TLDR: It's quite good. If you're invested in the lore, and fantasy books are your jam, pick this up. While I would say this is a fairly standard fantasy novel, where it excels is being a PATHFINDER novel.
Godsrain, a Pathfinder Novel, tells the story of the Iconic Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Barbarian, as they embark on a divine quest to save the world, in the wake of the Godsrain, the downpour of magical blood and metal that occurred after the death of Gorum. But you could have gotten that from the back cover of the book. Now let me tell you why I like it.
Like I alluded to, the strength of this book isn't its setting exactly, but in how much this feels like the world that the Pathfinder adventures take place in. This novel feels like it was written with character sheets for the iconics on hand, and the "feel" of playing Pathfinder in mind. This is maybe my favorite aspect of the book, but also the hardest to articulate. To give some minor examples as spoilers, in the first chapter a character is noted to be moving with effortless grace for their bulk. I don’t know about you, but that rang true for every time I've rolled a knowledge check and my DM is trying to communicate that an enemy has high DEX and STR. Later, we see the elderly wizard struggling to climb some steps sized for giants, and they are wordlessly assisted by the Barbarian. No particular attention is drawn to this moment, but I remember thinking "Hey now, was that the Aid action?" The entire book is like this, ranging from "Was that the follow-the-expert skill action to stealth?" or "Was that us, the characters, breezing past an easy hazard?" or "Is this the party gaining access to an Uncommon spell?". I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with allocating characters' tasks based on who has the highest bonus in that skill, or the appropriate save, and this book is just dripping with that sort of delegation that just feels so much like playing the game.
I cannot praise Liane Merciel enough for this aspect of the novel. When looking up her writing credits, I was shocked to not see any writing credits for Adventure Paths, because this book read exactly how an AP is remembered. EDIT: never mind she has written for Season of Ghosts, I just misread during my research. Based on that alone I think I’ll have to run that adventure, or convince one of my GMs to run it, if this is the level of quality we can expect.
Another aspect of the book that shines is the Characters. As expected, we follow a cast of the four Iconics. Everyone gets the chance to shine, with a real emphasis on how they view each other compared to how they view themselves. This also feeds into the plot in ways I won’t get into here, Amri the Barbarian really shines in this role, and the relationship between the married couple Kyra and Merisel plays into this heavily. If you are a fan of these Iconic characters, maybe after encountering them in one of the Owlcat games, I think you will find a lot to love here.
Finally, I can't really dig through the lore without massive spoilers, but the lore here is good. It's accurate to what we know, and builds on it in interesting ways. Nothing groundbreaking, but I appreciate their work here. Lots of little bits for the lorehunters to chew on, which is always appreciated.
To restate, TLDR: It's quite good. If you're invested in the lore, and fantasy books are your jam, pick this up. If you want to see how well the RPG experience can be captured in novel form, pick this one up. You'll find lore to chew on and characters to love, with only a small few things that diminished the experience.
Pathfinder Society GM. 102 posts (161 including aliases). 1 review. No lists. No wishlists. 20 Organized Play characters. 
