Well, for starters you get two new races - Neanderthals and Uldra (small blue fey). There's also a selection of new Prestige Classes (mostly quite interesting), some new deities, some new feats, new weapons and even a few new psionic powers... plus an awful lot of new spells and creatures.

Some of this material is really very good - a couple of neglected veteran AD&D creatures get updated for 3.5 (Frost Folk, White Puddings and the like...), some of the new creatures are interesting and stylish (the Entombed - ice covered undead - are probably my favourites) and some of the spells are useful/essential additions for the setting.

Most of it's not quite so gripping, though - and some just feels like padding. Do we really need three more generic templates for Frost Giants (a scout, a berserker, a shaman...)? Or a template for a frostfell-specific Orc shaman? For that matter, do we really need space devoted to 'Flesh to Ice' spells when they're just the standard 'Flesh to Stone' with a very minor change...

I probably wouldn't mind so much, but there are too many interesting ideas here that don't get explored - so why waste space on the dull ones? Snow Elves get a brief mention in the character section, but not enough to give you any real feel for what they're supposed to be - and other (non-monster) arctic variants of existing races get even less coverage.

To be fair, you do get rules for the environment - both natural sub-zero hazards and extraplanar realms of cold. But you don't get an awful lot of guidance on running a game, just rules and a couple of sample adventure settings at the back of the book.

Frostburn's not bad - it's pretty, it has some good ideas and I don't feel cheated out of my hard-earned cash - but it really could have been so much better. More setting sourcebooks, initially for desert and sea campaigns, have now been announced by WotC - and hopefully they'll deliver something a little less padded.