An excellent tool for the DM - Rated 
The new Monster Manual for D&D 4e, continues the effort of making life for the DM simpler. It provides the game information for a variety of monsters, focusing on their role within encounters allowing the DM to concentrate on plot and DM'ing. The big change between this and the two previous editions is the distinct lack of fluff in descriptions of the monsters. This may be disconcerting to some buyers, but personally I prefer it this way. It puts less restrictions on the DM's creativity as the DM can then place the monsters in a variety of ecological niches and within more interesting social structures.
Monster Manual light - Rated 
After being impressed by Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition and the following 3.5 update I'm very dissapointed by 4th edition.
The art is very good as usual, since Wizard of the Coast has a lot of talented artists, so you won't have any problem with that. Lots of nice eye-candy indeed!
I agree with all the points in the previous review by Simon Allen. This book is definitely missing something. It's basically a text book with mainly statistics and maybe a couple of sentences about the creature itself. Take the beholder for example. Here's a short summary:
Beholder:
Stat block {} Eye of flame. Covers ~60% of the page
Tactics: Three sentences each for two different kinds of beholder.
Lore: 9 small sentences about beholder lore.
Stat block {} Eye Tyrant (Solo creature). Covers ~80% of the page
Encounter group: 6 sentences
This all there is about the beholder. All the info on this creature is on one page, the next page has a full-page picture of two beholders. Almost all creatures have their pictures on the same page as their stat block(s). As you can easily see this doesn't give a good picture of a beholder at all, except as a large piece of numbers and letters. This goes on for all the other creatures. In my opinion I don't really have to say anything more to prove my point. The reliance on stat blocks to show all the info makes this book look like an index for monsters in a trading card game or something.
This review is based on a thorough read-through at a gamestore, and I'm glad I read through it, because I won't be buying this one.
Dungeons and Half of the Dragons - Rated
I think we all expected Wizards to milk their new edition of the rules with a whole new suite of supplemental books, but I felt really let down with this. People are going to have to start throwing big cash at this game to get what they had in their hands from the three core books of previous editions.
Whilst the artwork and presentation can't really be faulted, the descriptions are sometimes very brief and oriented primarily towards combat. No ecology, no behaviourial or social traits, seem to take away some of the roleplaying possibilities. The tone of the text, like the other two books, suggests very much a younger target group. The 3.5 edition had a certain balanced maturity to its writing style that would not phase a mature gamer, but I expect this will be cause for complaint.
However, this is not my main gripe. There are huge gaps in monsters presented here that have been integral in the game since the beginning. No metallic dragons (only chromatic) and many of the the giant species (scorpions, ants, centipedes) that traditionally formed many of the challenges at lower level are just not there.
There is a section at the back which presents a selection of statistics for use in character generation, but those used to the level adjustment in 3.5 will probably not find these easy to get on with. Is a 1st level 7'5" 350lb minotaur really balanced with other 1st level characters? Why do none of the races in the whole game have negative adjustments to their statistics? Everyone is pimped up! Was not Warforged promised as a core race in D&D 4 Characters & Classes, but has now been demoted to a short paragraph here?
It also seems that for most of the stats presented in the Monster Manual, unless you are around 10th level, you are going to get kicked around. Although with the new self healing phenomenon you don't need to worry about dying ;) The variety here is limited - you will be fighting zombies and goblins for quite a while. How about a giant scorpion huh?
The idea of updating the game is well appreciated, but pages are wasted here with rather abstract 'gibbering horror mound' type villains that will have no real part in many roleplayng campaigns.
I will stick to Pathfinder for the moment. Hopefully I will be persuaded by the new web tools to take more interest. Do we have to pay for those by the way?
Maybe I'll leave this in the dentist's waiting room, as it's not a bad at a glance.
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