Stargazer

Pathfinder Tales

by Chris A. Jackson

Pirate captain Torius Vin’s navigator, Celeste, isn’t your typical crew member. She’s a naga - half woman, half serpent - and can read the night skies like an open book. When Celeste is kidnapped during a trade run to legendary Katapesh, Torius and his crew must race to unravel a web of betrayal and evil magic in the bazaars of the dangerous City of Trade.

From fan-favorite author Chris A. Jackson comes tale of swashbuckling pirate adventure, set in the award-winning world of Pathfinder’s Lost Omens campaign setting. This story serves as a prequel to the Pathfinder Tales novel, Pirate's Honor, as well as the follow-up novels, Pirate's Promise, Pirate's Prophecy, and Operation Hellmouth.

Genres: Fantasy

45 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 29, 2013

About the author

From the sea to the stars, Chris A. Jackson’s stories take you to the far reaches of the imagination. Raised on the back deck of a fishing boat and trained as a marine biologist, he became sidetracked by a career in biomedical research, but regained his heart and soul in 2009 when he and his wife Anne left the dock aboard the 45-foot sailboat Mr Mac to cruise the Caribbean and write fulltime.
With his nautical background, writing sea stories seemed inevitable for Chris. His acclaimed Scimitar Seas nautical fantasies won three consecutive Gold Medals in the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards. His Pathfinders Tales from Paizo Publishing combine high-seas combat and romance set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Not to be outdone, Privateer Press released Blood & Iron, a swashbuckling novella set in the Iron Kingdoms.
Chris’ repertoire also includes the award-winning and Kindle best-selling Weapon of Flesh Series, the contemporary urban fantasy Dragon Dreams, as well as additional fantasy novels, the humorous sci fi Cheese Runners trilogy of novellas, and numerous short stories.
To learn more, please visit jaxbooks.com.

Reviews

[Yanik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed my short time with Stargazer and her crew. I've grown to love these Pathfinder short stories to introduce us to authors, characters and settings.
In this, I was quite impressed with Jackson's writing style and control of the short form.
The story is crisp, well paced, includes a lot of action but remains atmospheric, diverse and vividly told. The last bit especially was something I was very appreciative of since it was lacking in my previous read (Trading in Danger).

While I was aware of the Romance angle in this, and it was otherwise meh to me, the angle of having a literal toxic relationship where the venom of the Naga lady enthralls the captain is very interesting. The other crew, namely the Half-Orc bosun Grogul and the Gnome engineer Snick are fun and interesting. I hope we'll get to see more crew in the novel.
As said, the visual descriptions are wonderful and vibrant, yet the tone is somewhat grim and darker than what I've gotten used to in Pathfinder, I like it.
There's a bunch of combat situations, including a boarding action and it's all presented in quite visceral display.
Likewise the dialogues are quite nice, rough and piratey.

So, I'm looking forward to Pirate's Honor and will start it later today. I know there will be a big emphasis on the romance, which is partly true to a lot of pirate stories, but I'm hoping there's more to the story than just that.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is part of a series that tells the tale of a fictional pirate in an imaginary land.

I initially began reading about Captain Torius Vin's Stargazer to augment my Skull and Shackles TTRPG game. I welcome the flavor and regional insights these stories give into the shackles and other nearby ports. I have brought some of this into my own campaign and it gives a much more rich experience to the players.

In itself, these stories are compelling. The characters are really well developed. Inter-character relationships are complex and interesting.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 Sea faring short story with a very unusual character.