Prince of Wolves

Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross

Two books into the Pathfinder novels, they are proving to be quite good at fleshing out the campaign world while being entertaining.  I had started with Winter Witch since the next person running the game after our current adventure is planning to run something in that area; Prince of Wolves is set in an entirely different area of the campaign world, Golarian.

Prince of Wolves follows a Pathfinder, Varian Jeggare, and his bodyguard, Radovan, into the country of Ustalav in search of a missing member of the Pathfinder Society.  While the lands of Irrisen explored in Winter Witch were full of trolls and goblins, Ustalav's major threats are undead and werewolves.  D20 RPGs generally have one or more pantheons of deities, and different ones have stronger followings in different areas of Golarian, so the way the inhabitants of Ustalav interact with their deities, and which, was also different from those in Winter Witch.

Pathfinder anthropology aside, the story itself is told in first person, switching back and forth between Radovan and Varian.  This construction works fairly well for giving events from both's point of view, but it sometimes takes a paragraph or two to figure out whose perspective is behind each chapter.  (I don't know if this is an element of the ebook format, or if the print version has some kind of distinguishing cue.)  Radovan's storyline at the points the characters are separated is better structured; the segments where Varian is alone at a manor in Ustalav feel a bit rushed.  The separate paths weave back together coherently, however.

Thus far the series shows promise, with both books having compelling characters and enough plot twists to make them hard to put down.