The only keepers to me are IETSF and TBOS - Perhaps Speed of Light too. The rest suffer from the Dream Theater "The Astonishing" disease - It sounds good while you listen to it, but don't leave any noteworthy impression. It's just forgettable.
Strong words! I don't remember it being that bad!
Ok since I'm on a nostalgia trip this week it seems anyway, I did a re-listen to The Book of a Souls as an album. Review in brief below.
If Eternity Should Fail - Pretty damn excellent. The sound is crisp and Bruce's voice sounds good, lyrics not too outlandish. 8/10
Speed of Light - Fun, forgot about it though to be honest. Could have been like 3 minutes long instead. 5/10
The Great Unknown - Ok, good intro, otherwise fine. 4.5/10
The Red and the Black - Mmmmmm....not sure what's happening here, the lyrics are really hard to hear and then there's the stadium-friendly whoa-whoa that comes in seemingly out of nowhere that seems to expect me to have an emotional attachment but I don't. Way too long. There's some nice riffs in there around the 7:30 mark and on. Getting some Angel and the Gambler vibes. I'm at 10 minutes in and checked the clock and am dismayed to find its's 13:33 long. I like these riffs, but am too fatigued to be really into it. Rating this is tough. 3.5/10.
When the River Runs Deep - Makes a nice change of pace, but again not super into it, the chorus is lame. 4/10.
The Book of Souls - This builds quite nicely, lyrics are compelling. BUT, when the instrumental section kicks in at 6 ish, I can't shake the feeling that it'd have been ok if that had been the end of the song. Also am getting a 'copy paste' sense to it all, as if I've heard all these riffs before. Shades of The Legacy with the outro. 6/10.
NOTE: Had to take a listening break at this point, was just drained.
Death or Glory - Kinda fun, but also a bit dumb and exceedingly repetitive towards the end. 4/10
Shadows of the Valley - Wasted Years intro rip-off that could be interpreted as a fun nod but given the 'sea of madness' in the lyrics shortly after, makes me cringe a bit. The rest of the song has Dance of Death and AMOLAD album vibes, wouldn't have been out of place on either of those. Gets better as the song progresses., although could do without the whoa whoa portion. 5.5/10
Tears of a Clown - This feels a bit out of nowhere in terms of the context of the album, especially since I know it's talking about the very time-specific passing of Robin Williams. That being said, I think it's a very good stand-alone song that might have been better suited as a single, similar to Virus. I really like the lyrics, and the song feels like its going somewhere, has purpose, and, it ends at an appropriate length! 7.5/10
The Man of Sorrows - Aside from the title (which I find weird that Bruce agreed to, given his own solo work), this is a good song. I really enjoy the cymbal-heavy instrumental portions where the bass and drums fall away, it is a bit like The Man Who Would Be King in how unusual it is for Maiden. 7/10
Empire of the Clouds - So when I first heard this I loved it. And just hearing the intro riff brings goosebumps. But it isn't an 'easy' listen and especially at the end of an already over-long album, its just tough. Again, single material with The Man of Sorrows, Tears of a Clown, and If Eternity Should Fail as B-sides??? Just going off minutes, that's actually decent album material right there. On its own though I love this thing, the orchestral bits, the piano, the solos, everything. Its 18 minutes long but it actually doesn't feel that way. 10/10
In total this album gets a 5.9 on individual scores of the songs alone. However, it doesn't ever feel like an album. If Eternity Should Fail gets me pumped up for something its not and by the start of the Red and the Black, I'm tired. There's just too much rinse and repeat disjointedness as if they had a bet going on how many nods to previous songs they could squeeze in, there's very little flow to the thing. Even the best songs feel like they come out of nowhere. So I'm not sure where this would fall in the pantheon of Maiden albums...its too much of a 'best of' collection without enough 'best'. I guess I agree with
@Yax on this one 5 years down the road, just not on which songs to keep!
. Now seriously I really don't understand how any Dickinson era Maiden fan doesn't rank these two tracks at least at their top 10.
because of your take on the album, or with 
because of that 10/10 rating for Empire. 