Pathfinder Tales: "Stalking the Beast"

NO SPOILERS

Stalking the Beast tells a new adventure featuring the protagonist of Howard Andrew Jones’ previous Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows.  But in addition to elven archer Elyana and half-orc warrior Drelm, several new characters are introduced here as well.  The chapters alternate between different characters’ points of view, and while it’s not quite as effective of a contrast as Dave Gross’ Varian/Radovan books, it still works well.  This novel starts off near the small town of Delgar in the River Kingdoms, but there’s some local travel later in the book.  The plot is certainly not predictable, and contains plenty of action and drama capped off with an excellent ending.  Although it’s not my favorite Pathfinder novel, it’s an above-average entry in the series and definitely worth reading.

SPOILERS

The first part of Stalking the Beast concerns a mystery: what strange, invisible monster is murdering people near Delgar?  The cover art unfortunately gives it away, but the protagonists have to bring together adventurers and bounty hunters from all over the River Kingdoms to form a search party capable of tracking and slaying the strange beast.  I particularly liked the scene of Elyana and Drelm testing the applicants, though the eventual search party ends up being so large that I had trouble keeping track of all the participants.  And this proves something of a problem as they start being killed off, and one of them ends up being the beast’s master!  It’s a “twist” that fell flat to me because I couldn’t remember who the character was before he was revealed to be behind the murders to begin with.  Anyway, that’s far from the end of the story: the plot also involves tensions between the fey and druids of the forest of Sevenarches (in an excellent portrayal) and several further twists that are almost dizzying.  There may, in fact, be one twist too many.

What makes Stalking the Beast work as a novel are the exciting action scenes and the interesting, well-rounded characters.  Drelm, a half-orc warrior who worships Abadar (god of law and civilization) is a great character, the emerging subplot of how Elyana is realising that the time may have come for her to leave the town and Drelm behind (she’ll live for centuries after his death, after all) is bittersweet, and a new major character, a bounty-hunting gunslinger named Lisette, keeps things fresh.  And whereas a lot of novels fall flat when it comes to the ending, this one nails it perfectly.

I think Stalking the Beast has some room for improvement, but it’s enjoyable and probably superior to Jones’ previous Pathfinder novel.