![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 18th, 2016 06:02 pmIt's sequel season! I am drowning in books I've been looking forward to reading and am now desperately trying to keep up with as they come in for me at the library. Let's start with Four Roads Cross, the Max Gladstone Craft book which I have been waiting for ever since I first read Three Parts Dead, aka THE ONE WITH MORE TARA IN IT.
Three Parts Dead is the first book in the Craft sequence, set in a world in which the economy runs on soul-magic, which results in a great deal of magical lawyering and divine financial negotiation. In that book, neophyte magical lawyer Tara Reynolds assists a city whose God has just died with fulfilling their divine financial obligations and ends up setting a whole number of other balls in motion as a result.
Without too many spoilers, Four Roads Cross picks up several of the spinning balls left at the end of Three Parts Dead and pitches them onwards in a way that was about 90% satisfying to me. I especially liked the thread about the community of people that run the local farmer's market, how all the high-level divine changes in the city look from the ground, and how those people impact the book's eventual conclusion. But also, Tara! And her complicated relationship with theology, and her joy in her own cleverness, and her student loans!
( This gets more spoilery )
Anyway, then I reread Three Parts Dead to remind myself of all the things I missed in Four Roads Cross, and it is still probably my favorite of them all, with Last First Snow coming a very close second. But Four Roads Cross is a worthy third and I remain extremely excited for whatever further Craft Sequence adventures there may be!
Three Parts Dead is the first book in the Craft sequence, set in a world in which the economy runs on soul-magic, which results in a great deal of magical lawyering and divine financial negotiation. In that book, neophyte magical lawyer Tara Reynolds assists a city whose God has just died with fulfilling their divine financial obligations and ends up setting a whole number of other balls in motion as a result.
Without too many spoilers, Four Roads Cross picks up several of the spinning balls left at the end of Three Parts Dead and pitches them onwards in a way that was about 90% satisfying to me. I especially liked the thread about the community of people that run the local farmer's market, how all the high-level divine changes in the city look from the ground, and how those people impact the book's eventual conclusion. But also, Tara! And her complicated relationship with theology, and her joy in her own cleverness, and her student loans!
( This gets more spoilery )Anyway, then I reread Three Parts Dead to remind myself of all the things I missed in Four Roads Cross, and it is still probably my favorite of them all, with Last First Snow coming a very close second. But Four Roads Cross is a worthy third and I remain extremely excited for whatever further Craft Sequence adventures there may be!
