text: So, it's a monster manual for dnd 5e. It has a bunch of monsters, some good ones, some throw-away (as with all of these types of books). The book is less useful as a reference for lore or role playing support. It offers little useful information in monster descriptions. Most of the text in the descriptions I have found to be of very little use. For me, this book is just monster stat references with the occasional flavor support. I would have liked to have smaller illustrations and more of them. If lacking that, at least a physical description of every creature. There are some monsters that just have stat blocks with no further information. Sure I can just google and see what someone else has drawn, or I can draw inspiration from my long history of role playing to make it up, but they devoted a full page to one image from one creature, could they not have just stuck to smaller images and given more space for this stuff? I really didn't need a full page scene with the monster in-action. It would have sufficed to just put a simple illustration for reference. This is still a book that I would not be able to go without (online versions aside), so it is pretty much a must-have for anyone wanting to have physical books for their gaming. I know that some people look for these as fantasy themed art books, some of the art is good, some of it is bad. As an art book, I would give this a 2/5. As a source book for monster stats it's a 3/5.