I have been a Tabletop RPGer nearly my entire life, started out of a little white box set, before a hardback book or full color soft-back for an RPG even existed. Recently the focus of many gaming products aimed at the non-computer RPG world have lacked asthetics, quality of writing, and offered contradictory mechanics within the same game system. Dungeons and Dragons, once claimed by Hasbro, fell into the trap of releasing material that was weak in both entertainment value and game mechanic value. When I discovered Pathfinder, which follows a superior game mechanic to 4th edition D&D, I feared the support material they would offer would follow the modern production mentality that can be best summed up as "slap it together and crank it out". I bought Gods & Magic a a gift for my wife, who has alwayed had a least one cleric in her active PC file, and for a chance to look at the efforts of the Pathfinder writing team away from the core books.
I was not only pleasently surprised at the balance of ROLE material to ROLL material, but actually found the detail writing to be revealing, colorful and inspiring -- and I am not ivolved with any Golarion campaign, where these gods are from. The two page layout for each major deity gives a "catch phrase" that nicely sums up the attitude of the god and their followers (reminding me of the better Planescape material from days gone by), a history of the god in a way that is role usefull, and a section that describes the daily life of an average cleric in service to the god. Each god has one or two exclusive spells or spell varients - Asmodeous' came from out of the blue, but boy did it generate some great ideas I wish I has access to in my last campaign. These varients are in keeping with the more player-power basis of the Pathfinder core books, without tipping into Monty Haul territory.
The book has encapsulations of lesser gods and their roles, and closes with a collection of magic items that are deity specific, the kinds of things you should consider carefully before tossing into a campaign. Strong items, for the most part, but not to the point where they are overpowering if distributed with care (in other words, if the NPC's who oppose your players have 'em too).
The most uplifting part of reading this supplement is that it was of high quality throughout. Well written, good role ideas, some nice support material, and had plenty of enjoyable art. It is nice to see there is still a company that can pull that off. I will try a few more support material or game module publications for Pathfinder now, just to see if the quality of Gods & Magic is to be found elsewhere. If you are playing a Golarion campaign, or just like to read fantasy god material to derive your own deities from, this is a very well done book. Buy it.