Reign of Stars

Pathfinder Tales #22

by Tim Pratt

It Came From the Sky

When the leader of the ruthless Technic League calls in a favor, the mild-mannered alchemist Alaeron has no choice but to face a life he thought he'd left behind long ago. Accompanied by his only friend, a street-savvy thief named Skiver, Alaeron must head north into Numeria, a land where brilliant and evil arcanists rule over the local barbarian tribes with technology looted from a crashed spaceship. Can Alaeron and Skiver survive long enough to unlock the secrets of the stars? Or will the backstabbing scientists of the Technic League make Alaeron's curiosity his undoing?

From Hugo Award-winner Tim Pratt comes a fantastical adventure of science, savagery, and the vagaries of the human heart, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and tied into the Iron Gods Adventure Path.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Role Playing Games

363 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 2014

About the author

Also writes as T.A. Pratt and T. Aaron Payton

Reviews

[Jacob Proffitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Pathfinder tie-in novel. I picked it up because I quite liked those by Tim Pratt I've read so far. It didn't disappoint. In this one, Alaeron heads back into the Technic League to see if he can't take care of his assassin problem at the source. And no, not by killing people to convince them to stop. The plan is to bribe them and it's a mostly good plan, too.

The story is a bit rambly as things happen and then more things. Pratt never entirely loses touch with the point of it all, though, (and neither does Alaeron), so it's not as bad as all that. Plus, Alaeron and Skiver are a good deal of fun.

What I particularly like is how Alaeron and Skiver work as a team, each making up deficiencies in the other and working together for their mutual satisfaction. I also like how they incorporate others as needed including a brief cameo by Jaya and work with them as smoothly as they'll let them.

I don't typically appreciate sci-fi getting in my fantasy, but again, Pratt does a really good job giving it just enough wonder without getting caught up in the weird.

So overall a good story, though without a consistent antagonist to keep things focused. That may be a feature of the tie-in sub-genre, but it still hampers me from pulling a full five stars.

[Bobby Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. While i don't like/get into Alaeron the way i do Rodrick, Tim Pratt is still a good author with engaging ideas, memorable NPCs, and twisty-turny plots. So if you are looking for an engaging read, something a bit heavier than light-hearted, but lighter than gloom and doom, this is probably the book for you.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Numeria or just sword and sorcery and tech, this is the book for you!

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tim Pratt is among my favorite authors from the pathfinder tales writers stable. His books are always filled with quick witted, funny and capable characters. His stories are always fun and they always have the undercurrents of equality and rationality. 2 things that are missing in the political and public debate these days.

So why only three stars. I was expecting a bit a different story. I was hoping on some great revelation about the true nature of the Silver Mount. But what we got was a story about power struggle and the finding of some artifacts. It was quite an entertaining story but there was no new insight in this book. Nothing that had not been covered in the previous Alaeron and Skiver book.

Still his style and humor will be bring back to Tim Pratt's novels.

[Jonathan Spadafora · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites.

[Stirling · Rating 2 out of 5]

So unlike some people who read Reign of Stars, I came in knowing what I was getting into (or so I thought). Science fiction in fantasy; before the fantasy puritanism of J.R.R. Tolkien and such, tales of pulp action, fantasy, and science fiction freely mixed the worlds together into campy glory. Having a space ship crash land on a fantasy world has been done before even in the DnD-esque sector. Plus, I'm going to be running Iron Gods so I bought into Numeria and it's setting.

So I should be totally on board for this novel and greatly enjoy it? Right? Wrong.

First thing's first, it's very clear from the first chapter that the tone of this novel is going to be one of crude irreverence. Once you get to the pirate priest of the great firmament (his imagined giant butthole in the sky) and his daily worship of using the toilet you see the lowbrow 'comedy' at work. Sex, drugs, toilet humor a-plenty, and snarky, joking, self-aware characters is the name of this game, which already set me on the wrong foot. There's a difference between humorous camp and a cynical, almost farcical take on the subject matter and I found Tim Pratt erred on the latter rather than the former. We sadly see only bits and pieces of Numeria and while there are some visuals and descriptions I appreciated and will likely steal for my campaign, most of it feels like barely scratching the surface of Numeria, which given this novel is 400 pages long is quite a let-down. There's only so much snark one can read before you would rather have something of substance.

The characters aren't terrible. Alaeron and Skiver are the two primary characters with the technic league and its agents serving as their main foil, with the exception of Alaeron's old mentor / lover Zernebeth, who I know shows up in the Iron Gods adventure path. Alaeron is a neat character, an overly analytical alchemist nerd who's a bit naive, while Skiver is a thief with a heart... if not one of gold. They're both semi-amoral but compared to the Technic league they're saints. Skiver does get terribly annoying the further in the story you read, however, as he's the primary source of that snark which I found grating early on.

The novel's twists and turns are terribly predictable and there's not enough substance to any one part. Despite being 400 pages long the novel seems to zoom by most parts at a breakneck pace only to stop for two pages to make a fart joke about a divine butthole. Clearly the epitome of literature this. And the thing is if it was handled evenly I'd be fine with grotesque and crude imagery. This is supposed to be Conan the Barbarian with Aliens after all but it seems like the author cares more about his pet characters and their snarky outsider view of Numeria than giving us a taste of Numeria itself.

The ending is rushed and quite half-arsed save for again, a page of dialogue that serves no purpose whatsoever but to insult Alaeron and piss off this reviewer. One of Alaeron's faults is his naivety which comes across in his love life as well, and after having his heart torn out his 'friend' Skiver takes a pained man's careless statement and proceeds to lecture the poor man AND the reader for a full page about not making blanket statements and treating everyone as people, regardless of race, creed, yadda yadda yadda. Good message and most everyone would go 'no duh', but this is anvilicious and hamfisted in the extreme and makes Alaeron look like some kind of misogynist which he most certainly was not.

I have my own hypothesis as to why this ending bit was put in. It seems likely due to Paizo interference. It's clear the author is no highbrow liberal arts major looking to make some literary masterpiece, he's a blue collar nerd who'd rather be playing video games and watching movies (by his own admission at the back of the book). My guess is it was put in by either party as a sort of apology for the low-brow toilet humor and mostly male-minded sexual content throughout the book. A sort of progressive version of saying your hail-maries after sinning. As someone who's a fan of the Numeria setting and of the Iron Gods adventure path, my suggestion is to skip this novel. If you want some good Numerian fiction read the short story told in six parts at the back of each adventure in that adventure path.

[Robert Furlong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite being a fan of Pathfinder the game, I never knew that there were games set in the Pathfinder universe. I definitely wasn't disappointed in this representation of that universe. Tim Pratt provided a fun and engaging glimpse into the world of Pathfinder with intriguing and humorous characters and twists that I somehow didn't see coming even after years of reading tabletop fantasy novels. Perhaps it's because of the fact that this book was written a bit later than most DnD novels, for example, but Tim Pratt also doesn't seem to take the assignment too seriously, to the benefit of the series. He plays into the tropes of tabletop fantasy settings and even occasionally subverts them to keep you guessing, while keeping the tone light and humorous. The only complaint I have, and it's a minor one, is that once the love interest is introduced to the mix the scenes between her and the protagonist feel like it came from a sitcom. But other than that everything was amazing and I will definitely be looking for the author's name in bookstores in the future.

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit less fun than it could be (although the instance of calling up the other authors' characters cracked me up), still, this is an enjoyable romp in the Pathfinder sandbox, with a massive number of automata thrown in. Good for what it is, some uninvolving entertainment for a few evenings.

[Berryman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read four Tim Pratt novels now. This is my forth favourite.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pathfinder Tales books take place in and around the world of Golarion, Paizo's fantasy world used with the Pathfinder gaming system. Golarion is a world of swords and sorcery, with a number of different countries that represent different cultures from our own world (and allow for a number of different gaming experiences).

This Pathfinder Tales book focuses on Alaeron, an alchemist we met before in the book City of the Fallen Sky. He and his partner in crime, Skiver, become embroiled in politics in Numeria, a country that has not only magic but also high technology (and, as someone once said, any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic). See, thousands of years ago, a gigantic space ship broke up and crashed in the area that is today Numeria. The Technic League is a group of adventurers who explore the ruins in search of powerful artifacts. The members of the League use these artifacts to advance their own standing. As they say, what good is privilege if you cannot hold onto it? (In gaming terms, these guys are chaotic neutral at best and chaotic evil most of the time). In any case, Alaeron was a lieutenant in the league and fled some year back after his partner, Zernabeth, was caught in an electric trap in a ship. Alaeron killed a captain of the Technic League (the rulers of the group) as he left, and the League has sent assassins after him for years. So, he has become very cautious and, well, paranoid. Still, Zernabeth's emissary, Char, gets through the traps, mostly because he is incorporeal due to a side effect of an experiment with an alien artifact. Soon, Alaeron is drug back into the politics of Numeria (even though he seems to have a fairly well developed case of Asperger's Disorder and has troubles interacting with others socially). When Zernabeth is ousted from power, it is up to our heroes Alaeron and Skiver to save the day.

This was a nice diversion. As usual, I did not have great expectations prior to reading the book; it is a Pathfinder Tales book, after all, and is my pulp fantasy book to keep me diverted. And, as it was tied in with the most recent Pathfinder Adventure Path, I thought that it would not be any great shakes. I'm glad to say that the book had more depth and characterization than I expected. Alaeron is true to his lack of social skills (even if Mr. Pratt did not have Asperger's in mind when writing the character, my psychologist's mind saw it there). Skiver is well developed as a sympathetic character. Even Zernabeth stays true to her characterization. Well, with one slightly disappointing deviation at the end of the book. But, I could see why that had to happen--need to keep the characters around for the next installment! Still, this was an enjoyable read, and the story picked up as it went along.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dungeon Master : "Okay, thanks everyone for showing up to our first session. For a campaign idea I chose to start with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks..."
Jaded Player : "Pffft... Been done. Isn't that a spoiler to tell us up front?"
DM : "...but the spaceship is mountain-sized, it crashed into let's call it Cimmeria some untold age ago, and for the last generation has been systematically plundered of its technology by a League of mad scientists, who have also dominated the region by addicting the mad Sovereign to weird drugs and a program of terror over the locals involving experimentation and robots. Oh, and the League is a bunch of power-hungry sociopaths who'll gleefully backstab each other and throw passersby into their grotesque-body-horror experiments. And, of course, weird chemicals and energy leaking from the spaceship over millennia has mutated the landscape, and various other wreckage periodically ejects malfunctioning technology and/or anthropophagic extraterrestrial lifeforms."
Jaded Player : "THIS IS THE GREATEST CAMPAIGN EVER"

So...this is a thing. It can't be a new thing, but I can't think of an earlier example. Sure sounds interesting, doesn't it?

But the elevator pitch as described has been busied up quite a bit, and has all these tinkertoy intricacies that I associate with game fiction and game settings in general. The setting material is packed with factions and materials and artifacts and other hooks for the delectation of the players, and therefore it has to appear here, even when it clogs the story.

This is especially apparent when you realize that Numeria, this nation/state/empire, is but one of a crazy-quilt, each patch with its own theme and weird feature. Apparently the neighbor to crashed-spaceship-land is a Hellmouth (here called the Worldwound). You'd think that interesting and incredibly deadly features would be widely separated by tracts of very boring land. The whole idea of Numeria and the Silver Mount deserves to be its own thing, rather than one more bit of weirdness.

But it's amazing how much this lends itself to a sword-and-sorcery story. The protagonists, one a thief and gangster, the other a destructive alchemist, have what might be called an "it's complicated" relationship with morality, but they are paladins compared to the utterly degenerate rulership of Numeria. It becomes readily apparent that no improvement of circumstance will be coming to the oppressed inhabitants: the Technic League and the Black Sovereign are too entrenched in power to be toppled. The best that Alaeron and Skiver can hope for is to get out alive and in possession of a vast amount of money.

[Bree Hatfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Pathfinder novel and it did not disappoint. It’s full of witty banter, fun characters, interesting sci-fi elements weaved into this rich fantasy world, and so much more. There were a few aspects that fell flat, but overall it was a fantastic book.

The characterization is phenomenal. Just in the short first chapter we see that our eccentric main character has a passion for creating and learning things. I fell in love with Alaeron immediately, and my love for him only grew over the course of the novel. Following an alchemist is so cool and rather unusual, and it made for unique action sequences and some really fun discussion. On top of that, Tim Pratt makes it very clear that Alaeron is neurodivergent/autistic; he isn’t adept in social situations, hyper-focuses as a way of life, and generally over-analyzes things. He uses logic and reasoning when it may be wiser not to, but he doesn’t always recognize that. It can often lead to humorous moments, but not in a way that’s offensive at all. As someone with ADHD, I found myself relating to this character much more than your typical fantasy protagonist.

On the topic of characters and diversity, Skiver is also amazing. He’s a snarky gay thief whose pretty typical of the archetype, but a welcome addition nonetheless. He balances and blends with Alaeron so well and their dynamic is so amazing; their banter made this novel shine for me. And as I mentioned above, he’s gay. Pratt recognizes queerness as a normal thing within this world, and it’s so wonderful. It’s not often you find a neurodivergent lead character with a gay sidekick in fantasy.

The integration of sci-fi tech into a fantasy world is done incredibly well. The black box is so cool, and the automatons, annihilators, gearmen, etc. were super fun to see in action. This book also went into the lore behind the crashed spaceships, and I thought that concept was incredible. This was my first Pathfinder novel, though, so that may be par for the course, but I still thought it was awesome.

Spoiler warning for the next section.

The climax fell short for me, but climaxes in fantasy novels often do. I wish we could have gotten a more proper conclusion to the crashed spaceship shuttle plot and less with the politics of infiltrating the technic league, but it wasn’t too bad. I liked the concept, but I think it should have been it’s own thing. It would have been cool if the shuttle plot was wrapped up in this book and there was another book where they infiltrated the technic league using whatever they found in the shuttle, but alas. Even so, the focus was on the characters and by the end Alaeron was a much more learned and wise person than when the novel started, and that’s the most important thing to me.

[Joel Flank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Pratt returns to the heroes (?) of his first Pathfinder Tale novel, the amoral alchemist Alearon and his lovable rogue, the immoral Skiver. This time, they are summoned to the land of Numeria, where a crashed spaceship has let to a land of super science and sorcery, brutally ruled by the Technic League. Since Alearon has been hounded by their assassins ever since he fled with some of their technological secrets, and is offered a chance to have that annoyance stop, as well as have a chance to plunder/explore an unclaimed wreck, he's lured like a fly to honey and cannot refuse. Skiver comes along for both the excitement, to keep his friend Alearon safe, and to steal anything of value not nailed down.

Pratt makes his characters a delight to read, and experience the world through their eyes. In particular, Alearon's completely dispassionate world view is a perfect blend of mad scientist and social misfit, who can develop scientific marvels, but not understand why people wouldn't want perfectly good inventions, like security doors which explode when someone unauthorized tries to open them. If only he understood who didn't have his best interests at heart, such as pretty much every traitorous member of the Technic League.

What develops is a fun romp into one of the more unique corners of the Pathfinder game world, and makes a perfect tie in for the Iron Gods Adventure Path, as well as a rip roaring good time all on it's own.

[J.L. Doty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in the world of the role-playing game, Pathfinder. The wizard Alaeron returns to Numeria at the behest of Zernebeth, a female wizard he once left for dead. She's now the preeminent captain of the Technic League, which has been sending assassins after Alearon, and she'll get him off the hook if he does her a favor.

The book is well written by a skilled writer, with excellent style and prose. It's a great blend of fantasy, with bits of science fiction thrown in. But I found too many of the characters had the same personality: a sharp, sarcastic wit. They tended to blend together, and I never became emotionally invested in any of them.

My disconnect with it is probably more that it's not the type of story I enjoy--I'm not a gamer--so merely showing me the fantastic doesn't get me there.

[Dave Walls · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not usually crazy about sci-fi in my fantasy, but the presentation here works. I liked that it was characters in a fantastic world exploring other-world technology, and they understood it as that. The technology was not overplayed, but more of a McGuffin to drive the story.

I enjoyed the first Alaeron book as it helped me understand how to play an alchemist. This one I enjoyed more for Alaeron's and Skiver's interactions. They were a definite pair of partners who knew what to expect of each other and trusted each other with their lives. That more than anything kept me reading along. I hope Tim Pratt writes more Pathfinder novels in the future (with Alaeron or without, I've enjoyed all three). He has a style that is easy to follow without being overly simple.

[Tony Calder · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a bad book, but I struggled to really get into it, and I'm not sure why. The characters are interesting, and the Pathfinder world setting is an interesting place to explore, whether in novel or gaming. Tim Pratt is a decent author, although I found that his moral stance became a bit preachy towards the end of the book, even though I agree with a lot of it.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book exploring the lands of Numeria.

[Anna Mattaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book, especially when the plot began to come together and seemingly random events turned out to have their place in the grand design after all. I wasn't fond of the ending, though. I'll describe it in generic terms but put it in spoiler tags anyway: I didn't expect the main characters to get what they wanted, but I was disappointed when they ended up pretty much exactly where they started. Also, one pretty big random event didn't get the comeback I'd hoped for after quite a lot of others did, and one character appeared purely because she'd been in a previous book.

I like a bit of character development in my stories - that's the whole point of a story, isn't it? - and this didn't have it. Parts of it really read like a role-playing campaign (I mean, trying to get your friend's attention by breaking through his door with an axe, and then not stopping or explaining when you have his attention and he starts to get aggressive... that sounds an awful lot like players having fun role-playing amongst themselves but getting distracted by snacks). But there was enough to enjoy, too: the plot was fun, the setting was fun, and there was some clever writing.