I have to say that, for $8 on sale, this was an excellent buy overall.
Whether or not you agree with me will depend mostly on your gaming tastes. People looking for iconic Dungeons & Dragons fare need not apply here. In fact, there is a decidedly anime-like feel to many of the races... a very strong plus in my book, though I would imagine it would be a turn-off for others.
It is a beautiful book, aesthetically. The artwork isn't exactly Arthaus caliber, but is definately very good especially for an independent small print. Unfortunately, this comes at a price. The book is only 70 pages long, but clocks in at 160 mb in file size. I speculate this is due to the use of very high-resolution graphics for the artwork. While this makes the book very pretty, it also makes the file very unwieldy on slower computers like mine. If I had my drothers, a B&W-low-res alternative download would make this book even more attractive to me than it already is.
Something that I had to nod in appreciation to was a sidebar explaining their design balance philosophy. They wanted to make these races mesh well mechanically with core material. So they set the upper limits on game power equal to dragonborn and genasi. I'm not one to judge game mechanics well, myself, but I believe they did their job fairly well on this consideration.
Avian: spiritual humanoid eagles. They handled the "race with wings" problem by simply making their ability to fly an epic-tier feat.
Bjorn: humanoid bears, with all of the intimidation and gentleness stereotypically seen in bears. Their epic-tier feat makes me want to play one, just so I can say that I have the Turn Anything ability.
Excelsion: a blue-skinned humanoid with an affinity with psionics (one of the sample adventurers is in fact a psionicist, which makes me wonder what else GameVein has in store for us). With the right feats, Excelsions would be hard to drop as long as they can critically hit their foes on a regular basis.
Ferralyn: can you say "neko-chan"? These humanoid felines are arguably my favorite of the races, if only for the artwork. They're more like house cats than great cats, since they favor agility over brute strength. One feat allows them to regain healing surges with a short rest, giving them something of a "nine lives" flavor. And, despite my anime reference, there are male ferralyn as well as female ones.
Insectoid: the name pretty much says it. While the feats for the race pretty much emphasize the fact that they're big bugs, I can see them being something of a surrogate race until WotC publishes the dromites again.
Leonine: the picture for this race reminded me how much of a red-blooded American male I really am. And I'm assuming GameVein did that deliberately. While remotely descended from celestial lions, Leonine are now more like hyper-attractive gold-skinned (furred) humanoids. In fact, their attractiveness is their primary game mechanic premise.
Ling: small humanoids with a rainbow selection of skin colors, they espouse and embrace the chaotic nature of the Feywild. They are especially good at not being noticed, despite their decidedly fey appearance.
Nymph: another race whose mechanics focus on their attractiveness, for obvious reasons. However, this all-female race also has an affinity for water that plays into their mechanics as well.
Obsidian: a race that fled the Shadowfell for the natural world, they appear to be humanoids made of obsidian rock. While their physiology plays strongly in their game mechanics, their Shadowfell heritage does, as well.
Radiant: something of an anti-thesis to the obsidians, radiants are metal-skinned humanoids from the Astral Sea whose "blood" seems to be pure radiant energy. Their Astral heritage plays strongly into their game mechanics.
Storm Elf: these are simply elves with an affinity for nature, sky, and lightning. However, their racial power puts them on-par with dragonborn as emergency controllers, so they're definately worth a look-see.
Tarsion: This is an agile mammalian humanoid race known for intellectual pursuits. While its racial power plays on its natural agility, many of the feats play up their intelligence.
Vixen: These are spiritual fox-like humanoids with an affinity for illusions. Its racial power makes a vixen seem like she's in two places at once (even though she's really not).
Volem: Probably the most ambitious of the races in the book, as far as game design is concerned, these are literally living golems. There are six different types, each one with their own racial power.
At the end of the book is a series of tables summarizing the racial feats presented throughout the book... something of a handy guide if you're too lazy to flip to the section for your race.
The latest version of the book also includes the current FAQ as it is presented on GameVein's website, which is also handy.
All in all, I loved the book. I would have given it a 5 rating, in fact, had the file size been one or two dozen megabytes rather than fourteen dozen!
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