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As a physical product, the Book of Jalan is a soft-cover, almost 250-page book. The cover art is nice and in colour. The insides are readable with a few pictures, black-and-white (to keep the print-on-demand costs in check, one presumes), and not very impressive. Some are recycled from the cover art, others not. They are grainy, which reduces their quality significantly. Text and tables are eminently readable. The few maps are not very clear, unfortunately, due to the shades of grey background colouring making lines and names hard to read.
The book has a table of contents, after which the reader finds a bit more than page of fiction. There a total of twelve such pieces of fiction, on average a bit in excess of page long each. They form a coherent narrative and provide a feel for the setting (there is undead former companion, a pen stabbed in eye, a burning district, and such). They are also quite easy to skip, if one is inclined to do such.
A page of introduction follows. If one is using other StarCluster games, the page adds a potentially powerful story seed (great civilisation, SaVaHuTa, has quarantined the planet due to strong psionic powers present, but they should drop it due to development in technology, and are using assassins to delay that). To a reader unfamiliar with the greater whole that is StarCluster universe, part of the introduction is lost. The value it has, to be more precise.
Peculiarly, the magic system of the game comes first, rules-wise. After a bit of thinking (and confirmation from one of the authors), this decision was made to spare those already familiar with other StarCluster games the trouble of reading through all the known rules. For an uninitiated reader, this is a tad jarring. Skimming or entirely skipping the magic section might be wise until the core system is understood. The workings of magic (or psionics) are divided into 5 affinities: earth, air, fire, water and light. Each mage uses one of the affinities (faye, the fey, may have more, but they are not available as player characters). Spells have control (determined by caster's skill) and power (PSI attribute). Using magic burns physical attributes in proportion to the power of the magic used. Multiple spellcasting skills can be combined to produce a weave, which are essentially complicated spells. A few examples and frequently asked questions (from the older edition, presumably) are provided. Some of them reveal extra rules, others are clarifications, and some essentially leave the effects of the spell totally up to the GM. Some details of spells are calculated simply wrong (10 g * 10^1 is 100 g, not 10 g, for example).
Character generation is next. The first step is GM assigning your home nation and ethnicity (but you should suggest stuff, since GMs like that and are prone to even accepting it), which will give a few skills. The characteristics are strength, endurance, coordination, agility and charisma rolled at 2d6 or among which 35 points are divided, and IQ, rank and psi which are rolled at d100 or which share 150 points. The results are derived from a table (which is cleverly hidden a few pages onward), so that the final IQ is between 70 and 140, final rank from 1, street orphan, to O, aristocrat (the scale is 1, 2, …, 9, A, B, …, O). Rank determines starting cash. PSI ranges from 0 to 5. No unified scale of attributes, here. Next, character species is chosen by the player. After ethnicity and such, which is an interesting design choice indeed. Type/species modifies attributes, and the psychology of nonhuman races may be decidedly different from that of humans. On to the interesting part. Lifepaths, kind of. First a six years of apprenticeship or secondary school. After that comes further education, journeymanship (essentially education with a different name) or a job. Schooling costs money (rank is quite important here), jobs give it. Most of the stuff here has requirements in addition to the cost. One can try to waiver either the cost or the requirements, with the chance of success varying by lifepath in question. When doing a job one can get promotion, which increases the money gained. And all jobs and schools give skill and sometimes attribute bonuses, one per year, with some of them usually doubled. One can also pick a metaskill (more of these later) or one of the general social skills, if desired.
The lifepaths are also the primary method of character advancement. More skills/attributes by year. This makes the problem of adventurers suddenly becoming excessively skilled disappear, and allows for visible character chance between actively played time, if desired. Attributes start going down when 34, and every three years thereafter. Old characters are supposed to be skilled but have low attributes. This is true of many, but not all, characters (those who take physical attribute bonuses are an exception).
All in all, the character generation process gives player lots of choice, but also gives a random method, if one doesn't want to make those choices. There are some gameable features and lots of stuff for an obsessive tinkerer to latch on.
Skills are rated from 0 to arbitrarily high numbers. Skill 0 means that relevant chance of success is low. Skill 1 gives a 45% chance, which is not devastatingly low. Each rank thereafter gives further +5. Attributes have a minor effect on the end result, unless they are very high. Skills should be rolled "if a normally competent individual would have trouble", which is a good guideline. Skill list is pretty standard. There are weapon skills, fields of knowledge, miscellaneous physical skills, social skills and some others. It is notable that there is little advice for using or not using the social skills. Perhaps it is left up to group preference. Since they are often problematic, some paragraphs of advice or a few rules would have been useful. An interesting feature is the metaskills. These include analyse, grow, sell, orient 3-D and embellish, to give a few examples. They are very difficult to use without a related skill. The main purpose seems to be augmenting normal skills. The skill entries are intentionally vague to give the GM maximum power over metaskills. This is an intriguing concept, which could have used more development.
There is information about the different species, with automatic skills they get embedded in the descriptions. Some of the cultures are quite stereotypic (Erikkin are sea-going culture which practices trade and raiding. They live in north.). This is intentional. Cultural relations are listed in an appendix to help GM get a handle on them. This is very useful feature.
Nonhumans are not quite standard, though not too far from familiar, either. Alari are physically like humans, but they "mythologize" their past and learn through the process of doing so, from their ancestors. This can happen instantly but only at the rate of one skill per year (this replaces the normal skill advancement and acquisition rules). The Alari player must describe the person who taught the skill. An interesting species, all in all. Alari are much like standard elves. There also are Half Alari, who are trapped between two cultures and can choose between them. Khali are barbaric, strong and clumsy. Kind of noble savage archetype, with clumsiness added in (presumably for game balance). They are short (on average one metre), which makes the great strength even more phenomenal. In a later example they are spoken as generally long, though, so there is contradictory information in the book. Some clans are hostile and bloodthirsty barbarians, while others are not. There are Half-Khali, too. Bani are essentially dwarves, but weak and frail, which is compensated by their agility and coordination.
Characters also get stuff. They get armour, clothing and weaponry. Armours have rating between 0 and 2, which are totalled to get the character's effective armour type, which reduces the number of hits (cross-referenced with the type of weapon used). Most armour reduces agility, endurance or coordination (plate ribbing increases agility, while having spikes sets coordination to 1, but these are pretty clearly errors). Weapons have damage (0-50), required skill level (and possibly strength for the heavier ones), range, type of damage, range and often special abilities. Weapons can be customised with special materials or decoration.
Next, a chapter on playing the game. It starts with three paragraphs of play philosophy (object is to survive, one adventure per in-game year is suggested, Book of Jalan is all about characters, whose strength propels the game). After those, seemingly randomly ordered rules are present. There is combat, language, healing, masteries and such. There is a death spiral which kicks in after losing more than one fourth of one's constitution (hit points, in practice). Instant deaths in combat should not be too frequent, since at half constitution characters go unconscious (this is intentional design choice and allows for combat-intensive game without resurrection magic, if desired). There is player-level tactics in the combat system; initiative, to-hit and damage can be shifted around. Some guidance for handling tasks with no or many applicable skills is given, which is very good. These have the potential to be problematic areas in gameplay.
NPCs, mostly the creation of them, is the subject of the next chapter. There are random tables for attributes, skills, incidental skills, personality, mission and wealth (using all of them in actual play would probably be slow, but rolling once or twice for guidance might work). They are explicitly for guidance. Using the normal character creation process is suggested for permanent and important NPCs. There also are stat blocks for mooks and more skilled characters included.
Setting history has such stuff as dragons ruling everything, then alari appearing and prospering, ending of the golden and silver ages, lots of wars, empire (which explains a language shared by almost everyone), the fall of said empire, and rebirth of it. Some of the stuff can be used as story seeds, but significant part is fairly useless.
Deities are heavily influenced by various Greek, Roman and Egyptian ones. Some of the names, such as Anghelos Tremestigus, Okeanus and Aphrais are more than influenced. All the gods have control over some aspects of life, an elemental affinity and power (between 1 and 10). The birth of gods (multiple different ways) and some of the ways they can influence the world are detailed, along with their relation to their worshippers and each other (in general terms). Some deities are described in more detail.
A bunch of mostly sentient enemies, including the faye (the fey), lycanthropy/lycanthropes (it's a real disease) and the undead are discussed. The next chapter contains large and fairly complete tables for random creature creation, which should not be used in active play.
The large and free city of Barkesh is detailed next, with specific attention given to taverns and inns. General layout, politics and influential people are also discussed. It is suggested as the starting location for adventures.
Appendices have optional rules (with the usual implications of their use) and lots of examples, current and ancient coins, Green River Valley where Barkesh is located, cultural equivalencies between the fictional cultures and those of the real world, and various useful sheets (character, character creation worksheet, and others). The optional rule section was especially useful read, though the author likes fiddling with systems, so this likely won't be true of everyone.
All in all, the book contains outlines of an average setting, an average system, but bad presentation. Tables have typos and the rules are introduced in confusing order. If the reader has other StarCluster games, lots of stuff is redundant (many rules, for example). If not, the minor parts of the book are useless and the book must be read out of order.
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