Forgotten Realms: The Harpers Books in Order

The Harpers is a wide-ranging Forgotten Realms line, built from loosely connected adventures rather than one uninterrupted storyline. Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb's Masquerades is the tenth book in the sequence, but it also serves as a return to characters from their Finder's Stone novels. Readers who know Alias and Dragonbait will recognize the history they bring with them, while new readers can still follow the immediate conflict.

The setting is Westgate, a wealthy port city where influence is traded, hidden, and stolen. Its streets are shaped by merchants, nobles, performers, thieves, and the Night Masks, a criminal guild with deep roots in the city's daily life. That makes the story less of a wilderness quest and more of a fantasy city adventure, full of shifting alliances and people who have reasons not to say what they know.

Alias is at the center again. She is a hard-charging sellsword who has already survived stranger problems than most people could imagine, but Westgate's threats are not solved simply by being good with a sword. Dragonbait, her loyal saurial companion, stands beside her, while the halfling Olive Ruskettle and several new allies become part of the effort to push back against the Night Masks.

Nothing in Westgate stays simple for long.

The mysterious leader called the Faceless turns the conflict into a larger web of political maneuvering, murder, and manipulation. Alias and her companions have to sort out who is using whom, protect people caught in the middle, and keep their own loyalties from becoming weak spots. The tension comes from both action and investigation, with the city's power structure always pressing in around the characters.

The tone is lively, direct fantasy adventure. There are fights, chases, secret plans, and a crew of allies with different skills, but the story also takes time to make Westgate feel like a place where ordinary livelihoods can be damaged by criminal control. That human-scale concern gives the larger struggle something concrete to protect.

You can read Masquerades on its own, but starting with Azure Bonds gives Alias, Dragonbait, and Olive more context. If you want the fuller route, continue through The Wyvern's Spur and Song of the Saurials before arriving in Westgate.