Craft Sequence series

## Genre Information

Urban Fantasy
Necromancy

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Urban Fantasy / Legal Thriller / Necromancy
* **Theme:** Secondary world fantasy with a post-industrial setting rather than the High Medieval milieu - Max Gladstone
* **Narrative style**:

## Series Description

A phenomenally-built fantasy realm that feels at once innovative and contemporary: one where gods do not rule over man, but faith in them is the money that makes the world go round.

About the cutthroat world of international necromancy: wizards in pinstriped suits and gods with shareholders' committees.

The city of Alt Coulumb came out of the God Wars with one of its gods intact, Kos the Everburning. In return for the worship of his people, Kos provides heat and steam power to the citizens of Alt Coulumb; he is also the hub of a vast network of power relationships with other gods and god-like beings across the planet. Oh, and he has just died. If he isn’t revived in some form by the turn of the new moon, the city will descend into chaos and the finances of the globe will take a severe hit.

The story paints a picture of a fascinating world where gods are a commodity to be bought and sold, where “soulstuff” is the coin of the realm, and where knowledge of the Craft can be a key to immortality... of a sort.

In the series, we’ve seen the rise and fall of deities (*Three Parts Dead***)**, the near catastrophic loss of a technology based corporation that provides power in the place of any deities (*Two Serpents Down*) and in *Full Fathom Five* we see the middle-option; fake deities (literally idols) as a way of putting oneself outside either of the other systems.

## Series List

### Published Order

* Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence Book 1) (2012)
* Two Serpents Rise (Craft Sequence Book 2) (2013)
* Full Fathom Five (Craft Sequence Book 3) (2014)
* Last First Snow (Craft Sequence Book 4) (2015)
* Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence Book 5) (2016)
* The Ruin of Angels (Craft Sequence Book 6) (2017)

### Chronological Order

* *City's Thirst*
* *Last First Snow*
* *Two Serpents Rise*
* *Three Parts Dead*
* *Choice of the Deathless*
* *Four Roads Cross*
* *Full Fathom Five*
* *The Ruin of Angel*

## World Building

### Settings

* **City of Alt Coulumb** — the city of Kos Everlasting
* **City of Dresediel Lex** — desert city by the sea; overthrew its gods and set science-based magic up in its place; once demanded blood and sacrifice
* **Island of Kavekana** — divinely controlled Old World

### Fantasy Elements

Gods, Craft Practitioners, necromancers, wizards, sorcerers, necromantic firm, magic users, revenants, God Wars, Shadow demons, Twin Serpents beneath the earth, skeletons, coatl (dragon-like serpent), Tzimet.

* **Craft Practitioner**: resurrect the dead—necromancers—their power stems from the same source as that of the gods.
* **Stone Men**: gargoyles, who are now despised and hunted in Alt Coulumb, but who formerly enjoyed a very close relationship with the goddess Serit;
* **Skeletons**: undead wizards/craft-practitioners/necromancers
* **Tzimet**: a form of water creature that spawns nasty creatures to kill and maim
* **Idols** (fake deities) like gods, sculpted by humans, constructs, tools to allow for the storage and contracting of the client soulstuff—non-sentient and can't speak. (bk-4)

### World Description

A hedonistic world in which incredibly powerful sorcerers won a war against the world’s corrupt gods and established themselves as the power in the land.

Gladstone’s world-building involves magical takes on fields that aren’t typically addressed in fantasy—in this case, litigation. Gods, rather than being mysterious, unknowable, and omnipotent, have direct relationships with their followers. Their abilities bring happiness and joy to believers, create rain in the desert, cure illnesses—but also fuel metropolitan transit systems, back military operations, and promote trading partnerships with multinational corporations. Like all powerful people, then, the divine are always in need of good legal representation.

Worship is power in the universe of this series, and power is not merely divine power (although it is also that) but all actual power like electricity. It heats homes and lights cities.

In this world the power of the Craftspeople stems from the same source as that of the gods. When the gods saw the mistakes the human Craftspeople are making, the gods come down to the physical realm to ‘take care of it'. The Craftspeople fought back and the gods were slaughtered. As a result, while the eastern part of the world still has gods, the cities of the west have none. With the exception of Alt Coulumb in the city of Kos Everlasting. Kos is the last living god in the west who survived the war by Switzerland-ing the whole thing. Except Kos has just been murdered. Thus begins an entertaining and intelligent story that's equal parts action-adventure, fantasy, culture clash, mystery and courtroom drama.

### Protagonist

Tara Abernathy
Tara is a Craftwoman, one capable of manipulating the soulstuff that enlivens every person. With a little careful effort she can restore the recently dead to a kind of life; of course, it’s necessary to trim away the fiddly bits of the soul so as to leave energy for basic functions. When she is brought to Alt Coulumb by her mentor she assumes that the job will be to do much the same for Kos, stripping away the damaged identity and higher features of the personality and leaving a kind of spiritual machine that can do the essential work that Kos did. Something similar was done at the end of the God War to Kos’ dead consort Seris, who was responsible for civic order; the result was the cold, blind soul machine called Justice, whose unstoppable Blacksuits police the streets of Alt Coulumb.
Caleb Altemoc
begins as a mid-level administrator for RKC with a penchant for gambling
Kai Pohala
makes fake ‘gods’ (or idols) for clients and does the worshipping of them in their place and has her attempt at saving one of the dying gods foiled by some well meaning co-workers. Kai hears the god speak at the end of her life when these ‘gods’ aren’t supposed to be sentient or be able to speak. They are created merely as constructs, tools to allow for the storage and contracting of the client soulstuff. This sends Kai on a hunt to try to figure out: is she going insane and has really just been overworking herself as her boss says, or is there something else going on and she was correct in her belief that the ‘god’ could have been saved?
Kai Pohala is a priest, and very good at her job. When she tries to save a dying idol, she’s badly injured, and sidelined from the business: written off by her boss as unstable. Outside parties are investigating the death of the idol, and Kai feels sure that there is some kind of conspiracy involved, something that explains the idol’s death, the outside interest in it, and what she experienced in the last minutes before the idol died.
## Book Descriptions

1. Three Parts Dead (2012)
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 is Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead God, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith. But when the duo discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and the city’s slim hope of survival.
2. Two Serpents Rise (2013)
Shadow demons plague the city reservoir, and Red King Consolidated has sent in Caleb Altemoc—casual gambler and professional risk manager — to cleanse the water for the sixteen million people of Dresediel Lex. At the scene of the crime, Caleb finds an alluring and clever cliff runner, crazy Mal, who easily outpaces him. But Caleb has more than the demon infestation, Mal, or job security to worry about when he discovers that his father—the last priest of the old gods and leader of the True Quechal terrorists—has broken into his home and is wanted in connection to the attacks on the water supply. From the beginning, Caleb and Mal are bound by lust, Craft, and chance, as both play a dangerous game where gods and people are pawns. They sleep on water, they dance in fire... and all the while the Twin Serpents slumbering beneath the earth are stirring, and they are hungry.
3. Full Fathom Five (2014)
The third novel set in the addictive and compelling fantasy world of Three Parts Dead. On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World. When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first.
4. Last First Snow (2015)
Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation-especially in the Skittersill, a poor district still bound by the fallen gods' decaying edicts. As long as the gods' wards last, they strangle development; when they fail, demons will be loosed upon the city. The King in Red hires Elayne Kevarian of the Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao to fix the wards, but the Skittersill's people have their own ideas. A protest rises against Elayne's work, led by Temoc, a warrior-priest turned community organizer who wants to build a peaceful future for his city, his wife, and his young son.
5. Four Roads Cross (2016)
The great city of Alt Coulumb is in crisis. The moon goddess Seril, long thought dead, is back--and the people of Alt Coulumb aren't happy. Protests rock the city, and Kos Everburning's creditors attempt a hostile takeover of the fire god's church. Tara Abernathy, the god's in-house Craftswoman, must defend the church against the world's fiercest necromantic firm--and against her old classmate, a rising star in the Craftwork world.
As if that weren't enough, Cat and Raz, supporting characters from Three Parts Dead, are back too, fighting monster pirates; skeleton kings drink frozen cocktails, defying several principles of anatomy; jails, hospitals, and temples are broken into and out of; choirs of flame sing over Alt Coulumb; demons pose significant problems; a farmers' market proves more important to world affairs than seems likely; doctors of theology strike back; Monk-Technician Abelard performs several miracles; The Rats! play Walsh's Place; and dragons give almost-helpful counsel.
6. The Ruin of Angels (2017)
The God Wars destroyed the city of Alikand. Now, a century and a half and a great many construction contracts later, Agdel Lex rises in its place. Dead deities litter the surrounding desert, streets shift when people aren’t looking, a squidlike tower dominates the skyline, and the foreign Iskari Rectification Authority keeps strict order in this once-independent city—while treasure seekers, criminals, combat librarians, nightmare artists, angels, demons, dispossessed knights, grad students, and other fools gather in its ever-changing alleys, hungry for the next big score.
Priestess/investment banker Kai Pohala (last seen in Full Fathom Five) hits town to corner Agdel Lex’s burgeoning nightmare startup scene, and to visit her estranged sister Ley. But Kai finds Ley desperate at the center of a shadowy, and rapidly unravelling, business deal. When Ley ends up on the run, wanted for a crime she most definitely committed, Kai races to track her sister down before the Authority finds her first. But Ley has her own plans, involving her ex-girlfriend, a daring heist into the god-haunted desert, and, perhaps, freedom for an occupied city. Because Alikand might not be completely dead—and some people want to finish the job.
## Awards

* In April 2013, Gladstone was nominated for the 2012

## References

1. ↑ Macmillan
2. ↑ Three Parts Dead ~ Patheos
3. ↑ Three Parts Dead ~ Patheos
4. ↑ Suvudu
5. ↑ Arts and Literature
6. ↑ Suvudu
7. ↑ Patheos
8. ↑ Review: Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone |Not Yet Read
9. ↑ Tor
10. ↑ John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.