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Max Gladstone

Three Parts Dead: 1 (Craft Sequence) Paperback – 23 July 2013

by Max Gladstone (Author)

4.3 2,499 ratings

Book 1 of 6: Craft Sequence

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From the co-author of the viral New York Times bestseller This is How You Lose the Time War.

"Stunningly good. Stupefyingly good." --Patrick Rothfuss

Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence chronicles the epic struggle to build a just society in a modern fantasy world.

A god has died, and it's up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis's steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara's job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who's having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb's courts?and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb's slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which lawyers ride lightning bolts, souls are currency, and cities are powered by the remains of fallen gods, Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence introduces readers to a modern fantasy landscape and an epic struggle to build a just society.

Also Available by Max Gladstone:

The Craft Sequence
1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels

The Craft Wars
1. Dead Country
2. Wicked Problems

Last Exit
Empress of Forever

This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)

Book 1 of 6

Craft Sequence
Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

23 July 2013
Dimensions

14.1 x 3.05 x 20.7 cm
ISBN-10

0765333112
ISBN-13

978-0765333117
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Product description

Review

"This has so many of my favorite things: an intriguing world, fun characters, a puzzle of a story that manages to be both funky fantasy and legal thriller. Three Parts Dead is simultaneously fast paced and thoughtful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it." --Carrie Vaughn, author of the Kitty Norville series

"Neil Gaiman and Jim Butcher are conjured for a China Miéville story about magical lawyers trying to revive a dead God in a steampunk city. Recommended: Hell yes!" --Geek Speak Magazine

"Max Gladstone has evidently devised a necromantic steampunk machine that enabled him to channel the Roger Zelazny of Lord of Light, cathect the Neil Gaiman of American Gods, and subsume the oeuvre of John Grisham, all with the aim of producing loopy, metaphysically-minded legal thrillers." --James Morrow, author of The Last Witchfinder

"With his first book, Max Gladstone gives promise of being a true star of twenty-first century fantasy." --John Crowley, author of Little, Big and The Deep

"The combination of legal thriller and steam-powered fantasy may seem improbable, but Gladstone makes it work with an appealing cast and a setting rich in imaginitive details....the story remains suspenseful and fast-paced throughout, and the diverse, female-led cast is a joy to follow through the fascinating and unusual landscape." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Max Gladstone has created a fascinating universe and equally fascinating characters.... This is his first novel. I can't wait for his second." --Jerry Pournelle, author of The Mote in God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer

"Sci-fi, fantasy and a murder mystery all rolled in one.... exciting and fast paced with unexpected twists and turns. It culminates in a big surprise ending." --RT Book Reviews

About the Author

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning author, MAX GLADSTONE, has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Last Exit, Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the viral New York Times bestseller This Is How You Lose the Time War. His dreams are much nicer than you'd expect.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; Reprint edition (23 July 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765333112
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765333117
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.1 x 3.05 x 20.7 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 281,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 10,759 in Urban
- 42,821 in Thrillers (Books)

Customer reviews:
4.3 2,499 ratings

About the author

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Max Gladstone

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MAX GLADSTONE is a fencer, a fiddler, and Hugo Award Finalist. He has taught English in China, wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat, and been thrown from a horse in Mongolia. Max lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. He is the author of the Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, Full Fathom Five, Last First Snow, Four Roads Cross, and Ruin of Angels).

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

2,499 global ratings

5 star		49%
4 star		37%
3 star		11%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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One of the most original books I've read lately

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 January 2023

Verified Purchase

The story begins with a reference to the God Wars, a god getting murdered and a woman being thrown off a floating university to slam into the ground, barely surviving.
Man, does this book know how to get my attention.
And it’s an intriguing world we find ourselves in. Magic has often been seen as about words and contracts and this book brings it to its logical conclusion. Mages are lawyers/accountants, creating contracts of power and selling and buying it to move it between themselves.
It’s an interesting system and lends itself nicely to the plot. The god Kos has died and the auditors are called in to sort out his affairs. I found it easiest to think of Kos as a sentient corporation of power. So all his debts have to be settled, all of the outstanding bargains and divisions need to be sorted and what’s left of him has to be carved up. And yet there’s still the question: How did the god die? And it’s that question that our story revolves around.
It’s got a good cast of characters too. There’s Tara, who is on probation for the necromantic firm she’s just been hired for. Her boss is an old hand at this and covers the bigger picture, leaving much of the grunt work to her assistant. There priests facing a crisis of faith, piratical vampires, drug addled cops and secret contracts. The world is alive, vibrant, a little confusing at times but enthralling all the same.
Also the plotting is just great. The mystery twines nicely around the action, with hints of the eventual reveal. And when all the cards are flipped it leads to an amazing, explosive finale. Seriously, I‘m a sucker for a good ending and this was an amazing ending.
I’ve not read a lot of books like this. It’s new, it’s fresh and it’s powerful. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

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liminal fruitbat

Fun thriller with real potential

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 November 2016

Verified Purchase

I’d seen Max Gladstone’s name come up in various places in connection with Seth J Dickinson, whose work I discovered last year and quickly became a huge fan of, so once I’d cleared out my reading backlog I decided to give this a try.

The premise in a nutshell: Tara Abernathy is a sorceress (or Craftswoman in this setting’s terminology) who’s lucky enough to get offered a job with a prestigious firm of necromancers straight out of university and unlucky enough, once she takes up the offer, to be saddled with the task of resurrecting a dead god in a form acceptable to his worshippers before the city powered and sustained by that god collapses into chaos. Someone in another review called it “low fantasy”, and while I’ve always understood that term to mean fantasy where supernatural elements are rare or non-existent (which this book definitely is not), I can understand why someone would apply the term here: Three Parts Dead has a very pragmatic, unglamorous approach to its fantastic elements and one of those wannabe-noir atmospheres common in fantasy that is a little bit sabotaged by the tying-up of all the injustices the plot addresses at the end. Which isn’t a bad thing: given recent events, an optimistic ending involving the beginning of the end of the persecution of an ethnic/religious minority and women defeating a man who exploited and preyed on those beneath him was highly welcome.

The nature of gods in this setting, the covenants and pacts they make with their worshippers, makes the book a legal procedural, with the apparently-obligatory shift into a detective/thriller novel once Tara discovers that Kos Everburning did not die of natural causes. It’s mostly a fair-play mystery: the magic (or Craft) and the rules of the setting are demonstrated sufficiently clearly for the reader to understand the nature of Kos’ death, and twists such as what’s going on with the gargoyles and what Elayne does in the epilogue are organically derived from what’s come before. (Elayne’s rationale for her action feels a little contrived, but if I’m feeling generous I can accept it as a demonstration of her not-quite-human outlook.) The use of Craft is fairly well-integrated into the setting’s culture – the Blacksuits in particular, people who can become avatars of Justice, trading free will for superpowers and a sense of purpose so strong it borders on addiction, were a particularly cool concept – though the visceral, detailed acts of zombie-raising and face-stealing are more impressive than the rest of it, and placing them in the earlier sections front-loads the sense of wonder and leaves the rest of the book a little unbalanced. Still, it’s a good concept, and the matter-of-fact way in which Craftspeople drift apart from humanity with age is a fun aspect of the setting and provides a nice bit of implicit characterisation for everyone who chooses to study Craft.

The characters are good enough for what the book requires of them, though the novice priest Abelard felt like the weak link, and I think that’s connected to the occurrence of my pet peeve with many fantasy religions: the cult of Kos Everburning feels very much like Christianity with a new coat of paint. The internal lives of the other major POV characters are all entangled with specific aspects of their world, while Abelard is just dealing with a fairly standard-issue crisis of faith and some limited political intrigue in the Church. He’s less interesting than Tara, Cat, and Elayne, and I wish the blurb talked about Cat and Elayne rather than Abelard because they deserve it more.

The setting’s good and feels original, and, like the characters, is well-drawn enough for what the book requires (this may sound like damning with faint praise, but it genuinely was an enjoyable read). It’s no Perdido Street Station, but if you’re a big setting nerd I suspect reading the other books in this series will probably allow you to build up a better picture of the world. Gladstone’s made an effort to give us a gender-equal setting (it’s not perfect, but it’s better than many secondary worlds), and in-universe racism is directed against the gargoyles rather than any analogue to real-world ethnicities. Everyone seems to be straight and cis, though I’ve heard that improves in later books.

In short, it’s a fun fast-paced thriller with smart, competent characters (barring a certain large brain-fart on the part of one character whose name rhymes with Rabelard), and while it lacks the sheer delight and numinous aspect of something like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the baroque inventiveness of something by China Mieville, or the strong blend of plot and character of something like The Traitor Baru Cormorant, I think it’s definitely worth reading if you’re into this kind of fantasy. Three-and-a-half stars rounded up to four because I think there's promise here.

4 people found this helpful

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SC

A solid, if unspectacular, series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 July 2019

Verified Purchase

Bought this plus the 5 others that make up the "Craft Sequence" whilst on offer from Amazon (6 books, £10). I'd say at that price these books are definitely worth the read. They're fast paced, slightly steam punk and filled with some good characters and world building. I find the magic system to be fairly convoluted and at times difficult to grasp, at times this leads to an ex machina situation which ruins the plausibility of the plot

One person found this helpful

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Martin

Magic, But Not As We Know It

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 September 2015

Verified Purchase

I've avoided these books for a number of months until I found out that the author was also responsible for some other things that I'd read.

As I was reading, I kept having the feeling that the book wasn't really for me but I try not to give up on something halfway through and I'm glad I did. About halfway in to the book it really started to get it's hooks in to me, as the plot progressed and more about some of the concepts of the world were explained like the magic system and so on.

If you want something a little different or you enjoy reading books with interesting magic systems in, go for this - you may be pleasantly surprised.

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Mr. B. J. S. Liddle

An interesting and fresh fantasy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 November 2017

Verified Purchase

Very nice fantasy with a hefty dollop of detective fiction. An actual review would take a long time - this book is well layered and merits careful picking apart - but I would definitely recommend it, especially for people who have read Borges and gone "Hmmm, needs more shadow monsters"

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James

Excellent and fresh take on fantasy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2017

Verified Purchase

Really surprised by the original take on the fantasy genre and a genuinely smart murder mystery. It did have a slight tendency to obsess over world building here or there but thankfully it didn't break the pacing of the book. Also some welcome dry humour kept things fun. I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good murder mystery, a good fantasy novel or just a solid, entertaining read.

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Enjoyable, good plot, good characterizations

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2016

Verified Purchase

Very interesting world building, there's still a lot to be explained, good book, I'll buy the second immediately. I don't really have a single criticism.

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