I bought this book to find out about High Essence Charms for Celestial Exalted largely so I had some idea of scale for spells since I decided that the Essence and Occult requirements for sorcery should be much higher. Unfortunately they rarely go into Essence 7 territory, a few Lunar ones go up to 8 and they don't go any higher. There aren't any Charms for Essence 9 and 10. Warning, there aren't any Sidereal Charms in this book. And since it sticks strictly to the First Age there are no Abyssal Charms either. The lists they do have are rather short, not like the long lists they have in other source books. I would have probably written a chapter about each Exalted. This is annoying because at Celestial Circle Sorcery having Essence 7 and Solar Circle Sorcery having Essence 9 it gives very little detail for the scope of their spells which I was looking forward to. The cloth map is nice but I thought Creation would be vast compared to what it is now. What's left is just an island in the sea of the Wyld under the control of the Terrestrial who were never meant to be in control, rather than the vast empire ruled over by the Solars. As is unfortunately the case with Exalted they say how it should be a game of epic scale with legendary heroes but they don't take the breaks off and go completely bonkers which you need to do to write about such all powerful personages. The book does have a list of luminaries like Salina herself and the soon to be infamous Anjei Marama. It only gives an idea of like at the peak of the First Age however rather than describing it from start to finish. It's a nice idea in itself with more of a feeling for the moment, it even comes with it's own guidebook for Meru, but doesn't describe the epic was against the Primordials or how the Realm became so degenerate that the Sidereals thought the Solars had to be stopped and their final downfall.
Basically the designers need to think bigger and act completely without restraint to describe the Celestial Exalted at the height of their powers which I imagine to be the end of the First Age when they're at their most powerful but also their worst. Scroll of the Monk regularly goes up to Essence 7 and in one style has several Essence 8 Charms, but the designers' decision to not do any high Essence Sidereal Charms because it would cause damage to the Tapestry of Creation limiting them to sorcery and martial arts is very bad. Lunars, Solars and Abyssals each have their supernatural speciality and have ordinary Charms so why shouldn't the Sidereals. Once again I'm very disappointed by the fact that I haven't seen an Essence 9 or 10 Charm that would help me with perspective for Celestial/Solar Circle Sorcery and my project, Dark Messiah Style. I guess I'm going to have to get creative...
