Havent seen any of the book yet so cant comment about that part.
Anyway, if your group wants a high fantasy setting, just nudge the world enough in that direction that it becomes the genre you want...
Who´s to say that there isnt trolls in the forest, wether they´re faerie or "mundane"(or infernal, magic or divine( 
) is your choice.
Personally i prefer using a world that has "mundane" monsters and nasties as well as creatures from what ArsM calls the 4 Realms of power.
The question then of course is wether you really want to play in "(mythic) Europe", something that´s merely vaugely like it or simply go nuts and create something completely new.
Nothing saying you cant have trolls marauding out of Scandinavia and goblins or orcs rampaging from the south etc etc... 
Thing is, my group wants both. We want Mythic Europe, with all the history, legends, nations etc, but we also want a place where we can throw that away and just go on huge, epic quests, with huge, impossible geography, armies of monsters and such. Think Narnia. Sometimes the players just want to go through the closet. I hope that RoP: Faeries can provide that. 
E.
How do the rules mesh with or patch the Merinita Becoming Mystery? RoP:Magic offered learning rules for magical immortals, which though different from those in TMRE are nonetheless potentially applicable. How is it with Faeries? Is the partial transformation loophole made less attractive?
Not really. However, partial transformation is an aberration, in my opinion. Characters initiate Becoming to actually become faeries, not to go just far enough to get a Might Score and all of the other benefits. If a character goes too long without finishing the process, like say seven years and a day or whatever, as storyguide I would say you should cause the character's faerie nature to assert itself and take them to the next stage. It's not clear whether the character is still the same person after the ritual, and there are hints that the person switches places somehow with a faerie. If you think it's a problem for the story you want to tell, stage a faerie intervention.
Thats easy then, because then you dont have to justify ANYTHING, just let them find a not quite reliable way of moving between "this world" and "that world"(if totally reliable then you risk "flooding" in either direction).
But again, does Arcadia, as presented in RoP: Faerie, work well as this kind of alternate world (such as the writers intended?).
E.
If all you want is alternate worlds and fantastic locations, RoP-Magic can do that for you.
Yes, I was thinking RoP: Magic, but I'm also curious about the Faeries Realm. How does it "work" compared to the Magic Realm then?
E.
Availability Update:
My FLGS says their distributor shipped the books and they are due on the shelves tomorrow, Wednesday the 11th.
Albany, NY
Well, it's kind of like Hell.
When you arrive in Hell, you don't randomly wander through the Forest of Suicides unless there's a good reason for you to be there, for example, that you are linked to a suicide.
Similarly, faerie is not like the Magic Realm, which just exists regardless of your touristic presence. Faerie -cares- that you are present, you little bundle of vitality you, and so it kind of reads where you are at in your life and whatever made you desperate or stupid enough to enter Faerie.
In one of my campaigns based on the "Dragon and the Bear", I remember my characters fighting the Queen of the Land, so that they could go home to Mythic Europe. The Queen had been their patron for epic Arcadian quests and they had married her daughters and acted as her champions and now they wanted to go back to reality. She was filled with rage and pain and blasted them with ice and screamed at them "WHY WON'T YOU JUST LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER?"
It's like that. Faerie is filled with and owned by faeries, and individual faeries near humans always have an -agenda-. Spiritis would generally prefer you just went home and took your camera and trashy souviniers with you. They don't put up with your mortal crap. Faeries want you to hang around. They want you to hang around so long you don't even notice you have died and withered to dust. They really are that amusing.
Well, one part of it is like that. Mark's done some really cool stuff here about three ways to think about and interact with the Faerie Realm, based on telling classic stories, new stories, or heroic stories. So, you get your old Arcadia, but you have two other bits as well, where things are different but interesting and novel.
The example in the book is that if you have a good story but you need a zepplin for your set piece, and you don't want zepplins in Mythic Europe, you can run it in Faerie. Is that what you mean?
Exactly! That's my point.
Now I really can't wait for that book much longer. 
E.
I don't think you'll be disappointed. The Faerie Realm is basically where stories are born, where they live, and where they die. There are three paradigms of the Realm; Arcadia is only one of those; the place where new stories are made. This is pretty similar to the Arcadia you'll be familiar with, and can be Narnia-esque if you so desire. Think of it as a melting pot of scenery, actors, props, and dramatic situations just waiting for a creative mind to put them all together into a story.
Elysium is a place where stories have already been made; it is the land of myth where you can interact with heroes and gods, but you can't change their stories. However, you'll find multiple reflections of each story according to all the versions that you might come across.
The third part to the Faerie Realm is Eudokia, where personal stories are told. This is where you can resolve issues regarding the direction of your life; or gain help in achieving a personal transition (or transformation).
Each of these worlds have their own rules, but the biggest rule of all is the same - be the story. It is easy to move between the worlds by reweaving the stories around you.
In lieu of a fan review, I hope this will suffice for now.
Mark
This looks really great.
These books are getting better and better for each release.
So I take it there are rules for player characters getting caught up in stories that they can't easily leave? In our group, we have two problems: the first being that players aren't that good at taking any initiative themselves for stories or character development. The second is they're mostly used to GMs in others rpgs throwing stories in their laps ("Find cave, kill monster, get loot".)
I'm all for the grand epics myself. But they need to be personal. One of my favorite legendary stories are Beowulf, for instance.
E.
I'm just hoping it won't be like White Wolf's The Lost, where the Fae (capitalized) were all one thing: Sci-fi Channel Boogiemen.
Will this preclude the idea that a faerie can be a complete character with various different motivations, or must they always be utterly selfish? (And I don't mean 'Well, they might sacrifice themselves for the sake of the story.' I mean, would a faerie ever be willing to sacrifice its primary cause? Or is this something I'd have to add in?)
Otherwise, Faeries begins to look like Infernal and the Divine, with the material as-is becoming less interesting because there's only one genuine option for dealing with them and a few stupid ones. (Infernal: Kill or mostly avoid. Only idiots willingly join them, and if you have been tricked because they're impossible to figure out, it's basically the GM going 'haha, rocks fall and your char dies/loses all magic because it's False/goes to hell.' Divine: Avoid and guess what, they're invincible, Superman-grade boring with all the pretentiousness of a hardline Christian.)
I just confirmed that my FLGS got it in today. I'm on my way right now to pick it up. Not sure how much I'll get to read tonight, however.
Curse you, I preordered from Warehouse23. Not that I have a choice, there's no gaming places by here that stocks it.
You can never know what the inner heart of a faerfie is, and so its hard to tell if they are able to change, or if they were just being deceptive the whole time up until the apparent change. The basic play-point though is that they can certainly give the appearance of change. Bluebeard, for example, appears to love his wives right up until the moment when he doesn't. Which is the "true" him? Both are, and the factthat they are utterly irreconcilable in a human doesn't matter, because he's not a human.
On a deeper level, there are some faeries who can do this and some who can't, because some follow a particular role, over and over again, story after story. Others, however, know they are faeries, and know they are story elements, and these are capable of vast mutability, not just of motivation, but also of physical structure and ability analogue levels. You choose what type your faewrie is at creation, with virtues.
There is no strong link between the Might of a faerie and its awareness of its narrative role. The example we give is that the Snow Queen from the Kay story by Grimm is not aware that she's just playing the same role over and over, despite being one of the most powerful faeries ever. Compared to this, there are some pixies that are aware that they are narrative sidekicks and that by doing X they can become something else. Above them again, there are some faeries who were a dragon last story, and are a kngiht this story, and will be a princess next story, and like it that way.
Again, this looks great, but I'm curious about one thing. If faeries are all about the stories they're a part of, and these stories are about humans caught up in them, what then do the faeries do when there are no humans around? Do they seek them out? Do faeries have lives and society apart from humans? Or are they concepts, so to speak, who are only active when fulfilling their purpose in the stories?
One way of handling faeries in my campaign, I think, is to use them to give the players familiar themes. For instance, players who're interested in Tolkien will see elves and dwarves in that style. It will be a good opposite to the strange Magic Realm, where little is familiar
E.
That's a very good question, but you won't find an answer to it in this book. You will find the self-same question, however, along with some current theories. As Timothy so eloquently wrote, "this book is about what faeries do - not what faeries are." And believe it or not, your question is in the latter category.
M.