This is my co-favorite amongst the Pathfinder Tales novels I've read so far (tied with Prince of Wolves). The second person tense took some getting used to, but after a few pages it was fine. Maybe having read Stross's Halting State helped.

I'd love to see some of the characters return, though I would be okay if they returned in the third person.

This was one of my favourite Pathfinder Tales novels. I love caper stories and this was a fun take on the genre--caper meets horror with a motley crew of characters. I'd love to read more of the group's adventures. I'm normally not a fan of present tense, but I thought it worked in this case. It was one of those books where I stayed up far too late reading "just one more chapter."

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.

I think I read 1 chapter and had to stop. I really think 1 star is to good. Having been a reader of fantasy, Sci-Fi and many historical Bios, this book just could not be read. It frustrated me from page and I really struggled to read this book.

While there may be those that like how this guy writes, I am not one. Before I buy another pathfinder novel i think I will sit and read a few pages.

I loved Winter Witch and Plague of Shadows. While not a fan of Prince of Wolves, that book is far better.

To me reading this book was as bad as reading some of the character histories I've seen written by gamer's who had no concept of telling a story or creating a background.

I think had the writer wrote in a different point of view I could have enjoyed this book, but the way it was, it may get used as a trade in.

I absolutely agree with Mairkurion, I can't believe some of the negative reviews based solely on using present tense, it is a non-factor.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I liked that there was a an adult edge to the story. The characters where not typical, a half-orc who DOESN'T want to smash anything in site?, the leader who isn't secretly the greatest swordsman the world has ever seen, and others who are flawed and stay that way. My only criticism is that some of the characters seemed to blend together, but that could be me.

Solid four stars.

This is the most mature of the Pathfinder Tales thus far (written December 2011). It has been described as Ocean's Eleven in the Abyss (Hell), and this is an accurate description. I would add that there are distinct moments that are reminiscent of the film “Aliens.” It does have the most sexually explicit scene of the Pathfinder Tales so far, but nothing that you wouldn't see in a PG-13 film (that was trying to skirt just shy of R). The biggest complaint from reviewers on this book is that it is written in the present tense. I felt that this enhanced the story, but some found it distracting. Under the MPAA system, I rate the book a PG-13 almost R.

While I didn't HATE the book, or the use of the present tense, there was little I loved or liked about it. Few of the characters called to me in any way. Gad was okay, the rest were either bland, cliche, or unrealistically extreme. The whole plot was a bit of a reach, too. On the plus side, there were a few scenes that did work for me. I thought the whole first chapter was great. And (I'll try to be spoiler free) the scene late in the book with the halfling and the trap was really interesting. Unfortunately, the few scenes I enjoyed couldn't save the novel as a whole. While I finished the book, I can't say I was very satisfied after doing so.

This is an enjoyable tale that just doesn't deserve the hate it's getting. I frankly am amazed that the non-traditional choice of tense (this is happening in other novels, people. Get out more often.) is alone to blame. To say that the characters are shallow is just misleading. Shallow compared to Henry James, sure, but not shallow for the genre at all. While I'm tempted to give it 5 stars just to undo some of the extreme (and in at least one case, clearly unfair) reviews, I will give it an honest four. Which, I hope I don't need to remind people, is a good rating. Give Laws' Gambit a chance, reader, and set off on a rompy heist that stays abyssal incursion.

The present tense writing style is like reading stage directions. The characters are two dimensional at best, and the overall plot is corney, but it really was the writing style that kept pulling me out of the story. I made it through about half of the book before I finally gave up.

This is my second favourite after the Prince of Wolves. After a rather standard fare of Plague of Shadows and Winter Witch that had their brighter moments and duller ones as well the Worldwound Gambit is a fantasy Great Heist. The characters are rather likeable (Hendregan is after some time a first really fun magician to have around), but the book isn't as much about them as about the action. The book has a more cinematic feeling than the previous ones and makes you want to see the action yourself and the grotesque landscapes of Worldwound and...