Handbook House Liao is in hand!

[Top Sergeant]

Haven't dived into it yet (just picked it up at the store).

So just off the cuff impressions from the color plates in the middle of the book:

I do like the picture of Kali, not as bizarre as the one we saw before.

Good likeness of a middle aged Sun Tzu.

If the caption hadn't told me that was Naomi I wouldn't have guessed; I suppose I either imaginmed her very different or this image doesn't match an earlier image I may have seen.

[Drufause]

My postal worker just dropped mine off as well.

[cawest]

picked my up today... nice for the long weekend

[Sgtops54]

Got mine at my FLGS.

[nerd]

It's not bad, and interesting.

Comment on the color section:  Ion Rush's ribbons:  National Defense Service Medal (Second Award), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Kosovo Campaign Medal (Second Award), and Global War on Terrorism  Service Medal Expeditionary Medal.

[Top Sergeant]

I figure he'd at least have an MSM by now!  :D

[YingJanshi]

Just looked it over and result: best BattleTech book EVER!!!!

[HikageMaru]

Still going through it but so far so awesome.

[HikageMaru]

I love what I see as the "honest Capellan perspective" it gives.  For example, we all know that Stackpole hates the Capellans and took every opportunity to bash them in his novels.  Consider this perspective on the events in Outreach:

"Despite the invasion's distance from her realm, Chancellor Romano Liao immediately sensed the depth of the threat and worked as much with the other House leaders as their longstanding contempt for the Capellan state would permit.  She had to stand fast against slurs and derision from Hanse Davion and Thomas Marik; in the end, only by direct appeal to the Fox's wife, Melissa Steiner-Davion, was she able to overcome Hanse Davion's hatred of her family and her realm."

I also like the explanation for the practice firefight with Kai Allard-Liao and Sun-Tzu Liao: "[Sun-Tzu] was paired with Kai Allard-Liao in a BattleMech testing cycle, but a malfunction in his Dragoon-manufactured BattleMech caused his ejection system to fire his command couch out of the 'Mech before he could make more than [sic] desultory attack against his opponents."

[Gracus]

Honestly, I felt a little disappointed.  I loved the new tone, and an indepth look that was unapologetically Capellan without being ridiculously unbelievable.  Herb made a post about how the Handbook series isn't a good seller for Catalyst, and frankly, it felt like the book suffered from a lack of prioritization.  Some sections, like the economic pieces, felt a little underdeveloped in comparison to the earlier books.  It's not that what was there was bad, so much as it felt incomplete. 

[Neko_Bijin]

I think it's good, but that it suffers by comparison to its predecessor.  The old HLSB was a thing of mad beauty and cunning hilarity.  New one's a buy, but not a classic.

[CVB]

I had SO hoped to see an update/correction for the 3025 state of military production, given that the old HLSB had ... some issues... in that regard. Seemed like a lost chance to me.

[Headshot]

Must have been extreme fun, and extremely hard at the same time to write that book, what with reviewing canon history with glasses on tinted so heavy you can barely read the dates. Some passages there had me rolling my eyes so hard i was looking in three directions at once...
(like: the capellan survivors (ROFL) in the Liao Commonality may have had greater personals freedoms, higher living standards and a noticably better infrastructure within barely a generation under FedCom rule, but hey, they are back working for the greater good now, and with the help of the Maskirovka can enjoy the benevolent guideance of the Celestial Wisdom instead!)

Also loved Romanos version of Outreach, or how Xin Sheng really worked, what really happened on Milos, Hustiang and in St. Ives, and the snippets about the media where hilarious.