Pathfinder Tales: Skinwalkers
Feb. 10th, 2021 03:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI finished this book after a lot of stops and starts. Whenever it got especially anatomical and gory I got distracted by whatever else was handy. Trigger Warnings for cannibalism, murder, graphic depictions of violence, lots of injury, children in danger, child soldiers, child murder, and implied sexual assault. Also some mind control. Possibly some other things too. If I'd read warnings like that I probably wouldnt have read this book, come to think. Not my sort of story at all.
Also, Pathfinder Tales repeated a trope I dislike: oh no protagonist's siblings are secretly evil, now protagonist must kill them. Like, why is treachery and betrayal a theme here? Ugh. There's also a recurrence of Victim Is Secretly Perpetrator, and that's nasty too.
It is the kind of story where the protagonist Endures, while the world throws bad things at them, until they find the right things to hit until the bad stays dead. A solo protagonist, even though the Pathfinder rules very much assume a group of allies. People other than the protagonist move in and out of the story npc style, they're not a tight team like players.
And once again the characters are kept so low level there's few possibilities for fixing things, which seems like a waste.
So having read three books I feel like they're not the genre I expected, rather darker, and I have no further interest in reading Pathfinder Tales.
Though I still like the world they're set in for the richness of the adventure possibilities.
But the book was skillfully written and anybody looking for vikings vs shapeshifters will find much to enjoy in it.
Also, Pathfinder Tales repeated a trope I dislike: oh no protagonist's siblings are secretly evil, now protagonist must kill them. Like, why is treachery and betrayal a theme here? Ugh. There's also a recurrence of Victim Is Secretly Perpetrator, and that's nasty too.
It is the kind of story where the protagonist Endures, while the world throws bad things at them, until they find the right things to hit until the bad stays dead. A solo protagonist, even though the Pathfinder rules very much assume a group of allies. People other than the protagonist move in and out of the story npc style, they're not a tight team like players.
And once again the characters are kept so low level there's few possibilities for fixing things, which seems like a waste.
So having read three books I feel like they're not the genre I expected, rather darker, and I have no further interest in reading Pathfinder Tales.
Though I still like the world they're set in for the richness of the adventure possibilities.
But the book was skillfully written and anybody looking for vikings vs shapeshifters will find much to enjoy in it.