The Bookish Owl – Hard in Hightown by Varric Tethras

Time for some nerdy noir with Hard in Hightown by Varric Tethras!

(Also known as Mary Kirby… considering that Varric is a video game character.)

For those of you not familiar with the Dragon Age games, Varric Tethras is a crossbow-wielding dwarf as well as a successful writer of multiple genres.

Basically everything I aspire to be. Except maybe for the dwarf part… but if it’s a requirement for getting the crossbow, I’m willing to invest in a stepladder.

Hard in Hightown, a noir detective story and Varric’s most popular book, is mentioned in Dragon Age II, and you can find all the individual chapters around the world in Dragon Age: Inquisition. So it’s really just my nerdness that made me buy a physical copy. But this one has illustrations!

I do, however, think they could have made the story a bit longer when they decided to release it as its own book. But I enjoyed it, even though it’s short and rather predictable. Sometimes it’s nice to just read something like that.

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Hard in Hightown
by Varric Tethras

Prolific dwarven author and heroic companion of the Dragon Age games, Varric Tethras brings us the collected edition of his breakthrough crime-noir drama, Hard in Hightown (with help from his trusted human confidante, Mary Kirby)! This volume is beautifully illustrated by Stefano Martino, Alvaro Sarraseca, Andres Ponce, and Ricardo German Ponce Torres, with a painted cover by E.M. Gist!

Twenty years of patrols have chiseled each and every stone of the Kirkwall streets into city guardsmen Donnen Brennokovic. Weary and weathered, Donnen is paired with a recruit so green he might as well have leaves growing out of his armor. When the mismatched pair discover a dead magistrate bleeding out on the flagstones, they’re caught up in a clash between a shadowy organization known only as the Executors and a secretive group of Chantry agents–all over some ancient artifact.

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