This book truly represents a monumental accomplishment. The scope of what it attempts is absolutely astounding. The sheer volume of what it provides — almost 6,400 images of more than 2,300 species — is simply staggering. I still cannot wrap my mind around the labor of love that this tome must represent for the lone artist, Robin Restall.However, a field guide lives or dies by its illustrations. What concerned me immediately was that common North American species I’m quite familiar with are almost unrecognizable in this book. A few quick examples include the Limpkin, Cooper’s Hawk, and Purple Martin. I’ve never seen living examples that resemble those graphics. For me, this instantly casts serious doubts on the ability of this book to help me correctly distinguish between, say, a half-dozen nearly identical flycatchers — an all too common occurrence during my years of birding in Venezuela. The quality of the illustrations ranges erratically, from the poor examples I just mentioned to others that are genuinely excellent. The quality and size of the illustrations also varies from family to family. Poses fluctuate from group to group as well, vacillating between realistic and stiltedly unnatural. This would have been an excellent, five-star reference book if the quality of the best illustrations had been maintained throughout. But compared to something like the gallery-level artwork of Guy Tudor in “A Guide to the Birds of Venezuela” by de Schauensee and Phelps, the book in question simply pales in comparison.Something I found both perplexing and frustrating was the inconsistently selective scope of coverage by the illustrations. One of the purported strengths of this book is the fact that it does full justice to those species also found in North America. However, that information is abundantly available from dozens of other resources including apps that you can consult on your smartphone. Bafflingly, what we end up with is 20 illustrations of the Yellow Warbler — a common species depicted or photographed in literally hundreds of other books — and not even a top view of the Blue-and-white Swallow which was the most common (and therefore a fairly important) species where I lived. I purchased this book very much more for the latter than for the former.The excellent range maps, however, are worth the price of admission alone. These would have been a godsend to me during my years of birding in Venezuela in the 1980s, especially on those days when I finally concluded that what I was looking at was indeed a bird supposedly 300 miles out of range.One final note about the consistent complaints regarding size for all of these South American bird guides: It’s simply physics. There is no conceivable way usable-sized illustrations of that many bird species, even for the single-country guides, could possibly fit in a pocket volume. In fact, this book eschews species descriptions for a two-volume set and is that much more compact for it. That’s one of the things that would have made this colossal work equally meritorious, were it not for the inconsistency of the illustrations.The bottom line for this book is that it attempts something momentous, and succeeds on all fronts except the most important: The illustrations. The overall graphics quality is good and ranges to excellent, but where the graphics deteriorate into mediocrity they bring the entire work down with them. Buy this book for the range maps and as a secondary reference, but I would not trust it for my primary South American bird guide.