Review: Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone

Published: Tor, 2016

Series: Book 5 of the Craft Sequence

The Book:

“After helping to save Kos Everburning, Tara has remained in the town of Alt Coulomb as a Craftswoman advisor to the church.  Soon, she finds herself in the center of a new crisis. Kos’s love, the moon goddess Seril, was thought to have been killed in the God Wars.  However, Seril Undying has returned, as have her gargoyle children.

The people of Alt Coulomb know Seril only as a scary story to frighten children, so they are not going to easily welcome her return with open hearts.  Her lack of followers makes Seril weak, and Kos’s love for her makes her a liability. Those who do business with Kos point to her as an undisclosed financial risk, and some are using her in a legal battle to overturn Kos’s power. Tara and her friends will need to find a way to protect Seril, Kos and the city from disaster.”~Allie

This is the fifth book in the Craft Sequence that I’ve read, and I intend to keep reading them.  I just recently bought book six, A Ruin of Angels, and Gladstone has shown no sign of leaving the series anytime soon.   

My Thoughts:

On Gladstone’s website, I’ve read that this book is intended to be a finale novel for the “first season” of the Craft Sequence.  It is also the first book of the series that I would call a strict sequel, and it ties together the stories and characters of most of the other Craft books so far. Because of this, I’d recommend that readers check out the other books (at least Three Parts Dead, and ideally also Last First Snow and Two Serpents Rise) before digging into this one.  The story follows up the events in Alt Coulomb of Three Parts Dead, and characters and places from the other two novels also make an appearance.  Full Fathom Five, though, happens chronologically after Four Roads Cross, and thus can be read afterward.  Four Roads Cross doesn’t do a lot of hand-holding with respect to remembering what has come before.  If you’re like me, and it’s been years since you read the first book of the series, it might help to give yourself a quick refresher before starting.

With so many recurring and even some new characters, Four Roads Cross is bursting with different subplots, all going on in parallel.  I read the book slowly, occasionally interrupted by life-related stuff, so it sometimes got hard juggling so many characters and narrative threads. I think it would have flowed better if I’d read the novel at a quicker pace. It may have also made it more difficult that the various subplots were so different in tone.  There was a quiet, domestic story about faith and family, a cop thriller, a crisis of faith in church hierarchy, a quest, and more. All of the plotlines were focused on the same crisis and shared some thematic similarities, but I felt like they never fully merged. However, I enjoyed the commonalities in the stories, such as the exploration of the role religious faith plays in the lives of different kinds of people.

Gladstone’s world is as vibrant and quirky as ever, and his incisive and often hilarious writing style keeps things moving along at a brisk pace.  In some ways, his style is similar to Terry Pratchett, in that humor and references to the fantastical sit comfortably alongside more serious observations about human nature.  For instance, here are the thoughts of the protagonist Tara, addressing the rejection one can find returning one’s hometown with new and unpopular ideas:

“A year ago she stood in a graveyard beneath a starry sky, and the people of her hometown approached her with pitchforks and knives and torches and murder in their mind, all because she’d tried to show them the world was bigger than they thought.  

Admittedly, there might have been a way to show them that didn’t involve zombies.” ~p. 25

 

Tara is one of my favorite characters in the series, for her intelligence and resourcefulness, as well as for the fallibility of her judgment (as evidenced by the zombie incident).  Her story is also very post-grad, dealing with student loans, the fallout from having a predatory academic advisor, and having to choose between pursuing academia or industry-- or in this case, church advising or craft firms.  As someone not too long out of grad-school myself, it is very easy to sympathize with her and her problems. Though I’m focusing on Tara here, plenty of other fascinating characters return in this novel, such as the former-addict Cat, the vampire pirate Raz, the gargoyles, and the skeletal Craftsman The King in Red, among others.  On the more ordinary side, we also get a peek into the lives of a handful of people who sell at the local market. All of these characters have an important role to play in the crisis coming to Alt Coulomb, and it was a lot of fun to see how each story came to a conclusion.

My Rating: 4/5

Four Roads Cross is a direct sequel to Three Parts Dead, and it also incorporates characters and places from the other books of the series.  The novel concerns the return of the goddess Seril, Kos’s love, and the crisis that her current weakness may bring about for the city of Alt Coulomb.  It features a lot of familiar characters (Tara, Cat, Raz, Abelard, Caleb, etc…) as well as some new faces. Different sets of characters are involved in a variety of plotlines, each of which feels different in tone, though they all address the same crisis.  There’s a ton going on in this novel, and plenty of characters to keep straight. It’s worth the effort, though, and I enjoyed the time I have spent in Gladstone’s unusual world of economics, faith, and magic. Overall, it felt like a fitting finale for the story that began in Three Parts Dead, and I am happy to know that it isn’t going to be the final novel of the Craft Sequence.

Review: Last First Snow by Max Gladstone

Last First Snow by Max Gladstone

Published: Tor, 2015

Series: Book 4 of the Craft Sequence

The Book:

“Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation-especially in the Skittersill, a poor district still bound by the fallen gods' decaying edicts. As long as the gods' wards last, they strangle development; when they fail, demons will be loosed upon the city. The King in Red hires Elayne Kevarian of the Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao to fix the wards, but the Skittersill's people have their own ideas. A protest rises against Elayne's work, led by Temoc, a warrior-priest turned community organizer who wants to build a peaceful future for his city, his wife, and his young son.

As Elayne drags Temoc and the King in Red to the bargaining table, old wounds reopen, old gods stir in their graves, civil blood breaks to new mutiny, and profiteers circle in the desert sky. Elayne and Temoc must fight conspiracy, dark magic, and their own demons to save the peace-or failing that, to save as many people as they can.” ~WWEnd.com

I am still loving Gladstone’s Craft Sequence!  I read this one as a part of a read-along, and you can see our spoiler-filled discussions here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  I feel like the books and events in this series are now sufficiently interconnected that--even though each book has its own standalone story--you really need to have read the previous books in the series to best appreciate this one.

My Thoughts:

I was very eager to get to Last First Snow, because I had heard that it was a prequel involving the life of Elayne Kevarian, a recurring character from the previous books in the series.  I loved Elayne in Three Parts Dead, was excited to see her again briefly in Full Fathom Five, and was thrilled that she would be a viewpoint character this time around.  Her perspective of the world does not disappoint; she is the same intensely driven, intelligent, and powerful woman she is in the previous novels, and the insight into her emotions and reasoning only makes her more fascinating.  The other viewpoint character is actually someone I found very unsympathetic in his previous appearance, Temoc from Two Serpents Rise. I was surprised that he was such a compelling character-- a dedicated father, husband, and Eagle Knight who was struggling to reconcile his obligations to his faith and his people with those to his family.   I definitely didn’t agree with many of his choices, but I could see the pressures made him into the man he is in Two Serpents Rise.  

I think prequels are challenging stories to write, since the audience knows the direction everything has to go. In this case, while I knew the broad strokes of how the situation would end, the journey there was surprisingly tense.  I think my rough knowledge of what must eventually happen between Temoc, his gods, and his son added an extra layer of dread to my perception of events.  Even when things seem to be going well, I was always waiting for everything to fall apart.  The details of the central conflict, also, kept the tension high.  I might know roughly where Temoc and Elayne would end up, but I had no idea what would happen to any of the minor characters on either (or neither) side.  Each of these minor characters had their own motivations, even if they sought similar goals, which made the tangled knot of disagreements between the protestors and the developers that much more complicated.

Though the world may be full of Craft and supernatural religious power, the main conflict involves the very real-world problem of gentrification.  The developers want to improve the Skittersill, but their plans would destroy the existing community.  It was interesting to see both sides lay out their arguments during negotiations, and to see if there might be a way forward that addresses the concerns of both parties.  Of course, as in real life, the gradient of power did not only fall along economic lines.  The developers were largely secular Craftspeople, while the protesters mostly held to a religion that had fallen out of power in the Wars. The negotiations not only had to solve the immediate problems, but to avoid re-opening old, not-truly-healed wounds.  I don’t want to spoil the end of the book, but I think anyone who has read Two Serpents Rise will already know that something is bound to go violently wrong. I will say that the ending was powerful and heart-breaking, and--despite being a prequel--it held several unexpected surprises.  In my opinion, this is the strongest yet of the Craft Sequence novels.  

My Rating: 5 /5

Last First Snow is the fourth novel in the Craft Sequence.  It is a prequel that takes place in Dresediel Lex, featuring Elayne Kevarian and Temoc, in the years when Caleb from Two Serpents Rise is still a child.  Elayne and Temoc are both fascinating, conflicted characters, and they are accompanied by a cast of minor characters whose differing baggage and motivations impact the direction of the story.  The central conflict involves a protest against the proposed gentrification of the Skittersill, but this immediate issue also threatens to re-ignite violence in the city along ideological lines.  I thought this was a very powerful and tragic story, and it is my favorite novel of the Craft Sequence to date.

Review: Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

Published: Tor, 2014

Series: Book 3 of the Craft Sequence

The Book:

“On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren't conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World.

When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she's grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can't stop it first.” ~WWEnd.com

I’ve been enjoying Gladstone’s work, and I’ve now finished reading all of his currently-published Craft novels (the review of Last First Snow is coming soon).  I read this one as a part of a community read-along, and the spoiler-laden discussions can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  As a side note, I read this book several months after I went to my first ever Caribbean island to visit a friend, and there were a good few setting details that really reminded me of St. Kitts!

My Thoughts:

The Craft Sequence is a series of standalone books set in the same universe, but I feel like it’s getting to the point with Full Fathom Five that the books are significantly interconnected.  While the main characters and plot can be enjoyed separately from the rest of the series, events and characters from the previous two novels also play a role.  I think that I would now recommend reading Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise first, in order to fully appreciate Full Fathom Five. The series has generally dealt with the interplay between different kinds of Faith and Craft in society, and this novel adds in the idea of idols--mindless economic constructs that are maintained by a priesthood that goes through the motions of worship.  It was interesting to see how this kind of business would affect a society that had historically been religious, and how it could fit into the larger web of power in this world.

The Craft novels also typically feature a creative new culture and society, and Kavekana is probably my favorite thus far.  It is a religious community that has turned to mindless idols in their gods’ absence, in order to maintain their economic and political independence.  Just as the idols are only shadows of their former deities, other things have become warped from their original purpose as well.  For instance, the horrifying stone figures that encase, torture, and brainwash petty criminals might have served a gentler purpose of instruction in better days.  It felt like Kavekana was in a precarious equilibrium, at the point of having lost its old mythology without yet developing something new and meaningful to take its place.  Change is inevitable, though not always good, and I was very curious to see how the mystery at the heart of the novel would change Kavekana.

Kavekana may being going through an overall transition, but how this will affect the people who live there varies based on what level of Kavekana society they inhabit. The island is a different place for the people who work with foreign businesses, the poets and regulars of the casual beach bars, and the refugees and other street children who are just trying to keep enough soul to live. Primarily through the eyes of Kai, an idol priest, and Izza, an orphan of the Wars, we see how different these two views of Kavekana are, and how little they overlap. Kai is very good at her job, and her intelligence and resources put her in place to uncover the conspiracy, but Izza is the one who stole the story for me. I was impressed by her resourcefulness, faith and compassion, even after she had suffered so much already in her short life. She knew very well how bad things could get for her in Kavekana, but still felt obligated to minister to the other children. Their stories do eventually merge, and I enjoyed how well everything tied together in the end.  I hope Izza and Kai show up again in future novels!

My Rating: 4 /5

Full Fathom Five is the third novel in the Craft Sequence, and the first one that I would suggest having read the previous novels first.  It has a standalone story and all is explained as needed, but events and characters from the previous two novels come into play.  The island of Kavekana, which had lost its gods and now marketed idols, felt like a living and changing place, and I was eager to unravel its secrets.  The main characters, Kai and Izza, showed very different views of their society--from the privileged to the homeless.  I appreciated Kai’s determination and intelligence, and was drawn in by Izza’s faith, pain, and internal struggle between self-preservation and caring for others.  This was another excellent installment in the Craft Sequence, and I hope Gladstone writes many more!

Review: Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone

Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone

Published: Tor, 2013

Series: Book 2 of the Craft Sequence

The Book:

“Shadow demons plague the city reservoir, and Red King Consolidated has sent in Caleb Altemoc—casual gambler and professional risk manager—to cleanse the water for the sixteen million people of Dresediel Lex. At the scene of the crime, Caleb finds an alluring and clever cliff runner, Crazy Mal, who easily outpaces him.

But Caleb has more than the demon infestation, Mal, or job security to worry about when he discovers that his father—the last priest of the old gods and leader of the True Quechal terrorists—has broken into his home and is wanted in connection to the attacks on the water supply.

From the beginning, Caleb and Mal are bound by lust, Craft, and chance, as both play a dangerous game where gods and people are pawns. They sleep on water, they dance in fire... and all the while the Twin Serpents slumbering beneath the earth are stirring, and they are hungry.” ~WWend.com


This is the second book I’ve read by Max Gladstone, and I really loved his first, Three Parts Dead. I’m planning to pick up Full Fathom Five, his latest in the same series, sometime in 2015.

My Thoughts:

Two Serpents Rise is set in the same world as Three Parts Dead, but since it is otherwise unrelated, I don’t think it’s necessary to read the series in order.  Gladstone’s Craft Sequence takes place in a very creative fantasy world where magic is wielded by both humans and deities, and the flows of power are determined by faith and economics.  I was delighted by the originality in Three Parts Dead, and it has been a lot of fun to see yet another corner of the world in Two Serpents Rise.  Some parts of the story in the first novel, especially those relating to graduate school, hit a little closer to home for me than the business and romance of Two Serpents Rise.  It was still really exciting, though, and I was easily drawn into the story.

The main characters this time around are Caleb and Mal, though there’s also a handful of memorable minor characters–such as the Red King, Caleb’s best friend Teo, and Caleb’s father—that play important roles in the story.  Caleb’s position is a difficult one, as he has to handle his troubled relationship with his father and his loyalty to the company that has replaced his father’s religion. Mal is mostly seen through Caleb’s eyes, but I thought the narration did a good job of showing that his perception of her was not altogether accurate.  I enjoyed the complexity of the characters, but I felt that they were not quite as intelligent as the protagonists and antagonists of the first novel of the series.  Part of that might have been due to the romantic subplot of the story, since Caleb tended to go a little stupid when he was struck by his attraction to Mal. I’m not a huge fan of romance in general or this particular character trait, but I thought it was handled pretty well within the larger story.

The religion this time is clearly inspired by Mayan/Aztec culture, though the details of the specific ‘Quechal’ religion and culture are fictional.  There is a lot of focus on the morality of human sacrifice, which is central to the Quechal religion.  I think this particular inspiration and its link to human sacrifice are pretty commonly incorporated into fictional stories, so it did not feel quite as fresh as the Alt Coulomb of Three Parts Dead.  However, I appreciated that it took a closer look at the idea of sacrifice as an important aspect of supporting a society.  The idea of killing a random person to appease a deity is hard to defend, but the infrastructure of their society depends on the micro-sacrifices each citizen makes, as well as the suffering inflicted on the surrounding land to extract the resources needed to keep the city running.  In general, I appreciated that the story does not take a simple approach to this and other topics, and that it instead portrays a more complicated world, where the way forward is not always clear. 

My Rating: 3.5/5

I preferred Three Parts Dead to Two Serpents Rise, but the second novel is still an interesting addition to a very promising series. I enjoy the way Gladstone combines ideas of business and economics with human magic and deities, and he has managed to use that to tell yet another exciting story. The fictional religion involved in this novel is based on Aztec and Mayan culture, which is something that seems to come up pretty often in fantasy stories.  This novel also had more of a romantic focus, and the characters seemed a little less intelligent than those from the previous novel. However, I appreciated that the moral situation was a bit more complicated this time, and that it was not easy to see how the problems within the story could or should be resolved. It was fun to see another corner of this unique world, and I’m looking forward to reading Full Fathom Five!

New Voices: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

This review has appeared on WWEnd, as a part of my series on new authors. 

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

Published : Tor, 2012

Series : Book 1 of the Craft Sequence

Max Gladstone (website here http://www.maxgladstone.com/) published his first novel, Three Parts Dead, in October of last year, and his second novel Two Serpents Rise has just come out on October 29^th!   Two Serpents Rise seems to be set in the same universe as Three Parts Dead, but this review will only cover Three Parts Dead, as I haven’t had a chance to read it just yet. Three Parts Dead is impossible to sum up in a few quick sentences, both because there is so much going on in the novel and because there are so many fascinating characters!  The story was always brimming with energy, fresh ideas and cleverness. 

In the world of Three Parts Dead, humans have learned to use godlike powers, resulting in a war against the Gods that almost destroyed everything.  Since then, Craftsmen and Craftswomen, who are trained in the Hidden Schools, draw power from earth and starlight to effect amazing feats of magic.  I was surprised by the mechanical and matter-of-fact tone of both Craft and deific power—they are described mostly in terms of law and economics.  For instance, a God’s power is managed and increased sort of like a finance portfolio, with investments and returns.  Of course, if a God were to go ‘bankrupt’, it would have some more direct personal effects, like death.

It is with the death of a God, Kos Everburning, that the story of Three Parts Dead really takes off.  The main character, Tara Abernathy, is part of the team that will represent the interests of Kos’s clergy in the process of resurrection.  This whole mystical/legal/economic system is unlike anything I’d ever read before, and this is really only scraping the top of all of the fun ideas in the story.  Everything in the world fits together like the cogs and gears of Kos’s steam-powered city, Alt Coulomb, and the details are revealed at a pace that always left me wanting to know more.

In addition to the world, the many characters were both interesting as individuals and integral to the story.  The heroine, Tara, is an intelligent, assertive, resourceful young Craftswoman.  In Gladstone’s words, “She had never been one for raw displays of power.  Hers was the clever solution, the quick step…” ~p. 111. She is a thoroughly entertaining character to follow, and I appreciated the highly active role she took in the story.  Other fascinating characters include Tara’s stern boss Elayne Kevarian, the earnest young novice technician (a.k.a. priest) Abelard, the addict Cat Elle, and others. The villain of the novel, also, was absolutely chilling.  His character was not strikingly complex, but he was an extrapolation to the supernatural of a common sort of evil in our world (or my world at least, academia). In addition to Tara’s point of view, the story switches between the points of view of a handful of characters (including Cat and Abelard).  I can see this seeming a little much for a relatively short book, but I enjoyed the insights into the perspectives of other characters.

Despite the fact that this is a fantastical story about fallible, vulnerable Gods, I really enjoyed the story’s exploration of the idea of religion.  Through a number of the characters, we see the strength of a personal connection with the divine, and the suffering caused when one is separated from God.  It was also nice to see the distinction between those who participate in religion in good faith, and those who seek to use the institution of religion to achieve their own ends (such as the necromantic firms).  I can’t be much more precise without spoiling parts of the plot, but I appreciated how these ideas developed throughout the plot.

As for the story, I hardly know where to begin; there are so many pieces. The whole novel felt intensely active and—somehow—brightly colored, and everything always seemed to be barreling forward at a breakneck pace. The novel carries the story of Kos’s death, Tara’s first job, another mysterious murder, the history of the gods of Alt Coulomb, the back stories of various characters, and more.  In short, it feels like there are a million things going on, but they all fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The end of the story does involve a lot of monologuing, both on the sides of the heroes and the villains, but I think they were probably necessary, in this case.  This is the kind of story where every little detail makes a difference, so the monologues were less about recapping things the reader had already figured out, and more about tying in the little details the reader could easily have missed.

In short, this was a very entertaining novel, and I am looking forward to seeing what else Max Gladstone has in store.  The characters were memorable, the world was vibrant, the magic was fresh and unusual, and the story was engagingly complicated.  This is a novel where pretty much everything seemed to fit together perfectly, and it was a joy to read!