal-looking art and more conventional, but still convincingly Rokuganesque, pen-and-ink. I'd have liked to see something like a Hokusai/Hiroshige print in there as well ("Ogre View of Yugure Yama"), but that, as John Wick would say, is just me. In the unified look and interior design, the Book of the Shadowlands actually surpasses Kindred of the East, which is saying something.