This is an excellent book which I highly recommend. There is a lot of information here and fills in a lot blanks that the core book omitted.

There are many things to like about this book. It's a ground eye view of the game of mage, all about how to play and storytell Apprentice and Initiate characters. All of the rotes in the book are an appropriate level, it's full of good material on Awakenings, Seekings, and the early phases of the life cycle of a mage. All in all, it's a good book to have if you're interested in focusing on this phase.

That said, I HATE the framing conceit. It's set up like a collection of booklets for new apprentices to help them figure things out, and it has two fundamental flaws. One is that because it has a specific perspective rather than an omniscient third person view, there are weird gaps that it would be really useful for the book to fill. Example: in the section on initiations where it discusses what each Tradition does, it includes this quote "I can’t say too much, since the Order keeps a lot of its material secret." The second issue I have with it is that the presentation is somewhat nonsensical: an apprentice just starting out would have no plausible way to obtain this document, and one that could obtain it would already have a mentor.