Elves don't necessarily have a bad passive, it really depends on how many and which skills you can get. If you can get a lot of the best skills, especially the higher level ones, then it may or may not be pretty powerful, depending on how hard they are to get otherwise. I don't know how insane some of the spell requirements are going to be, from what I can tell it appears that certain spells may end up taking more than one memory slot a piece. In that case, having free spells might offer a wider selection, but I don't know if that'll make it overpowered.
Elves may be able to get spells without having to invest the points, but they still have to pay a memory cost in order to slot them. And there's no guarantee that these spells are going to be the ones that you want.
Considering the price of skill books went way up as shown in the latest stream, Id consider getting skill books noticably more difficult to get. From what Ive played, you can get 5 free spells from Corpse Eater and thats alot of money saved for getting good equipment.
