Behind Pirate's Prophecy

Thursday, February 4, 2016

We interrupt this blog for a special announcement: The Pathfinder Tales novel Death's Heretic is still totally free in audiobook form on Audible.com until February 16th! Grab it now before the offer expires!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.

At this point, with three books in his Pirates series, you might think I'd be sick of talking about Chris Jackson's books. But you'd be wrong.


Illustrations by Eric Belisle

See, Chris is one of those authors that editors like me dream about. Not only is he a fabulous writer, perfectly balancing action and character development, but he also lives and breathes Pathfinder. He knows Golarion inside and out, and has a mastery of the rules that never ceases to amaze me. (Seriously, if you only knew the number of times he's brought up an interesting corner case or rules exploit that caused hours of discussion among the designers and developers...) Combined, those two aspects of his writing make his books a delight to read, both as a reader and as a gamer. How would naval combat work in Pathfinder? What kinds of magical defenses would a Chelish ship have? How could a naga best disguise herself as human? How might a sorcerer use magic to infiltrate a coven of paranoid witches? Chris uses the rules of magic not just as a storyteller looking to forward a plot, but as a person living in that world would, which means there's always something I can take away from his books for use at the gaming table.

Yet really, it's Chris's characters that get to me. At this point, I feel like I know Torius and Celeste and Snick and Vreva as well as I know Chris himself—maybe better, since I've spent so much time in their heads. They feel like real people to me, in a way that only the best characters do. When I suggest an edit to Chris, it's usually phrased like "Celeste wouldn't say that"—as if she were a mutual friend, rather than someone he made up out of whole cloth. That's the power of a good character.

So in Pirate's Prophecy, it's exciting to catch up again with the crew of the Stargazer, to see them settling into their new roles as abolitionist privateers for Andoran. While the crew may be perfectly happy to steal from slavers and spirit the freed slaves away to freedom, being involved in the world of international politics comes with a whole new heap of troubles. When expert spy Vreva Jhafae uncovers a Chelish plot to unleash a terrible weapon on Andoren ports, only the crew of the Stargazer can stop it without blowing her cover. Yet even as Vreva puts herself in harm's way with a series of Mission: Impossible style infiltrations, Celeste finds herself suddenly speaking in tongues and wrestling with the appearance of strange new powers...

James L. Sutter
Executive Editor

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Chris A. Jackson Eric Belisle Pathfinder Tales

As far as I can tell this only applies to customers who buy via audible.com, which means none american customers do not have access to the audible book offer.


Hmmmm...one quick question...do Nagas have mage's hand as a at will spell-like ability or do they use telekinesis as per the spell? I've always wondered how Celeste is manipulating objects without arms or hands.

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Berselius wrote:
Hmmmm...one quick question...do Nagas have mage's hand as a at will spell-like ability or do they use telekinesis as per the spell? I've always wondered how Celeste is manipulating objects without arms or hands.

They have mage hand, prestidigitation, and open/close as 0-level spells that they can use at will... Just one of the benefits of having no hands!


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loved this new book, bought it and finished it yesterday

Executive Editor

JohnHawkins wrote:
As far as I can tell this only applies to customers who buy via audible.com, which means none american customers do not have access to the audible book offer.

I know it's at least available through Audible's UK site, and probably others as well, you just have to search for it on your country's localized instance of Audible.

Conversely, I hear you can sign up and grab it via your browser's Incognito Mode.

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