The incredible artwork of Hal Foster makes these a true treasure to read. Being able to go through a year's worth of the Sunday strips is fantastic. Awesome story and incredible art make these books get my highest recommendation.
I'm glad Fantagraphics is now reprinting really nice hardcover versions of the entire Hal Foster Prince Valiant run. This is one of the old paperbacks which were getting nearly impossible to find.
Volume 10 reprints the comic strips from January 1945 to December 1945 and almost completes the story of Prince Valiant and Aleta, queen of the Misty Isles. The story end with Val trying to rescue Aleta from the hands of the fiendish Donardo. Looks like I will have to do some searching around to find more in this series. Starting in Vol 9 there was a sub story printed as a single strip along the bottom of each page and entitled 'The Medieval Castle'. This must have proven to be less successful is it ends abruptly in this book.