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The Basics: As you may well know, the DVD "Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles" came out in early 2007 to mixed reviews.
Some felt it was the best thing for anime fans since Jolt and Pocky.
Others felt that it was the worst thing since somebody in Hong Kong thought it would be fun to dub Do You Remember Love.
And most of them were pretty neutral.
But, this isn't a review of the OVA, this is a review of a book.
That book is a companion book for the Shadow Chronicles, "The Art Of The Shadow Chronicles"
The Review: Let's start with what I think is good about the book.
It's probably the second best source of MOSPEADA line art next to the RPG supplement, "The REF Field Guide".
Plus it's the first book to give any details about the new mecha and ships seen only in "The Shadow Chronicles", along with characters, mecha, and ships seen in the comic book mini-series "Prelude to The Shadow Chronicles", and the mediocre game "Robotech: Invasion".
Good examples are the Invid Overlord from Prelude and Invasion (p84), the Super Shadow Fighter from the OVA (p85), CBR-5 Body Armor from Prelude and the OVA (p88), the VR-057 Super Cyclone from the OVA (p92), and the Bioroid Interceptor from Prelude (p93), along with the Tokugawa, Icarus, and Ark Angel.
And it's loaded with a metric butt-load of stills, concept art and final art (Alex was originally a lot bigger then he ended up) for the characters, Mecha, and ships.
Unfortunately, this book ain't perfect.
I do have some issues with it.
First there is the overuse of the Robotech Font.
The title in every entry in the book is in the Robotech Font, along with the chapter titles.
If it was just the chapter titles in that font, it wouldn't be a bother, but I do think having that font being used for every title is a bit of overkill.
Kinda reminds me of every Robotech website back in the day that required you to download either the Robotech True Type Font or the plain old Robotech Font (they were both the same, just with different names).
Then there is the lack of text in the book.
Since this is a Robotech Art Book, I did compare it to the Grand Daddy of the Robotech Art books, "Robotech Art 1".
Like in Art 1, "The Art of the Shadow Chronicles" does have brief descriptions for the characters and the mecha, but Art 1 also had a nice size section of the history of Anime, Anime in America, and some about both the history of Macross and Robotech.
Unfortunately, "The Art of the Shadow Chronicles" pretty much brushed over the production, and not one mention of the difficulties in it's production (the replacing of the ADR Director, and a couple of the cast, not to mention the pushing back of it's release date).
Oh, and Sue Graham only appeared for one episode in the series, and was not a part of Scott's forces with Lancer and Rook, but the description gives the impression that she was.
But that's not the worst of it.
A book that was supposed to bring some continuity answers to Robotech Fans causes more continuity problems.
First, in "The Shadow Chronicles", every time we see the new logo, it's the "U.E.E.F." or "United Earth Expeditionary Force", but in the book they call them the "R.E.F." or "Robotech Expeditionary Force".
But that's minor.
There is also Vince Grant.
Watch the Shadow Chronicles DVD.
In the section where Vince Grant is attempting to access the control systems of the Neutron-S Missiles, it displays his age as 36 and his height as 192cm.
Of course, it's different in the book. He's now 54 and 182cm.
Now, I know that those are not really big issues, but to me they are like Scott Bernard's magically changing armor in the OVA, or the Pasadena sign in the "Making Of" documentary. When I see those things, it'll just bug me enough for my disbelief to set back in.
And then there are the mentions of Lisa, Dana, Lancer, L'Ron, Jack Baker, and Dr. Lang.
People might think they either show up in the OVA (if they haven't seen it yet) or appear in the eventual sequel, "Shadow Rising".
The only reason they were mentioned was simply because they appeared in either "Robotech: Invasion" like Lancer, or "Prelude to The Shadow Chronicles" like Lisa, Dana, and Jack.
That's just another minor thing to bug me, and things that might cause more debates on various Robotech message boards and chat rooms.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, but it could have been much better. And, even though Khyron_Prime was impressed with the book when he saw it at AX 2007, I can only give "The Art Of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles" 3 Shadow Dimensional Fortresses out of 5.

And why, in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, did they change the name to "Shadow Dimensional Fortress"?!?!