Enjoy Firesoul Edited By Gary Kloster In PDF
A book set in the mwangi expanse, a tropical jungle filled with remnants of lost cities, I liked reading up on this part of the pathfinder world,
other then that the story is quite cliché and did not really grab me, it was a bit to predictable, I liked the way the 'big bad' was dealt with, but I did not much enjoy the journey to get there, Too much wallowing in the awfulness of the villains, coupled with a set of 'heroes' I didn't much like, I suspect the author was going for 'flawed' with them, but he mostly just hit 'unpleasant',
Also, it is disappointing that a novel set in fantasyAfrica has so many of its cast of characters come from fantasyEurope, Another Pathfinder Tales story, this tale is basically your comingofage story wrapped in a fantasy world, Jiri is a druid who lives in the tropical jungles of the Mwangi expanse, Her mentor, Oza, protects her villageand by extension the large city of Kibwefrom an ancient evil buried under a step pyramid in the jungle, You can tell the buried magic is evil because it kills all of the plant life around the pyramid, Then, one day, the unethical Aspis Corporation discovers the pyramid and sends a group of adventurers to secure the magic, Oza dies trying to prevent the theft, and Jiri is left to fend for herself, exact revenge for her mentor's death, and protect the area from the evil, How can she do that when she is still learning the magical craft herself
I thought the story started slowly, but built as it went along, I enjoyed the charactersespecially the mercenary Morviuswho were generally three dimensional and consistent, The story was complex, but hung together logically, Allinall, it was a nice diversion, As kids visiting the beach in California, we used to make these sand castles, Only not really. You might call them drip castles, You make them by taking watersoaked sand and squeezing it so it drips sandladen water, If you do it right, you can make spires and turrets and in our minds that was very fine,
I feel like this book took a bunch of storysand, soaked it in water, and tried to build a castle by squeezing a lot and hoping things landed right.
Most of the story elements are there and if you squint, you can kind of see that there's something there, There's characters and a plot and the borrowed Pathfinder world doesn't disappoint this is a tiein novel, But the main character is a bit bland and very weak and sometimes conveniently stupid, And the story is predictable, If there was an obvious path, the author took it every time, Indeed, I very nearly put the book down when .
Now that I ask myself, I'm not really sure why I finished it, I'm trying to train myself out of sticking with books I don't like, Only. I didn't actually dislike it when all is said, It was just bland. I suppose if it had actively disappointed me more than the once, I might have stopped, As it was, it was adequate, if only just,
So "it was okay" is accurate, And thus two. But it isn't quite as bad as most of the two books I review, For only the second time in my life there is a book I just could not finish, this book is terrible the main character spends most of the book whining and complaining about how useless she is and then being useless and complaining to everyone who will listen.
I could not even finish this book, Mediocre at best. it definitely had some flaws, . . a very slow begining and some returning characters that feel like throwaways, . but you need to go into this one thinking of it as a tribal vs society story and not a normal knights and magic fantasty, the main character is good, and after the second chapter there are few tangents, Firesoul tells the story of Jiri, a young druid from the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, When her
mentor is killed by outlanders breaking into a forbidden ruin, she has no choice but to find help, from other outlanders, Soon she is enmeshed into the rivalries of foreigners, and trying to balance her need for vengeance and protecting her people with the needs and motivations of her erstwhile allies.
It's just as challenging to navigate their politics and conflicting desires for payment or single minded devotion to strange deities,
Morvius is simple to understand, he's mercenary enough he simply wants payment, even when innocent lives are at risk, Since Jiri doesn't have any money though, finding ways to pay him become a challenge, Trusting Sera the paladin is far more complicated when her service to her god trumps other concerns, and she is far more obsessed with killing evil demons than saving the people of the Mwangi from a threat that could burn entire cities to the ground.
Linaria is the most complicated of all, At first she looks for payment like Morvius, but over time tries being a friend to Jiri, However, is it legitimate, or a way to manipulate Jiri for her own reasons
Jiri needs to learn to handle her own tenuous allies though to defeat the completely selfish and greedy agents of the Aspic Consortium, who would gladly let cities be destroyed if they can profit from it.
And with the artifact they've stolen, it's all too likely that they will leave a swath of destruction in their wake, since stealing it has released a creature of unimaginable power, and no mercy for mortals whatsoever.
A good first novel by Gary Kloster and detailing a rarely explored region of the Pathfinder world of Golarion, Also a refreshing change of scene to an African based fantasy world rather than more common European influenced ones, I am not liking morvius very much, he is full of it and I have no respect for him, he sleeps with both men and women but this tough woman, Linarua still sleeps with him, Is sex so important to her that self respect goes out the window Tough in a battle but weak when it comes to this man a sea.
In any case, I never read books when it mentions or is about same sex love, it's just not my thing, I like to read what I live.
Anyway so far I'm enjoying this book very much, except for what I mentioned, A decent Pathfinder novel. Flames in the Night
Jiri has always been special, Found as an infant in the ashes of her village, she was taken in by a neighboring shaman and trained to be a powerful jungle druid, Yet when Aspis Consortium mercenaries release an ancient evil that burns her adopted home to the ground, Jiri must gather a group of her own to uncover the secrets of a lost nation and stop the fire spiritand the greedy treasure hunters trying to leash it for their own endsbefore it lays waste to the entire Mwangi Expanse.
From acclaimed short story author Gary Kloster comes a tale of revenge, lost cities, and unlikely alliances, set in the awardwinning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, .