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I was really excited to crack into this product, since it got good reviews and came highly reccomended by the author. However, what I saw very much did not live up to the hype.
The book is very poorly edited. I know English is not the author's first language, but it badly needs to be read over by someone more fluent. Some parts are fine, but others are borderline unreadable. Formatting is also not great, with third- to half-pages regularly left blank and wide margins inflating the page count unnecessarily.
History section is probably the most useful bit; I got some ideas there for certain.
The section on local folklore and important dates is lacking. There's nothing wrong with the details themselves, but the focus is all wrong for a Vampire chronicle. Bank holidays and when school children go on their lunch breaks are cool, but they're not useful to an average game at all. The Player's Guide is better in this regard, but I shouldn't have to buy two separate books just to get basic info about the city. I'm also not sure what the logic is between what of this info got into the Player's Guide and what got into this book.
Most of the rest of the book is NPCs. And they're... not good. Many of them are quite bland, with generic backstories and one-note personalities.
"I am a racist and don't like minorities", "I am a serial killing creep", "I am an all-around nice guy", etc. A few others feel very unlikely - Lyle, Claudia, and Victor in particular border on the rediculous in one regard or another.
On the bright side, I like the idea of the surface vs hidden Nosferatu, as well as the detailing of a few important ghouls and of some of the local other supernaturals - a good call for STs who might want to focus on that sort of thing. There was a few NPCs I liked as well.
Coterie breakdowns are fine, a bit oddly formatted and suffering from the same problems as the NPCs that make them up. The story hooks are OK, but many of them lack depth. I'd like to see a bit more complex stories suggested - there's really only one or two that work as a major chronicle plot, rather than a sidequest.
The influence explanations at the end are good and helpful, as is the timeline. The table of contents is linked to the sections it references which is really nice, although for some reason it's at the end of the book?
The biggest problem here, though, is the pricing. This book costs $20 US, or it's availible as part of a bundle with the Player's Guide for $35. This is the same price as a meaty V20 suppliment like Lore of the Clans. I understand pricing it up a little bit because they likely will sell fewer copies than "official" work and you want to get actual return on your time investment, but considering that the ST Guide alone is around twice the price of the official By Night sourcebooks, with less content, it's very underwhelming.
Overall, there was a few interesting ideas in here, but if I hadn't gotten it on a good sale, I'd feel like I wasted my money.
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