This beautiful image was fun to assemble, but it was the first time I’ve been disappointed in a MasterPieces puzzle in quite a while. 😒

My experience with this brand has mostly been very good. The image reproduction has always been excellent in my opinion, as are the variety of piece shapes. They are a good thickness and fit together well. I’ve heard that others have found the fit to be quite loose, but that hasn’t been my experience at all. That doesn’t discount their experience; there have been many times where people with the exact same puzzle have had much different levels of quality – a lot of the time it all depends on where in the run your puzzle was produced. Beginning of the run may give you a tighter fit, end of the run can be much looser.

My problem with this puzzle wasn’t the fit at all, it was the bent pieces. I can’t be sure if it was because of the box (book shaped and somewhat small for 300 large pieces) or if it was another reason. The pieces were almost jammed in the box, and up into the spine of the “book”. Whatever it was, there were many bent pieces and the puzzle didn’t lay flat when complete, which was disappointing.

Otherwise I enjoyed the assembly very much, and found the image itself to be absolutely stunning. Steve Crisp’s artwork is beautiful, the colors are perfect for the scene, and it made for a captivating puzzle.

The random cut helped with keeping my focus as well, you couldn’t rely on the edges of the pieces to help you find what exact shape you were looking for. You have to rely more on patterns and shades of color because you may think you’re looking for a certain shape and it could end up that 2 pieces fit where you thought only 1 should go. I love it when a puzzle keeps me on my toes. 🙂

The bent pieces were a bummer, but I enjoyed it anyway – it’s a beautiful puzzle!