Mercadian Masques Book

This one really underscored how much the previous book didn't fit in for me. It was a nice return to a single, consistent voice telling a coherent story.

That said, there was some really lazy writing here that disrupted what was otherwise a solid story. There were a lot of deus ex machina fixes to problems; e.g. Cho-Manno is suddenly alive. It was jarring to the point that I was fully expecting this was Volrath in disguise....which was another problem, doing the switch where a character you had been coming to know is suddenly someone else entirely, negating all development.

It just happened a few times, basically every time the crew was in a seemingly inescapable predicament. An acceptable "twist" would be like Squee stopping that big creature from murdering the shit out of Gerrard during their first arrival in Mercadia. It's adding something to the world we just didn't know yet (that Goblins have a much different standing here), and it's an interesting way out of a situation.

Compare this with "oh this guy I totally told you died is actually just fine and also he has crazy psychic abilities that can resolve this false accusation in 30 seconds". That feels more like trying to write your way out of a corner. It adds nothing to the world, you just tell your reader "fuck you for believing my explicit statement that this character was dead".

Anyway, we're finally getting into the meat of the history of these worlds now, and the set of cards I'm familiar with that now make sense has had its growth accelerated.