Pathfinder: "Bestiary 3" [RPG]

 The third bestiary of monsters for Pathfinder is chock-full of cool stuff.  A few major themes for the book can be extracted: creatures from myth and literature (like sasquatches and valkyries), creatures with an Asian theme perfect for adventuring in Tian-Xia (such as kami and jiang-shi vampires), and the just plain really weird (like yithians and zoogs).  As always with reviews of books like this, there's no way I can go through the hundreds of monsters individually, but I can say the writing and artwork is top-notch.  Some particular things to note:

* The book has five new playable races: catfolk, ratfolk, suli, vanara, and vishkanya.  There's always a demand for anthromorphic races like catfolk, and ratfolk later become prominent (under the name ysoki) in Starfinder.  Suli don't do much for me and vishkanya are a race I've never seen played.  But I do have to shout out to the monkey-like vanara, since a vanaran PC features prominently in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign!

* Several of the attempts from Misfit Monsters Redeemed to make goofy old monsters cool again are reprinted here, such as adherers and wolves-in-sheep's-clothing.

* Man, vulnudaemons are creepy.

* Love the artwork for animal lords--very Black Panther.

*The book introduces several new categories (sub-types) of monster: asuras (very cool concept I've never seen used), behemoths (creatures of divine vengeance on entire nations or worlds; a neat story idea), clockworks (a classic), demodands (titanspawn who hate the gods), divs (corrupted genies who strive for the ruin of all things made by mortals),  imperial dragons (wingless, serpent-like dragons of Asian legend), kami (fixed-location nature spirits), kytons (creepy devils from the Plane of Shadows!), leshy (plant-like sentients), linnorms (cruel wingless dragons with a death curse), oni (evil spirits given form--the opposite of kami), rakshasa (drawn from Indian myth), sphinxes (with an interesting write-up), and thriaes (female bee-like seers).  There's a real contribution to the richness of the game here, as all of these categories can then serve as the basis for rules-coherent variants introduced in later books.

All in all, Bestiary 3 is an excellent book and a smart purchase for a GM.