Bill Coffin's
Library of Bletherad is a wonderful book, and by the very nature of its subject matter, it's able to be a grab-bag of many different things that needed to be covered in Palladium Fantasy, but wouldn't fit as neatly into a normal book. "Library of Bletherad" could easily be the idea behind a series of "jam" books, with various Palladium authors collaborating turn out articles that might not fit elsewhere, or on areas that have already been covered in other books. The book at hand is not without its problems, but the high points of the book far outweigh the low points.
Obviously, this book deals with the Library of Bletherad on the isle of Y-Oda. The first part of the book covers the island itself in very good detail, though it is much longer on teasers than it is on actual facts. Many things are alluded to, like the discovery of ruins on the island, and some sort of magical phenomenon on the neighboring island of Zy, but nothing is given concrete details. I was practically begging for more information on Zy, but aside from cryptic references, there was nothing.
The second part of the book covers the library itself, both the physical structure, the history and organization of the library, the monks who inhabit it, and their main pain in the nether regions, the Carbunculum. That last part is a wonderful idea on Bill's part. "The Carbunculum" is a book published without the permission of the Monks of Bletherad, one that purports to tell all the "interesting" parts of the Library for "real adventurers". What this does is let him summarize the contents of the Library in a way that is completely non-authoritative. Since the book is known to be inaccurate, Game Masters can pick and choose what's real and what's not, and players can read the book without learning all the secrets.
I do think there was entirely too little information on the monks themselves. What sort of vows do the monks take? We know from Old Ones that scholastic monks must be male, but this seems at odds with the assertion that the monks are accepting and egalitarian. Their racial openness also makes me wonder about changelings in their midst; if a changeling wishes to act like a changeling (switching appearance according to mood, or occasionally walking around without putting on an alternate face), how are they going to react? The entire section on the monks themselves is only a page and a half long, and the better part of that was about specific NPCs. Too small, in my opinion.
Part three covers the Guardians of Bletherad and the Zealotry, a conspiracy that might or might not be bent on destroying the Library. While I can't point to anything in particular, I didn't particularly like this section. While it is well-written and makes good adventure fodder, it simply didn't appeal to me.
Part four is "The Argosy", describing a collection of books in the Library's possession. There is a bit of adventure fodder in here, tied back to the history of the Library. The books listed are supposed to be representative of what the library has in its possession, but the problem is that the first five books are books of magic, which are specifically excluded from the Library. While I can understand wanting to put these spells in a book, and they're really cool spells, the fact remains that they're completely out of place in the book.
The section called "On Numismatry" is absolutely outstanding; Palladium Fantasy has always had a fairly vague economic system, but a discussion of the coinage of the world really fleshes the world out. While I do have some problems with the section (such as the Wolfen having no coinage in a 1gp increment), its very helpful to have around, for both the pictures of the coins and the summation of the relative diplomatic strengths of the world's countries.
There are several more books that round out this section, including ones on other worlds, rune weapons, and a random system of justice, but the most notable book is the very last, on siege warfare. This section is very well done, and opens up the game to more epic-scale warfare (of course, my own mass combat system would further add to that). In all, it is an effective cap to a very good book.
I give Library of Bletherad an eight out of ten. It is exceptionally well done, and could do very well with a sequel to fill out other areas of the world. It does not get a nine, however, because of my dislike for the section on the Guardians and the Zealotry, and does not get a ten because of the other, minor problems scattered throughout the book.
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