Tag Archives: Max Gladstone

books, Fantasy, Reviews

Dead Country (The Craft Wars 1) by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 3 out of 5

I love the world of the Craft that the author so carefully crafted (pun totally intended). However, I didn’t love this book as much as I loved the previous ones in the series. 

It took me a while to figure out why. This book has all the right ingredients: a compelling protagonist (and I love Tara), a mystery that threatens something she cares about, so the personal stakes are front and center, and another facet of this complex world carefully painted and shown to the readers. I should have loved this as much as I loved the previous books! But instead, this book left me mildly irritated while I was reading it, and a bit dissatisfied when I finished.

The biggest reason is that, as much as I like Tara Abenati, she shines when given good secondary characters to bounce her ideas off of. Even though the previous book was mostly about Kai, Tara’s brief appearances were memorable. Or her interactions with Abelar, Shale, and Selene in Alt Columb. Characters make good stories, and good characters make excellent ones.

Unfortunately, secondary characters are sorely lacking in this book. And by that I mean the relationship that is front and center in this story – the one between Tara and Dawn. I was actually looking forward to seeing how Tara in the role of a mentor for once. To see how she would approach this responsibility and what kind of teacher she would choose to be. And the answer is – a rather boring one. 

Yes, I understand that the theory of the Craft is important to the story, but I think the lectures are a bit overdone here. It bogs down the story and kills the momentum. I mean, there is literally nothing going on in this book between the first attack of the Raiders on Tara’s village and the last stand during which the Father is kidnapped. And that’s about a third of the book. I admit that my attention started to wander in that section, and I had to put the book away for a bit and read something more exciting before I came back to it.

It would have been okay if Dawn was a more fleshed-out character. As it stands, we don’t know anything about her apart from the fact that she wandered onto this farm with her father, and was not treated well after he died. We don’t know about her dreams, her fears, or what she is like when she isn’t trying very hard to be the best student Tara could want. Try as I may, I can’t picture her in my head. She is not a person, but a concept. I don’t feel a connection to her like I felt for other characters in previous books. 

And without that connection, everything that happens in the end of the book, and it supposed to have the impact of a gut punch… feels flat. 

Same with Tara’s home village. I know I was supposed to grow to care for it by the end of the book and understand why Tara would fight so hard to save it, but I was mostly irritated with everyone instead, including Tara. And since I didn’t care for the stakes, I wasn’t fully invested either.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a solid entry in the Craft series and it advances the story. It’s just not the strongest entry to date.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence 5) by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

This book is a direct continuation of Three Parts Dead, book 1 in the Craft Sequence series, since it describes events that happen almost immediately after the ending of that book. So technically, you could skip books 2-4 and just read this one. Why though? All books in this series are excellent, and some of the characters we followed in those books make a brief appearance in this one as well. I would say reading them in order listed is an enjoyment in itself.

As we remember, book 1 ended with Tara helping bring the goddess Seril back to life, only this is far from a happy ending for both Seril and Kos, as well as Alt Coulumb. Seril is weak, her cult is small, and she poses a serious financial and reputational risk to Kos and his church. Now Tara and her friends will have to fight for the future of their city and answer a few important questions about themselves and their beliefs.

This book raises a few very interesting questions. What is better? The cold and clinical approach of the Craft, where everything is a transaction, and there is no room left for such things as sentiment, love, friendship, etc. Or faith that sometimes requires self-sacrifice and acts of kindness without expecting anything in return. Or is there a way to combine both of those approaches and to find a happy medium? 

This battle of identity is most evident in Tara’s arc in this book, because she has to go against everything she’s been thought in the Hidden Schools. It’s by daring to open her heart to faith and friendship that she wins her case and, I think, finds a home she’s secretly been longing for all her life. 

This is also evident in Abelard’s journey in this book, who undergoes a crisis of faith and feels betrayed and used by his god, only to find his own quiet strength in the middle of the chaos. Acceptance is also the theme when it comes to Cat and Raz, who finally face their own demons and emerge victorious from those battles. 

In a way, this book is a catharsis for all the events that started in book 1 of the series, and a beautiful resolution for some of those characters I grew to love so much. I know there are more books in this series, and I will definitely pick up the next one.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Horror, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Last Exit by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

It pains me to give a less than stellar rating to Max Gladstone, but this is the first book of his I’ve been disappointed with. How can a book about found family, road trip, end of the world, parallel universes and so on be so… boring?

I loved this author’s Craft series. They are wonderfully imaginative and full of interesting characters and thought provoking concepts. So of course I jumped on the chance to get an ARC of this through NetGalley. And my initial state while I was reading this book, before the boredom set in, was that of bewilderment. Is this the author who wowed me with his other books? Am I reading this wrong? What is going on?

Oh, there are glimpses of the author I love in this story. There are moments that are tightly written and intensely terrifying. Like when the Cowboy first becomes aware of Sarah on the interstate, or the confrontation at the Best Western, or when Zelda is in the bug-infested tunnels under an alt New York. Those scenes had me at the edge of my seat, with my heart in my throat, terrified for the well-being of the characters…

Unfortunately, those moments of brilliance are few and far between. And they are bogged down by pages and pages of flashbacks, introspections, inner dialog about how miserable the characters are and how they think that the world is ending. It’s self-pity and self-recrimination on page upon page upon page. So you get this brilliant scene when the action is non-stop, the stakes are high, and the characters in danger… then you have 50 pages of inner monolog topped with a flashback on their first journey. Momentum – shot dead, not by the cowboy in a white hat, but by sheer boredom. In fact, I think that the book is at least 200 pages too long. My Kindle assured me that it was 400 pages long, but it felt like one of those 1000+ pages door stoppers – never-ending.

I think this approach would have worked if I cared for any of the characters, but I didn’t. They are all unlikeable, selfish people who wear their failures like a badge of honor and wallow in self-pity for most of the book. And since the reader has to follow them and be privy to their most inner thoughts, it makes for a very painful read, and not in a good way. 

Also, it is constantly hinted that their first journey to find the crossroads went horribly wrong and resulted in Sal’s downfall, but the book drags the actual story over pages and pages of hints and self-pity. By the time we actually learn what happened it feels… anti-climatic? I was like, “So all this misery is because of this? Are you kidding me?” Not a good thing when Sal’s downfall and Zelda’s guilt about it are the cornerstone of this story. 

By the end of the book I was so bored with the story, that I just skimmed through the last 10%. Also not good. The ending is supposed to be rewarding. It’s supposed to justify the effort the reader put into sticking with 400 pages of story. It was anything but that. And the big reveal and twist wasn’t all that shocking either. 

When I had finished the other books of this author, I had a sense of satisfaction and joy. I had wanted to savor the story, to re-read passages that I liked the most. When I finished Last Exit, all I had is a sense of relief that the slog was finally over and that I could delete the ARC from my Kindle. 

I will not recommend this book. Max Gladstone is a wonderful author though, so I suggest you read his Craft series instead.