Pathfinder Tales: "Lord of Runes" [RPG]

 NO SPOILERS

"So much fun!" "clean, clear writing", "fantastic!" "so good!" are all notes I made while reading Lord of Runes.  It really is a gem of a Pathfinder Tales novel.  Varian and Radovan are back, and this time they're adventuring through some locations and interacting with some characters that are near and dear to my Pathfinder heart.  It's funny, exciting, surprising, shows a love of the setting, and is an all around good novel.  I give it my highest recommendation.

SPOILERS!

Having literally just finished running a multi-year Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and running the Pathfinder Module Academy of Secrets for PFS, I was both jazzed and frustrated that Lord of Runes spends several opening chapters in Korvosa!  Jazzed because I love the setting and it's fantastic to see NPCs like Vencarlo Orisini (he and Jeggare are old drinking buddies!) and locations like the Acadamae (Headmaster Toff Ornelos' niece is a major character) brought to life.  I was frustrated because if I had known earlier, I good have incorporated some of the novel's great flavour into my running of the adventures!  But that's just how the cookie crumbles.  In addition to Korvosa, the novel features more of Varisia, such as Kaer Maga and the Cenotaph, and the plot (as the title might indicate) has to do with an ancient Thassilonian Runelord: in this case, Zuthra, the Runelord of Gluttony.  Fans of Eando Kline should also read the novel, as he's a major character as well.

For me personally, it's a little weird to have finally read Lord of Runes.  I remember seeing it in a bookstore very early in my immersion into Pathfinder (circa 2016) and buying it despite knowing it would be years before I read all the ones published before it.  I think I'm in the last quarter or so of the existence of the Pathfinder Tales line.  Bittersweet, but ever onwards!