The Halls of Stormweather [Books]

This was a consistently entertaining collection of short stories featuring members of the Uskevren family in the Forgotten Realms' country of Sembia. One gets a picture of Sembia as a country where wealthy merchant families compete for money, power, and prestige through intrigue and subterfuge. Viewing individual family members through a linked collection of short stories proved to be an interesting and effective way to show how different perspectives create different impressions on what people are "really" like. The Uskrevens are individually well-drawn, and it appears they receive more sustained attention in subsequent books in the Sembia line. As an RPG-inspired book, it also serves as a good model of how to run purely urban adventures.