I must admit, I cracked the spine on Pathfinder Tales: Bloodbound with no little trepidation. It was to be my first exposure to the Pathfinderuniverse, and I had no idea what to expect. While I have fond memories of cutting my genre teeth on the old TSR novels,Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms haven't stood up well over time. That said, I find I actually appreciate their Ravenloft horror/fantasy world more now than I did back then, so entering into the Pathfinderworld with vampires and clerics seemed like a good choice.

Having closed the book on my first Pathfinder journey, I'm pleased to say F. Wesley Schneider put together a pretty solid novel that incorporates some of the universe's overall world-building, but which is still accessible to a new reader. I feel like I came out of it understanding at least one corner of the world, and definitely curious to know more.

As for the story itself, this is largely a gothic horror story, within the setting and time period of a pseudo-medieval fantasy. There are so many little elements here that make it all work. The settings include including drafty old castles, sprawling places of worship, and an altogether chilling asylum; the characters include vampires, half-vampires, priestesses, and Inquisitors; and the plot lines involve exorcisms, possessions, family secrets, and betrayals. I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled about the idea of a half-vampire heroine at the start - it's a tired old trope - but Larsa is sharp enough in terms of edge, wit, tongue, teeth, and blade to make it all work. Jadain, the conflicted priestess, was intriguing to me right from the start, and I really like the way Schneider explored the conflicts in her loyalties and her faith.

If the book struggled in one aspect, it's in the absence of a truly fearsome villain. This is a dark tale, set in what I understand to be one of the darker corners of the Pathfinder world, with some really dark acts taking place. While there are a few villains lurking about, none of them were strong enough or malevolent enough to be worthy of the plot. While the narrative structure is a bit weak early on, and kept me from really getting into a flow, this confusing/awkward changes of POV do eventually get smoothed out - and the rest of the narrative, especially the Gothic feel of the descriptions, is actually a cut above your standard tie-in fantasy fair.

I can't speak to its fan appeal, but as an introduction to the world, Pathfinder Tales: Bloodbound is a solid read, and one that ensures I'll make time in the reading schedule for a return to the world with Pathfinder Tales: Hellknight.

Hey you! …?...Yes, you! The one reading this. Are you looking for a book full of mysteries and plot twists? If the answer is yes, then "Blackfin Sky" is perfect for you.

What I liked about this book is that it kept me guessing until the end. After a long search, I’ve finally found another book, with an extremely well thought and very unpredictable plot! I couldn't put this book down! Warning: I’ve made the mistake to start reading this while I’ve been through an extremely busy period at school, so I had to stop reading it for two days and believe me that meant a great suffering for me. I’ve wanted so bad to find out what was going to happen next and if Sky would get all the answers in the end (what is she, what happened to her and so on) that I couldn't wait to restart my read. So before starting "Blackfin Sky" make sure that you have the possibility to read it without interruptions because it is a real page turner. There are lot of questions since the first pages of the novel and just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, the author adds another twist to keep you turning the page because in Blackfin, nothing is as it seems.

A little description:

Skylar (I have to mention that I find her name to be quite awesome) falls from the pier and drowns on her sixteenth birthday, everything seems normal until now but the weird part comes when she shows up after 3 months like nothing happened. She’s trying to find out what happened with her in the night she was supposed to have died and where she was this whole time. As she works to unravel the mystery surrounding her death, she discovers some pretty strange happenings around the town of Blackfin, a town filled with secrets just waiting to be unearthed.

Characters

I wasn’t too attached to the characters at the beginning. I’ve needed some time to get accustomed with them because there where so many mysteries and questions surrounding them, especially Skylar, but through the end, after I’ve started to find out more about their stories and understand them better, I grow to like them more and more .

Skylar was ok. That’s all I can say, I don’t hate her but she don’t fall into my favorite heroines category.
As for the main couple, Sean seems to be a good guy and he and Skylar really match with each other. I like that the romance between them is natural and never forced.

One thing that had bothered me was the fact the Cam and Bo didn’t really make any contribution to the plot, so their existence seemed unnecessary. I was expecting more from them because they were supposed to be Skylar’s friends, even though they didn’t react like her friends, especially when she returned from the death.

The ending was a good one but I think there is always room for a sequel because Blackfin and Sky's family seem like they have many more mysteries inside of them.

Unpredictable, FULL of mysteries, original plot, a little bit spooky (maybe), fast-paced, some paranormal stuff, that’s what "Blackfin Sky" has to offer to you. So what are you waiting for? Go find a nice nook, make sure no one interrupts you and start reading it! ^.^

A monster reference book focusing on humanoid monsters, designed as a resource for game masters to supplement their campaigns with more details about Orcs and Goblins and such. Lots of flavor text with backstories and trivia about the creatures. Apparently Lizardfolk only want to be left alone to live in peace, but the far more evil Serpentfolk worship a dead god. There are some surprising inclusions in the book like two undead races; I tend to think of the undead as their own category of monster and not as humanoids. Frost and Fire Giants are also included, and although Giants are humanoid I also think of them as a unique category of monster.

 

Given the popularity of the Horde among World of Warcraft players I am surprised that Dungeons & Dragons and its imitators have not explored more options of humanoid monsters as player character races. I know there are some options in supplemental works but they have never been part of the core game.

Shai has special abilities and is a precious commodity, for which different fractions of this futuristic city are willing to go into serious confrontations with each other.

Shai has been through many kinds of personal freedom restriction institutions and places.
- His life started at an orphanage, from which he escaped to the brutal life on the streets after the death of his older friend.
- After a few miserable years of being homeless he found a job as a waiter at a night club that offered speculative safety to its employers.
- However, that didn't last long and he was soon taken against his will to live and work at a government research facility. It offered many comforts limited to an ordinary citizen, while keeping its subjects under lock and key and exploiting their paranormal abilities.
- Finally, he was kidnapped by one of the most violent gangs and suffered a terrific physical and sexual abuse at the hands of genetically engineered soldier/gangster.

In the end, the Outsiders (Outriders) who roam free beyond the city limits take him in and become his new family, but this is all we are left with: Shai is safe for now.

Rounding up to 4 stars for all the abuse =)~ and because "Pathfinder" was at one point a free read and I am sorta kinda partial to the authors who take their time to write and share their fantasies with us for nothing (even if they eventually publish).

This book is what 3.5 should have been. In retrospect 3.5 was where D&D started to go downhill. I suspect that this is when corporate types that had no understanding of role-playing started making core decisions and started alienating their fan base, 3.5 did not really revisit 3rd edition, but instead made a few tweaks to the game that were nor really better or worse, but caused people to have rebuy the books or to work with two slightly different systems. In contrast Pathfinder revisited the rules, reconsider everything and fixed all the problematic stuff. Unlike the disaster of 4th edition, Pathfinder is the true successor to D&D.

The main fix is that the core classes are boosted in power. There is now interesting new stuff for almost every class level and the core classes are as good as Prestige classes. Pathfinder gives a lot of love to the Core classes and quite a bit of flexibility which is only increased by the other supplemental books. That means that the core classes are just very interesting to play.

Everything else has been improved as well. That has been done by revisiting everything and cleaning it up where needed. Some of the highlights are combing The Player's Guide and The Dungeon Master's Guide into one book. The addition of the concepts of the Combat Maneuver Bonus and the Combat Maneuver Defense. This brings all the special actions in combat like bullrushing, overrunning, feinting and sundering under one system of rules. In particular, it simplifies grappling so that these rules are now simple enough that players are going to be tempted to grapple, instead of avoiding it because the rules are such a headache.

Another standout is the overhaul of skills. A number of skills have been rolled together. In particular - search, spot and listen have been rolled into one skill of perception, hide and move silent rolled into stealth and balance, jump and tumble into acrobatics. This is just much better and quicker. Also, a skill being cross classed is no longer such a big deal. Any character, can overtime, become good at any skill. For some classes, certain skills will be easier. First level, also works like all other levels for skills and that is just much better.

There are almost double the number of feats as there were in the 3.5 players guide as well. Magic item creation has been improved and players might do it now. In this book, there is not one change that I have noticed that does not improve the game.

My only beef with the game is that it continues to put too much emphasis on combat. From the start the bulk of the rules for D&D were always about combat because it evolved out of miniatures gaming. In 1st and 2nd edition there was a lot of hand-waving in the rules, so the fact that everything outside of combat was blurry did not matter so much, because everyone had to role play out situations including combat all the time. Once 3rd edition cleaned up combat, some more robust rules for everything else might have been useful, so that the game supported adventures that were less of the traditional dungeon crawl a little but better. The supplements address this a bit, by putting in spells that are really only about role-playing more frequently. Things like the Game Mastery Guide or Mythic Adventures don't fix this because there rule sets are bad.

However, Pathfinder is what 3.5 should have been and people playing any edition of D&D after 2nd edition should switch to Pathfinder because it is doing what 3rd edition did, only better and 4th edition is not worth playing at all.