Lydia

it's absolutely a work for hire job, capitalizing on one of the more iconic weapons in the elder scrolls series, the umbra sword, one that i always thought was better left and an enigma. that's why i was so surprised how much i liked this, i really did get invested in the characters, even if the book is far to short to actually do their arcs justice. Annaïg especially is one of the most complicated and compelling characters since morrowind, which i guess is an insult to the games, but also more than i ever thought the book was capable of.

it makes up for its lack of connection to the games with its own inventive settings, i ate up the high stakes kitchen intrigue of Umbriel, but i'm just partial to seemingly innocuous jobs given life or death stakes (the city of dreaming books was a childhood fav.) really the whole of Umbriel is far more inventive and alien than (what's that again?) anything since morrowind. another highlight was the small gothic detour in the castle of Hleryn Sathil. anyway i just felt compelled to defend this book ig idk why.

ps
this is the third sexiest book in all of elder scrolls, the first is The Real Barenziah, and the second is the 36 Lessons of Vivec