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An Overview of the Book
Beltstrike is split into three parts: a 31-page rules section; a 15-page background setting; and a 46-page campaign based in that setting.
The rules start off with Asteroid Belts, which provides a very dry look at the sorts of asteroids and then offers rules for scanning, prospecting, and mining them (as well as selling the proceeds). Though dry, the discussion of asteroids has just enough depth to make you as the GM sound like you know what you're talking about. The rules for actual mining all seem good enough, but I find them too discrete. I would have much preferred rules for mining over weeks at a time rather than days.
There are also some rules for Zero-G movement at the end of this section, which will be nice if I ever remember to look in this book for them.
The next two rules chapters are pretty standard for the Traveller series. Belter Characters offers some nice rules for both being born in an asteroid belt and for taking a Belter career. Expeditions, Equipments and Ships contains crunchy tools and vehicles for belting. These are all well considered, and seem like the sort of thing I might use in any game.
The Schaeffer Belt is technically the start of the campaign, but it's actually a pretty intensive look at some of the most important parts of an asteroid belt. I think it's missing an overall map, but that's my largest complaint. Specific information on a number of asteroids is again quite dry but useful. Contrariwise I find the couple of hollowed-out asteroid habitats that are described colorful and enlightening. Whether you use this particular setting or not, including something like these habitats will definitely up the science-fiction-feeling of your campaign.
The rest of the chapters of the book comprise something that's much more a campaign than a simple adventure. It starts off with "The Factory", which sends the players off to survey a mining rig. "Signals to Noise" lets the player refit the factory (and introduces some potential problems). "Working Them Angels" delves deeper into the Factory. "Adventures in the Chlaer Radical" suggests some possible stories now that the campaign is truly running. "Belt War" brings things to a head with a satisfying conclusion to the arc.
Overall, I think that the campaign is nicely constructed. There are quite a few specifics that the GM can run from the book, but broader outlines are provided when necessary, thus giving the opportunity for a lot more scope than a series of short adventures could provide on there own.
There were a few points, early on, where I thought the adventure might be a bit too mundane (particularly in the first two chapters), but the author did a good job of introducing just enough of the fantastic and the exciting to keep the adventure hopping.
Generally, Beltstrike seems like a fine campaign to run. There's also a lot of good depth to the product, both in the setting for the adventure and in some of the more general background material, and because of that depth and the good quality of the adventure, I've given Mongoose's Beltstrike a "4" out of "5" for Substance.
However, I do also have some concerns about the setting created for the adventure, which I'll talk about momentarily ...
Applicability to Mongoose Traveller
Clearly, Beltstrike is entirely usable with the Mongoose version of Traveller, since it was written for that edition of the game.
However, I think Beltstrike is a bit less apt for use in The Third Imperium, Mongoose Traveller's default universe. The biggest problem is that Beltstrike is set within a system that has not yet discovered Jump drive. The book suggests that it could be in a backwater of the Imperium, like District 268 or Five Sisters, but I find that a near impossibility: a society this advanced would have been contacted by the Imperium. Overall, there's very little room to fit Beltstrike anywhere in Charted Space, because of this particular setup--unless you imagine some sort of stellar phenomenon that has hidden the system from view.
I suppose you could just reimagine this setting as being part of a galactic empire, but ... First of all, the setting's implicit claustrophobia is a bit of its charm, because it makes every bit of this somewhat small story (at least, somewhat small on the galactic scale) much more important. Second of all, the corporations involved in the story are too lawless even for the Imperium (though perhaps not in a backwater that the author imagines).
Really, though, I think that Beltstrike will work best as its own campaign, and that retrofitting it into an existing Imperial campaign will cause you to lose as much as you gain (though with that said, I'm already stripmining some parts of the adventure for my own Imperial campaign ... it's just going to be piecemeal rather than any big inclusion).
Style & Design
This book matches the general style of the Mongoose Traveller releases. It's got a plain design, but not some nice grayscale art. It also has some maps and deckplans that are quite good, though some of the grayscale maps could have been served by lighter shades and/or a bigger size.
All of the introductory material is pretty dry, but the adventure proper has nice color to it, between its NPCs, its corporations, and some of the things uncovered at the Factory.
Putting all this together, I let Beltstrike eke in a low "4" out of "5" for Style: good.
Conclusion
Mongoose's Traveller Adventure 1: Beltstrike has some useful details on asteroids, some great new character creation rules, and an adventure which is good with one caveat: it works best as the start of a standalone campaign, and would take more work to shoehorn into the Third Imperium.
