Masquerades: A Harpers Novel (The Harpers Book 10)

Essentially, an unofficial fourth novel of the Finder's Stone Trilogy starring Alias and Dragonbait. Alias and her saurial companion journey to the city of Westgate and find themselves up against the Night Masks thieves guild. Fighting evil cultists, evil gods, and more are a lot easier than fighting criminal organizations as well as the circumstances that generate them. We get some romance, too, as Alias quickly finds herself falling for a handsome young merchant lord. I had a lot of fun with this novel and kind of wish we'd gotten more Alias adventures.

When I read this years ago, I had the same negative reaction to it that I did to The Wyvern's Spur because I wanted something more action oriented like Azure Bonds, but I enjoyed it quite a bit this time. It IS more like The Wyvern's Spur than like Azure Bonds, more of a mystery than a straight action yarn, but I found it entertaining in the same way I found The Wyvern's Spur entertaining when I recently reread that. It's well crafted, with good dialogue, a great villain, several of the great protagonists from Azure Bonds, and some good new characters. It develops several of its characters well, both the old and the new.The narrator himself is actually pretty good, but the narration isn't properly edited, so there are coughs, repeated sentences that should have been removed, and other flaws, resulting in a reading that isn't worth purchasing unless you don't mind serious errors like that. It doesn't permeate the whole book, though. It's mostly confined to a couple of chapters near the beginning or middle. I forget exactly where.

I read The Finder's Stone trilogy as a young kid and grew up idolizing Alias and Olive as exceptional, strong women role models. They still fulfill that role in this novel, though as characters I found them less compelling here. The focus is definitely more on the story than the people in it, which is fine in its own right but not what I expected of the authors of Azure Bonds. It feels like the relationships between the characters are forced, plauing off of old moments from the previous stories but never really developing any new ones. Ultimately, it leaves Masquerades feeling a bit like a fan fiction based off of a truly marvelous original story rather than it's own off-shoot adventure. It's still worth a read, though.

Good book.Make sure you read this one - do not buy the audible version. If you want to listen, get a kindle with text to speech instead.The previous Alias books were read by a very good narrator, Kristin Kalbli. This one was read by Marty Moran. I got both the ebook and audible version for whisper sync, but have had to eliminate listening to this during my commute, and switch to reading this instead, though it is far less convenient. It has the worst narration I've ever heard, full of throat clearing, coughing, and repeated sentences while he stutters through words (sometimes 4+ times), without any effort to edit that out.The story, however, like the rest of the series, is quite interesting. If you liked the previous Alias books by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub, you should know what to expect. These characters start with the book Azure Bonds, if you have not read that first.

Do not purchase audio portion. The narrator is absolutely terrible. It's also poorly edited. Chapter two contains segments where where you can hear the narrator clearing his throat and repeating sentences.

good

More of a love story than anything else, but Alias is one of my favorite forgotten realms character.

It was okay, a little predictable.

kate novak and jeff grub have done it again with the adventures of alias the singing sell sword dragnobait the palaldin and my other wonderful character s. if you want to read a good book that riveting . this is the one

Great