Tag Archives: The Craft Sequence Series

The Ruin of Angels (Craft Sequence 6) by Max Gladstone

Amazon Link ( sponsored)

Stars: 4 out of 5

I love coming back to this world. It’s so rich and complex, and every book shows us a new facet of it. I feel like each book gives me more puzzle pieces to a giant picture that I’m assembling by reading the series.

In this book, we reconnect with Kai from Five Fathoms Deep, and she is away from her island in a city she doesn’t understand or particularly like, trying to help her estranged sister. Well, first Kai reluctantly meets with her sister and refuses to help her, but then she spends the rest of the book trying to rectify that error.  I missed Kai. She is a very good character. She isn’t a Craftswoman, she doesn’t have much personal power. She is a priestess to idols made by men from scratch to store their soul stuff in. And very recently a real priestess to a new Goddess. She is out of her depth in this strange and broken city where the God Wars started, and where the first Craftsman is still frozen in time, dying but not dead, tearing the world apart. 

I loved this city. Both the Alikand that was lovingly preserved in the books and stories of its citizens and the broken Dead City where the war was still being fought in infinity, with both sides endlessly dying but not quite dead. And the strange order of the squid city that was so foreign to both the other cities, but was necessary to keep the wound of the Dead City from destroying the rest of the world. I am happy that Kai found a solution that preserved Alikand in the end.

I have one issue with this book – it dragged a little bit in the beginning when the heist of the train was being organized. We spent too much time with Kai’s sister, and I didn’t particularly like her as a person. Yes, I understood her motivations by the end of the book, and I could even sympathize, but I still think she could have handled all of this better if she stepped on her pride and asked for help, instead of trying to play everyone around her. You could argue that she caused most of the problems she worked so hard to solve afterward.

I was happy to see Tara again since she is by far my favorite character in the series, but she doesn’t play a very big role here. She helped where she could, but was mostly relegated to the background. Which I understand. This is Kai’s book. And the Blue Lady’s, because she finally came into her full powers here. The Goddess of thieves and street children, and lost and forgotten people, the fleeing, the downtrodden. The one who ate the Wastes. 

What I love the most about this series is that despite some horrible things that happen to the characters in the books, there is always a hopeful note in the end. Kai and her sister finally make peace, and the poppy fields around Alikand are blooming once more.

Onward to the next book in the series.

Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence 5) by Max Gladstone

Sponsored link

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.