(no subject)

I picked up Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead partly because I enjoyed hearing him speak at Arisia, but also largely because of its super classy cover:



This lady is Tara Abernathy, a young woman from a small town with a wide skillset that includes:

1. lawyering
2. occasionally ill-advised but generally well-intentioned necromancy

Tara has been kicked out of supernatural magic lawyer school for pursuing a vendetta against a professor; now she's been recruited (on probation) by a major firm to help the priests of the city of Kos the Everburning sort out their legal situation upon the tragic and unexpected death of their god. Both extensive legal document review and necromancy may be required.

Besides Tara, other major characters include:
- Elayne Kevarian, Tara's classy boss
- Abelard, the ingenue; a religiously chain-smoking baby priest who happened to be on duty the night his god kicked it
- Cat, Abelard's childhood bff, FACE OF JUSTICE by day, vampire-bite junkie by night
- Raz, vampire pirate, generally cheerful and well-adjusted except when super irritated by people who wave their arms in his face without first asking his consent, JEEZ, MANNERS
- Shale, an angry gargoyle who spends a significant portion of the book as a disembodied face on a wigstand

I have a knee-jerk bored response to vampire-bite junkies, but otherwise I am so on board with everything in this book. I especially like how magical lawyering, like any profession, is both numinous and tedious (EXTENSIVE DOCUMENT REVIEW), and the nuanced portrayal of religious faith. Godlike beings exist; that doesn't make belief necessary -- for Tara, who is not a religious person, viewing Kos' corpse is just yet another factor in her case prep -- but it doesn't make it wrong, either. I feel like fantasy novels tip over very easily into "religious faith == MANIC ZEALOTRY," so I very much appreciated Abelard. And I truly loved Tara, and the fact that her main motivations throughout the book are tied up in a.) revenging a female friend, and b.) impressing her new female mentor. AND ALL HER ILL-ADVISED NECROMANCY. Okay, maybe that was only the once, but it was still really hilariously ill-advised.

So Three Parts Dead: great! Refreshing! Enjoyable! Interesting characters with interesting motivations!

Then I read Two Serpents Rise. Two Serpents Rise has a much less interesting cover featuring a standard bland white dude. Although this is not Gladstone's fault, since his protagonist Caleb comes from an Aztec-analogue culture and is definitely not described as white, it turned out to be sadly prophetic of my general lack of interest in this book.

Caleb is mostly motivated by an inexplicable and ill-advised instant attraction to a mysterious woman, super-subtly named Mal. I am super bored by inexplicable and ill-advised instant attractions to obvious femme fatales. I also generally wish people would not jump instantly to the human sacrifice place when writing about Aztec-inspired civilizations. Sadly, neither Caleb's lesbian best friend nor his adorable magical skeleton boss could manage to invest me in anything that was actually happening.

However there is a third book in the series coming out in a few months, and the cover definitely looks promising:



I am highly optimistic! Let's see if the correlation holds.