When I heard of SoE I was excited since I like a change of venue once in a while. My current campaign is based in the UK with excursions to Vienna, Rome and the Balkans.

Things that I liked: Matrix access ratings, border security ratings, political relations both within and between the various nations, and tips on running in each country. Having a bit more cultural discussion would have been nice (I actually still find myself referring to my London & Germany sourcebooks a lot), though I understand there is only so much you can put into a sourcebook that covers such a large area.

I also like the fact that some areas (such as the Balkans where much of the current campaign is focused) were left open. It's nice to have a few areas where a GM can be free to play with the local setting.

The things I didn't like were the maps which lacked scale and even minor detail (major roads, railways, etc). Also, it would have been nice to have maps of a few of the major cities such as Paris, Vienna, Rome, and Europort/Amsterdam. As I mentioned in another thread I ended up buying Michelin maps (online maps are nice but a chore to print if you need hardcopy) of the various areas the runners were travelling through to determine distances & travel times. Also, with Russia being a major player in the Euro Wars and Divided Poland, I was a bit surprised to see that there was no national profile included.

Overall I give it a B-

About the maps: I'm the guy who did them.
I acknowledge the fact that I should have included scales. But I forgot, and no one seemed to notice at the time, since many other SR map never had scales. I can assure you, however, that the maps in Runner Havens, that I'm doing and that are 99% finished, will have scales (cherry on top of the cake, the scales will be both in km and miles).
About missing details: there are so many thing you can put on a map. You have to draw the line somewhere. Roads, for instance, were not considered essential. There are so many of them, of all shape and width, crisscrossing Europe, that there is almost nowhere that you can't reach by car (except of course natural parks or mountains peaks). In these conditions, how to decide which are major and which are minor? I like to think of the maps in SoE (and that's true for the maps in SoA too) just the same as the texts they refer to: good starting points giving the reader a good idea of the general setting. But for fine details, the GM has to work a little.
Space constraints were also at work when it was decided not to have city maps. We couldn't have a map for a city, and not for another one. That would have meant at least 13 more maps in the book. (without mentioning that city maps are much more difficult and time consuming to do).
And finally, for Russia, I think you now see that it was kept for SoA.

Mike