I wish I had had these books 5 years ago when I ran a Vampire game in France.
You can easily tell that the author has a passion for the setting, and most likely is a local of the area. Little bits of setting information are included that you wouldn't get in most other books, such as how students often congregate around a certain statue, or why 'corner shops' have a certain name. There's a bit more information on wine than I would need for my style of games, but it's probably best it's referenced for those who want it to be more of the focal point (since it is a major wine region).
The characters and setting information is version agnostic (except for the references to some Changelings, which is from The Dreaming and not The Lost as they are completely incompatible), which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I personally would have liked some information about what skills and disciplines characters were favoured/weak for each NPC, but that wouldn't be really feasible.
The books were made in Scribus (correction - It was Word, which makes the rest even more impressive) (found out through conversations with the author) and that does unfortunately show every now and again (isses with kerning/hyphenation mainly, but I'm sensitive to this due to DTP layout being my forte), but the author did a damn good job in the layout, even with having to fight what the program thought was best. And there was the occassional issue with how certain sentences read (I'm assuming the author has English as a second language rather than a first), but you can still easily understand what is being conveyed. I certainly hope that the author can make enough money to hire an editor for future projects, just to make it look more professional, even though these books are well executed.
With a few polishing touches, I feel they could go far in the self-publishing field, and I look forward to other books they might write that I can use when I next run Vampire (and would like to see them approach doing setting books for other lines, like Changeling The Lost).
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