Rose has gone grimdark,
Kanaya, Rainbow Drinker:
See? Derse is rising.
My very first DnD 3e character was a halfling ranger named Chester Kegtapper.
With that out of the way, I can say that I like this book a lot. First off-- treating the Shadowfell as Ravenloft seems to be the order of the day, & that is...right on. Perfect. I mean, the Negative Energy Plane is neat, & the Plane of Shadow is cool, but Ravenloft is a setting, is a place you can actually run a game. Classes wise, we've got the assassin-- lots of people have probably seen the playtest of this, & in my experience it works like a charm. I've already mentioned my fondness for blackguards; here they are divine strikers, rather than the divine defender that the cavalier & Player's Handbook paladin are. There is also a vampire class, which I think is the right way to go for sure. Savage Species style! This paves the way for werewolves & other transformational monsters, & I think that is a great way to go. Sometimes, yeah, it is pretty cool for the guy who got bit by the werewolf to turn into a lycanthrope. There is also a whole new Essentials style class for warlocks-- the Binder. I'm not the biggest fan of the way these classes are laid out-- with class abilities segmented by an initial choice, & separate from the level progression information, but that is just personal preference. There are other options here as well, for Shadowfell-themed Clerics, Warlocks & Wizards-- really well fleshed out paths, rather than just a few scattered powers. That accounts for the first hundred pages or so, but it is a solid chunk of crunch & fluff. There are another two pages of feats in the back, which are fine, but really the role of feats is increasingly diminishing.
Races-wise, it is a little hit or miss, if you ask me. There are revenants, which are solid. People like Radarless want to play undead-type guys. I get it; in my last Oubliette campaign