Rodrick, a rakish scoundrel, and Hrym, his sentient magical sword sidekick, are on the hunt for fortune and glory, and what better way to line your pockets than collecting an ancient artifact from a frozen wasteland? Rodrick and Hyrm find themselves in the company of a religious fanatic, his somewhat creepy servant, and a potentially addled ranger on the hunt for the treasure. Magic, monsters, and perception checks await! Huzzah!
Despite being a tabletop RPG nerd for the vast majority of my life, I've never actually played a game of Pathfinder before. I lost interest in new versions of D&D after Wizards of the Coast assumed control of the brand and slowly started allowing the pronoun brigade to infect it, so Pathfinder, being this sorta-kinda offshoot of D&D initially, wasn't exactly on my radar for the longest time. However, a modern fantasy novel that's said to channel Fritz Leiber? Maybe I could get behind that.
That said, I'm never certain if author Tim Pratt knows exactly what he wants Liar's Blade to be. The concept of a sentient weapon in a fantasy story has been used plenty of times before, but turning the weapon Hrym into a smartass rogue wielded by another smartass rogue in the form of Rodrick is a novel turn. There's more than a hint of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Rodrick and Hrym's relationship (one chapter is even titled 'Sword and Deviltry', so we're getting really on the nose with the Fritz Leiber influence here). However, it feels as if these two would be better suited in their own buddy cop misadventure. Instead, we have them teaming up with an offbeat party of adventurers who never seem able to fully trust one another on what appears to be a typical fantasy style epic quest to snag a mystical widget of extreme power.
I do appreciate that the author didn't feel the need to give us a long-winded origin story for how Rodrick and Hrym came to be a pairing, and the action is pretty decent when compared to other fluff fantasy tie-in novels in the same wheelhouse. It's the dialogue and the banter between characters that I have a problem with and where Liar's Blade comes starts to come undone. The author spends a lot of time making his cast of characters unbearably quippy with one another. I get the impression Tim Pratt is a big fan of Joss Whedon... and that's never a good thing considering Whedon is one of the main perpetrators of why modern film and television has become so goddamn unbearable.
Liar's Blade is not the worst read if you're looking for some fast-paced fantasy, but it doesn't exactly maintain my interest and certainly doesn't inspire me to read the direct sequels to this story or even other Pathfinder novels.
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