The Craft Sequence

Max Gladstone

Getting back into the swing of things with a mega post! I'm reviewing all four currently released books in Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence series. Some quick notes before I get started: 

1. I'm going to provide a quick description of each book, and my opinion on each one. At the end of the post there'll be a retrospective and overview of how I feel about the whole series.
2. These books are in a weird order. That is, the chronological order in which the books take place is not the same as the order in which they were written and published. I'm going to be reviewing in order of publication, and if I refer to "the first book", I mean the first book published. Fun fact, the chronological order is in the name of each book!

Alright, now let's get started!

Three Parts Dead

Man this is such a good book. Like damn, what a great book.

I remember reading a while back that this whole series was inspired by the financial collapse of 2008. I don't know if I made that up, but it sounds legit. If that seems boring to you, just wait.

Magic is Craft, the enforcing of contracts and obligations which use the starfire which power souls to bring water to the desert, hide great universities in the clouds, and bind the dead to service. And, you know, a lot of other stuff too. Magic too is divinity, the exchange of faith and soul for safety, fertility, and strength to fight.

Three Parts Dead takes place seventy odd years after the God Wars, an aptly titled conflict in which Craftswomen took to the skies and broke the gods on their own altars, freeing humanity from the divine yokes of brutal gods. At least, in most places.

The city of Alt Coulomb is the domain of Kos Everburning, god of fire who has adjusted to the world of the Craft, binding himself via contracts to Deathless Kings (Craftsmen who have transcended the mortal coil) and other gods alike, whose city is policed by Justice, a construct built out of the corpse of his consort goddess who died in the war. The only remaining divine city in the New World.

And then, suddenly, Kos dies. Three Parts Dead follows Craftswomen and priests as they seek to understand the cause of his death, and negotiate for his resurrection against those to whom he owed debts. 

Isn't that just fuckin cool? Is that just me?

Ahem. Anyways. It's a legal thriller and a mystery and a urban fantasy and whatever the fuck else. It's unique. It's like nothing I've really read before, and that's amazing! 

Two Serpents Rise

We leave our protagonists of Three Parts Dead and Alt Coulomb for the city of Dresediel Lex, once the domain of savage and brutal gods who traded human sacrifice for grace, now overseen by Red King Consolidated and the Red King himself. 

The book follows Caleb Altemoc, a mid-level risk manager at RKC who also happens to be the son of the last of the Eagle Knights, the warrior-priests of the old gods.

One day, there are demons in the water. More things start going wrong. A god commits suicide to bring down the main power station of the city. The water runs black. People dream of great snakes, writhing in the fire beneath the earth.

More of a mystery than the previous book, this is less of plot-focused story and more of a character driven one. That's not a bad thing at all, but it is a bit of a change. Thankfully, the characters are strong enough to bear the burden. 

This isn't as wow as Three Parts Dead, but I think that's just because it comes after such a unique concept, and by fleshing it out, is relegated to the background by necessity. Still a very fun book, and well worth your time.

Full Fathom Five

Chronologically the last book in the series, we again leave our previous protagonists behind and are brought to what can only be described as an offshore tax haven for souls. The priests of Kavekana construct idols, shadows of gods which fulfill only the basic exchanges of soulstuff for grace. One day, an idol dying of a bad investment speaks in her death throes, something they're absolutely not supposed to do.

Familiar faces begin to show up in this book, side characters from the previous novels play subtle but important roles as the story progresses. It's fun to see what old characters have gotten up to, but it's probably the weakest entry in the series. Not by much, and it's still a fun read, but somehow it's less memorable than the others, even though it has it's share of really cool moments.

Sidebar: I will say this: Gladstone has a way of coming up with absolutely the worst police forces one can possibly imagine. First Justice in Alt Coulomb, and now the Penitents of Kavekana, giant stone statues in which criminals are put to be tortured and brainwashed until they can be considered reformed enough to join society as broken creatures, forced to conform. 

Last First Snow

We return to Dresediel Lex, twenty years before the events of Two Serpents rise. This time, the protagonists are Temoc, Caleb's priest father, and Elayne, the mentor of Tara Abernathy, who was the main character in Three Parts Dead.

Elayne is working with the Red King and the ostensible owner of one of the slums of the city, attempting to rework the wards and protect the area from disaster while opening it up for development. Temoc represents the people living in the slums, as they protest the actions which will drive them from their homes.

This is a brutal book. The fact that it's chronologically before the second book makes the inevitable conclusion incredibly hard to bear as you watch and wait for everything to devolve into chaos. 

I think, in the end, it's a book about choices. About people who don't have choices, or who feel like they don't have choices, and about why they make their choices. I don't think there's a single person who I can say is wrong in the choices they make (okay maybe one, and although they're important they're not one of the real main characters). These are people who feel real, fighting against the inevitability of conflict. The fact that Gladstone pulls this off without making it sappy or grimdark is remarkable. 

This is tied with Three Parts Dead for my favorite entry in the series. That is saying something.

Final Thoughts

Like I've said, these books represent such a unique take on the fantasy genre, like nothing I've seen before and yet somehow familiar in the way that all the best ideas are. As if they were out there all along, just waiting for someone to find their perfect expression.

The prose is excellent, serving the plot well in most places, and shining through with phrases that make me sit back and read them again with goosebumps in a few beautiful moments. Perhaps my one complaint would be that the fight scenes tend to be a little confusing, lacking the flow and beat of Butcher or Sanderson. 

I really strongly recommend you read these books.  Even if you don't normally like fantasy novels, these are something else. At least give the first one a try. If you don't like that, you won't like the sequels. If you do, you'll like the rest of the series, to varying degrees.

Also, the final? book is coming out this July, entitled Four Roads Cross which returns to the city of Alt Coulomb and the characters from Three Parts Dead. I'm excited.

Is this the return of blog posts? Find out next time on LeoTalksAboutBooksALot

-Leo

Traitor's Blade

Sebastien de Castell

I'm gonna start off with a minor rant. I'll get to the book soon enough, don't worry.

There's a trend in fantasy that I hate. It's become very popular over the past five or so years, especially with the rise in popularity of Game of Thrones. More and more books have been released which are described, and often self-described as "grimdark". Basically, in a grimdark novel, everything sucks, the world sucks, the main character is usually an asshole because everyone's an asshole, the world is a shitty grim, dark place.

It might seem like I have a certain degree of vitriol towards grimdark books. That's... not exactly true. I have read and enjoyed a number of them, and I'll be writing about my experience a number of books by Joe Abercrombie, the self-described LordGrimdark, which has been by and large positive. I do profoundly dislike the trend that most popular new fantasy fiction that I have run into is grimdark.

Mostly, my problem lies in the fact that everyone is bad, including the main character. The most common reason I see justifying this is that people are generally assholes, why should fictional characters be any different? Now, I'm as cynical as the next man (probably moreso), but damnit, if I'm committing to a five hundred page novel, much less a series, I need some people to root for. I need someone who, even if they aren't the nicest individual, is generally likeable by at least me if not the people around him, and pursues good goals that I feel okay about cheering for. Maybe I'm weird that way. Who knows.

Finally, we get to the book. Sebastien De Castell gave me everything I wanted. In Traitor's Blade, the world is definitely shit. The King is dead, the Greatcoats are disbanded and treated as scum, people are getting killed and tortured all over the place, and the main character has had some serious tragic shit happen to him, as revealed in a number of short flashbacks.

But damn if Falcio val Mond isn't the most goddamn righteous character I've ever read. Not self-righteous, mind you. This is a man who despite all of the horrible things in the world and in his life never stops fighting for justice. Does he have flaws? Absolutely. Of course. But his flaws don't turn him from a hero to an asshole. They just add dimension.

Also, the Greatcoats are a band of traveling warrior judges who sing their verdicts. And there's some fantastic speeches, which I will quote a blurb on the back jacket of the book as being "Aaron Sorkin-esque". It's great. It's a great book. After I finished it I was sad because things were sad, but I enjoyed every minute of reading it.

If you enjoy "gritty" books but wish that you had some people to root for instead of Asshole v Asshole, this is your book. Read it. There's a sequel too. I'm waiting on a library hold, but I'll write about that one too once I'm down.

Disagree with me about grimdark shit? Have any more recommendations of new fantasy that buck the trend? Lemme know in the comments or something. 

We back boyz

The Fifth Elephant

Terry Pratchett

This book is about fat mines, werewolves, and a petrified scone. It also happens to contain an enlightened discussion on gender identity and racial tensions. Also, it's really fucking funny.

This is Terry Pratchett to the core. If you've read any Pratchett, you don't need me to explain him to you. If you haven't, read some goddamn Pratchett. As a side note, I wouldn't recommend starting with this book. Instead, go with Going Postal, or The Wee Free Men.

There's really not much else I can say about this. In the words of Neil Gaiman, "any Terry Pratchett book is a small miracle". Get some of that in your life.

I would recommend this book to fantasy readers. People who aren't at least a little experienced in fantasy could very easily be put off by the fantastical elements and miss the core experience. And that would be a tragedy.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

N.K. Jemisin

This book is great. It starts out as your classic "Hick from the country is suddenly heir to the kingdom what do", and becomes so much more. A story of captive gods, beautifully characterized. Honestly, Jemisin's gods are one of the book's huge strengths. They are utterly godlike, and utterly flawed, and honestly brilliant.

Not a lot actually happens in this book. If you're looking for Epic Fantasy, look elsewhere, although the fate of the world does happen to be at stake. This is about one person, one family, and the actions in one palace.

There is a lot of "intrigue", but it is by no means a political intrigue book. I'm honestly not sure what category to put it in.

The concept is great, the writing is mostly good. There are occasional moments of brilliance, and even more occasional mild burrs in the writing that pop me out of the story for a second, but the bad ones are minor, and the brilliant ones are truly great. But it's really the character's that make this the story it is. The characters, and the gods.

Also, I hate that this is significant enough that I feel obliged to mention this, but the protagonist is a black woman. If you're looking for diversity in fantasy protagonists (which is kind of abysmal I'll be the first to admit), this is a great place to look.

I would recommend this book to fantasy readers, or those who are interested in exploring what the genre has to offer. I'm trying to think of what books are like this, and it's certainly not easy. If I come up with something, I'll edit it in.

This is a complete trilogy, and the second and third books are both excellent. I'll write them up at some point. There is an accompanying novella which is also quite good.

And that's all for the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms ladies and gents.

-Leo