I'd like to start off by saying I'm a huge fan of artifacts so this will be slightly biased towards this book.

What is an artifact within the fantasy universe? It's more than some super cool magic item that can sometimes break the campaign in the wrong hands. A proper artifact to me needs a story behind it; a soul so to speak. Most artifacts I have come across do not have that depth, but this book seeks to rectify that and does so splendidly.

All totalled there is 264 pages chocked full of the artifacts with a class and random artifact creation at the bottom. To be honest I don't know how useful the random artifact creation is or the class, but to focus on those two items would to see a few flecks of silver in a gold mine in my humble opinion. Every one of those artifacts is detailed in a way I absolutely love. Each of them has a rich history linked to their creation and a drawback to owning and using them. There are a variety of artifacts which are a healthy mixture of thoroughly good, indellably evil, and totally neutral artifacts. Each artifact seems to vary in power depending on their background and in a few cases if other pieces of the artifacts or other conditions are met. Each artifact has a way to destroy it if the campaign calls for it to be desroyed (though a few artifacts are repaired instead of destroyed). Finally each artifact has a section on introducing it into the campaign which I appreciate more than anything.

The only thing I don't understand as well as I'd like at this time is the random artifact generator. It's not that its unnecessary or hard to use as much as I said I don't understand it. To me designing an artifact should be deliberate and controlled. I don't like using a random generator for it. That being said even in that I love some of the ideas for some of the unorthidox artifact possibilities.

The only other thing I don't like as well is the class contained within. While it's not bad itself I don't like the concept. But this is just a personal opinion really.

To tell you the truth I can't begin to expound on the myraid of reasons why I love this book. It's one of those books if I could rate higher I would. In the end my question isn't how do I use the artifacts within the books it's more just finding that right campaign to put them in. And boy do I have so many campaigns to plan thanks to this book.