In the interest of full disclosure, I love heist/caper movies. I am fascinated by extreme competence and love to see people who are really good what they do. This is why The Worldwound Gambit was my first foray into the Pathfinder Tales line.
While I can understand people being put off by the present-tense narrative voice, I think it really adds a solid feel of immediacy and tension to the action of the book. But beyond this interesting stylistic choice, the novel is just a solidly fun, albeit sometimes gross, heist story. The characters are all nicely developed, but there does seem to be greater depth to the maie protagonists. I found Jarisa to be overall a bit boring and not as cohesive a character as I would prefer. She seemed to have been saddled with a lot of narrative function without the presence to really connect with the reader.
Hendregan more than made up for her shortcomings. I want to play that character!
Clocking in at over 400 pages I think it might be the longest of the Pathfinder novels but it definitely doesn't lack for action. Were I an editor on this project I would have tried to get more tower heist and less pre-heist travel but these are minor complaints on the whole.
Looking forward to more Tales of Gad and his people.
