Sonic Books Page 3 - Modern Sonic Books
This third page of Sonic the hedgehog books is for only 'modern era' (Dreamcast & after) books. For whatever reason, the modern era didn't have quite as many books as the pre-dreamcast one for quite a while. Will 2019 and 2020 change that? Hopefully so.
Sonic Books 1 * Sonic Books 2 * Sonic Books 4 * Sonic Gear Main *
Sonic Tales of Deception Sonic Tales of Terror Books Sonic Tales Books Interior Art Pages
Suddenly, in 2018, TWO new Sonic story books were released.
They are "Sonic and the Tales of Deception" and "Sonic and the Tales of Terror". Each small easy-reading book has 3 different, unrelated stories inside. There is not art on every page, but each book does have a few illustrations, as seen above. These are always done in shades of blue. The art is NOT Archie and is NOT all just stolen/modified stock art. (Bears mentioning because this was generally the case with previous books) Each book is about 7 dollars.
You can buy these on Sonic Books Amazon, or, by going to Target in 2018. (They are there both in store and online) Books are both inexpensive to collect, and easy to keep, making these a decent target to expand your Sonic stuff selection.
Book Mini Review:
The art: Kudos for not being a re-run. That said...the art is often confused between modern and classic. Sonic, Tails & Knuckles could be drawn classic style, while Amy only appears in her modern dress. Tales of Terror is illustrated by Spaz! of Archie Sonic fame, but it is not so much in his "usual style". Tales of Deception is illustrated by Ian McGinty. The page above with Rouge appears, although she isn't mentioned in the story. So, the art got a little bit uncoordinated. You can also spot Knuckles with fingers...

The plots: Tales of Deception - Somewhat preposterous stories like Knuckles is invaded by really small bees & Sonic has to shrink and enter him to defeat the bees. But like...I guess he's pretty hollow inside or something?
Eggman figures out 1 noise only Sonic can hear, and somehow this can mind-control him so the gang must consult Shadow on how to defeat him.
A "future Sonic" shows up with a device that can mess with Sonic's shoes to try to steal Tails'....plot device. (No, literally...it's literally a device to fuel the plot and that's all it is! The story even acknowledges that Tails has no idea what he's building. It's almost like Big went fishing and caught a literal Red Herring fish.)

Tales of Terror- Preface: Action game heroes and PG ratings are NOT SUITED to anything to be called 'terror', so you know this isn't going to live up to its name at all.
A meteor spills mind control goo on the heroes so Sonic & Tails have to figure out how to stop super-strong Cream & Cheese (and Big) from fixing the meteor & controlling the world.
Eggman brings back an egg boss & Knuckles' discovers some ghosts that bore into his face & that is painful. Eggman might die?
Return of the Werehog: Because the werehog & the Dark Gaia things are scary, it makes a breif return for 1 story.

Characterization: It's ok.
There's nothing spectacularly good or bad about the character portrayls here. It's pretty standard / expected for stories that are that short & forced to have odd themes that don't really go well with the universe.
Are they better than previous offerings?
Yes. They're longer, with more plot. The art is better though-out. They're not 'for babies' & they're not a re-hash. You can't instantly guess what's going to happen, either.

You can get these AND 'look inside' at Amazon in the Sonic Gear Book Store.
Welcome to the World of Sonic Book This is "Welcome to the World Of Sonic" book. It's a book meant to welcome in new fans of the Sonic series, and it comes with a sheet of stickers that you can see here in the back as a bonus.
This book is geared toward kids (of course) but it's ok for any fan, really. It spells out the basics of Sonic with character proflies for lots of characters, but then it also has nice tidy summaries for LOTS of the modern games. They get into the portable ones too, that maybe not everyone was able to beat. It's a good book to catch up on history with. There's nicely used stock art of each character through out. There's also the usual little random/wacky/easy "quizzes" hanging around on some of the pages as well. The characters 'talk' as a mini bio (you can see here with Silver talking about 'the future' in his circle there) This is only about 8 dollars or so on Amazon, so it's worth while to collect it since it has a good amount of nice art, good layouts, tidy summaries, stickers & isn't very costly. It's worth it's while.
Welcome to the World of Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog) You can use that link to go directly to get this book at Amazon.
Race Against Chaos Sticker Activity Book This is "Race Against Chaos" the sticker & activity book.
It's another new offering appearing at the end of 2018 from Penguin Publishing. As you can see here, it's all modern with CG art for the backgrounds (and likely the stickers too) That ring in the bottom corner says "Super Sonic Stickers Inside".

Further information of what's inside pending actually getting this book.

Race Against Chaos Sticker Activity Book (Sonic the Hedgehog) You can use that link to go directly to get this book.
Sonic And Friends Sticker Book This is the "Sonic & Friends Sticker Activity Book".
It's new in winter 2020. This is generally thought to be an Amazon item, but it may also appear in Barnes & Noble if they have a large enough kids section. You can see that the little disk there says "30+ stickers", and it also says 'activity'. However, supposedly it's only about 16 pages or so, that's very thin. And the activities consist of maybe like 3 pages of a maze, a word search and a crossword puzzle page.
So mostly, it's like a 7 dollar sticker book with...
About 30 stickers.
That's why there's no link here. (If it gets requested, it'll get added) but the value of the item just isn't all that high if it is so thin and there's only 3 activities in the entire book. Modern things usually have more value per dollar? Not sure what's going on here.
Where's Sonic Find Book 2020
After more than 20 years, here is another "Where's Sonic" search n' find type book.
The first one, styled a bit like 'where's waldo' came out in the 90s, and can be seen here on Gear too. This one though, arriving in 2020, has a much updated format with more to do. Not only will you get to look for Sonic who is hidden in deliberately complicated scenes on the pages, but there are other challenges as well. You can find friends too, as well as enemies, and certain numbers of things like "How many Chao" or "How many different wisps" that are also hidden around. So, this book gives more to do. It is composed of all CG imagry though, including the backgrounds and the characters. Most books like this aren't, so is that better or not as good as very-busy art? It's likely just a matter of opinion. This IS an Amazon item, and it is reasonably priced enough. You can use this link to go directly to it at Amazon (it is a Gear Affiliate link) Where's Sonic?: A Sonic the Hedgehog Search-and-find Adventure
Sonic His Amazing History Scholastic Book This is "Sonic His Amazing History", a Scholastic book.
But, why is it uncommon? It is by Devra Newberger Speregen , and was obviously recently released...but you can't seem to find it on Amazon? A used one will sometimes pop up on Ebay, but then...most or all libraries don't have it? The photo here is from WorldCat.org , not even Scholastic publishing itself will host an image of something they did?
Why?
Books are some of the easiest things to make/store/collect and even ancient 90s Sonic books aren't really rare or expensive, so what's going on with this one? It's probably from 2018 or so, so why only show up in 2020 then. It is a mysterious book......that'll probably end up being a bit of a repeat of the big hardcover one "History of Sonic the Hedgehog", but more for kids since it's Scholastic doing it. You can write in for credit if you know more about this book.
Encyclo-Speed-Ia Book Ian Flynn Cover A new hard cover book is announced in the fall of 2020, the "Encyclo-Speed-Ia" book by Ian Flynn of Archie Comics Sonic Comic as well as some of the IDW that are being released in 2020.
The book is currently in Fall 2020 up for pre-order at Amazon, but it is quite costly for whatever reason, at about 50 dollars. Not much is known about it so far other than it is hard-cover and has "30 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog" history inside. So, probably more like a 'biography' type deal than an actual encyclopedia (but maybe you can't call it a biography because it is not of a human character)

This apparently didn't end up releaseing in 2020 as planned, it seems to be a 2022 item and has a regular (seen here) and deluxe (seen below) edition. The regular is 49.99 and the deluxe is likely to be about 70.

Deluxe Edition Encyclo Speedia This is the Deluxe Edition Encyclo Speed Ia.
It is deluxe because it comes with a hard card folder that contains 2 art prints, one for modern Sonic, the other for modern Eggman. They're both profile portrait style. It also comes with a case that contains the book (also hard card, may be glittery on the ring) and the book's cover is different as well: being a collage of 16 bit game screen shots. It is likely to retail at about 70 dollars, and should be on Amazon.
Encyclospeedia Back Cover This photo has the book jacket (paper outer cover for the hard back) and actual book back for the regular edition of the Encyclospeedia. This, as with most books, gives you a bit of a preview of what's inside, talking about the content and showing some of the pages. It claims 'nearly' every game (what are they planning on leaving out? that's a curious claim), and does tell you that it's for the 30th Anniversary.
The back inner cover says about the same thing but also says the phrase "exahustive detail" which someone needed a thesaurus because that's derogatory and the better word would have been 'in-depth fascinating detail' because that is positive and really more fitting of Sonic.

This is by Dark Horse Publishing in 2022.

Video Game Heroes Sonic Book
Here is a small book about Sonic.
It is "Video Game Heroes- Sonic: Sonic The Hedgehog Hero". The book is part of the "Video Game Heroes" series, a batch of short books for little kids, each written about a different popular video game character. The book is supposed to present various facts, pictures, and history about the character. So, it's going to list off things like first-appearance dates, various games/systems and stuff like that. It would only be good for a beginner-type fan.
The book is only 24 pages long though, so it's not going to have a lot of content for the price. It's also 'for the kids', so it's not going to have anything new or unseen inside. It is written by Kenny Abdo, and is probably a late 2020/or early 2021 release. It can be found on Amazon, but likely should show up elsewhere.
IDW Collection Book 1
Comic book publishers / series usually have some kind of compilation eventually.
IDW then, it isn't a surprise has produced "The IDW Collection 01" for Sonic. The difference is though, that instead of the usual 'trade' type, this is a larger size (than the comic books themselves) hard cover item. It contains "Volumes 1 to 3", but does that mean collections 1 through 3 or issues 1 through 3? It's about 50 dollars on Amazon though...so hopefully the answer is that it has 3 collections worth inside to justify the price.
The cover is a close up portrait of Sonic which has his ear a bit close to his eye and is meant to look somewhat-cg although it is not. There's obviously plans for more with the '01' there at the end. Compilations (and special ones like this) are always generally a good idea so that fans can collect things they missed or avoid problematically-expensive issues. You can write in for credit if you get this and know what is inside.