Hi, Edmund!
I'll try to answer both your question and Vladimir's
There's no general overview of Glorantha currently in print. Issaries are working on new one, but it's currently a one-man outfit (plus freelancers) and recent problems have hit the publication schedule.
Out of print sources include Glorantha: Introduction to the Hero Wars
(Issaries)
and the boxed Glorantha set published by Avalon Hill. They do turn
up on Ebay so they can be found.
Easier to find is HeroQuest Voices which can be downloaded from http://www.glorantha.com/products/3001.html - it gives more cultural background on the Homelands in the main rules and a few more.
More Homelands are available in Imperial Lunar Handbook Vol 1 (the peoples of the Lunar Empire) and Men of the Sea (maritime cultures).
If you want to go into depth there's a lot more. A lot of it out of print.
I'm not a Runequest fanatic. There are people dedicated to the system - and not all of them are fans of Glorantha. I did play Runequest but I never got that far into it. But I was still attracted to Glorantha and the announcement of Hero Wars drew me back to it (Robin Laws' involvement was a definite plus,too). I do like the rules a lot and I expect to get Mythic Russia and Questworlds when they appear.
What I like about Glorantha is a combination of things. The depth - and the breadth - is greater than any other world I can think of. It can be matched by some on depth (Tekumel comes to mind) but the combination of depth and breath is - to the best of my knowledge - unique in a game world (perhaps even in the broader field of fiction). Gloranth is accessible - Tekumel is a quite alien world, while many Gloranthan cultures are easier to pick up - being closer to real-world analogues. But Glorantha does have a degree of strangeness, too. More so than, say, Harn. The importance of myth is another aspect I like. Even some of the wackier aspects can be fun to occasionally season a scenario - or to wallow in, in a one off (the infamous paired scenarios "Bad 'Boon Rising/Beak No Evil" are a fine example).
-- -- "The T'ang emperors were strong believers in the pills of immortality. More emperors died of poisoning from ingesting minerals in the T'ang than in any other dynasty" - Eva Wong _The Shambhala Guide to Taoism_ Paul K.
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