The Book of Mirrors: The Mage Storytellers Guide (Mage - The Ascension)

Rating:
Summary: Where the other half of the 1st Edition Mage went
Review: All those rotes, flaws, and merits you've been looking for in the main book are here, plus a more detailed description of the worlds, enemies, allies, and others. This book gives you more of a feel for the Neo-Gothic setting of the game, and a better idea of the way magic(k) works, though it doesn't deal as much with the mindsets of the Tradition willworkers. Overall, not truly necessary, but useful.

Rating:
Summary: Good with streaks of horrible
Review: The Book of Mirrors has several good laughs and quite a bit of thought-provoking material in it. It also has fairly thorough indices on most of the information in Mage books published to that point. None of it, however, is necessary for any clear-thinking Mage player who owns the main rule book. To boot, some of the FAQs are self-contradictory. The "cheat-sheet" at the back of the book, "Common Magickal Effects," is simply inaccurate, and D. McKinney's article on gender and roleplaying is sexist and insensitive.

Rating:
Summary: Very good, one of White Wolf's better offerings.
Review: This is one of White Wolf's better offerings within the Mage arena. While it doesn't have as many rules clarifications as I would like, it does give a strong showing for the whys and hows of running a good Chronicle, from the ground-up, including different styles and other methodologies.

One of the nice touches that's found within is the 'FAQ', a synopsis of questions similar to a Usenet FAQ, with most of the answers that many might ask found within. Also useful are the many indices found at the back of the book-- it's often that /I/ can't remember where to find something, I think that's a nice help, White Wolf has had problems with indices in the past.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre
Review: While it contains useful, thought-provoking matieral, and quite a few laughs, the FAQs that most people rave about are ill-thought out and sometimes self-contradictory. Also, the section regarding gender issues and roleplaying is rabidly sexist, which is somewhat surprising coming from a company that is so selfconsciously egalitarian. There is an index of all the mage books, items, rotes, etc, up until the publication of the BoMirrors, and a basic sphere effects cheat-sheet, but the latter is inaccurate.