This is one of the first books that Ed Greenwood wrote for TSR, and it is a shame that it be a poor scan. My print copy have a page repited, so that is the quality you can expect.

About the manual (or manuals, because you have a part for players and another one for the DM), Greenwood had a hard job here. He had to show halflings in a different light that Tolkien's hobbits, but he could not go too far away. He did a good job creating a soceity with traditions, magic and some interesting twists (backfire powers and pirate halflings!) that make halflings very good and playable characters.

But if the ideas are great, the way to explain them are not so good. The explanations are a bit plain and boring, repiting the same idea with different wording; the history part is tedious, a succesion of foreign conquerors and guerrilla warfare that gets old fast. Description of places are concise, but not very interesting, and perhaps it would had been better to give less key places but do them more diverse and special.

Finally, the rules. Oh, the rules! You have many rules that you can consider superfluous today, but that possible they were not so great 25 years ago. The Prestige rules are an example of boring bookkeeping, the blackflame rules are so precise that it's hard to use this ppwer in a right way without study them (and they are not really so common).

In conclussion, you have a handful of good ideas for a young Ed Greedwood, but the rules and exexcution make it hard to read. You have a lot of detail, but it is no very useful in a campaign.

Buy it if you like Mystara a lot. Don't buy it if you want a good reading that inspires you to create interesting halfling characters.

Happy with the purchase.The print can be hazy,and the map is in pieces and bound within the book.Still,this is a good buy!

As with all the gazetteers, the Five Shires is very in-depth, adding whole swathes of background detail to Mystara. Of special note is that this was written entirely by Ed Greenwood, and I haven't come across much non-FR material by him over the years.

It shines a different light on halflings, certainly giving them an identity beyond Tolkien's 'farmers and scouts' stereotype. But overall its value depends on whether you're interested in developing or using the Hin a great deal.

Reasonable scan considering its age. Basic chapter bookmarks included.

Great product, poor scans. This is probably the best thing Ed Greenwood ever did for TSR, presenting a fresh and innovative take of halflings. Yes they still smell like hobbits but are leant depth and fascination by some curly new conceptas.

Well worth a read for any GM/DM running a campaign where hte diminutive halfling leives.