Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our Contemporary Fantasy Novel discussion of...


Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

Well, let me start by explaining briefly why I liked this novel. Mostly it's Gladstone's imaginative new fantasy world, which is defined mostly by his unique treatment of magic.

Also it's a relatively short novel, and it stands alone (although Gladstone has written other novels in different places and with different characters in the same world.)

In "Three Parts Dead," Gladstone creates fantasy world with early industrial technology and strange new magics ("Craft"), populated by men and women and their very real gods. Magic isn't so much a power that's manipulated as a currency that's banked, borrowed and loaned under contract. "Craft users" act almost like lawyers & accountants, consulting professionally on behalf of clients concerning the exchanges of magical energies among Craftmen, gods and mortals.

The story takes place in the major city of Alt Coulumb. The God Kos the Everburning manages the city for the benefit of its residents, under the accountancy of his church, providing light and warmth and mechanical steam energy as needed. But it seems Kos is no more, his flame has been extinguished, and so begins the bankruptcy process.

The main characters are Tara Abernathy, a junior partner in a Craft firm (like a legal assistant), who quite literally was thrown out of Craft College. And Abelard, a devout, chain-smoking priest of the late Kos who was attending the inner sanctum when His flame expired.

Tara & Abelard make a great pair of protagonists.

Secondary characters are the lead counsel before the Court of Justice: Elayne Kevarian, Tara's boss and counsel for the church and city. (Evidently dead gods can be reconstituted after a fashion, without consciousness but allowing them to continue their magical services for the city.) Opposing counsel, Alexander Denovo, representing Kos's debtors, who has quite a different notion of how to divide Kos's legacy.

The question of who/what killed Kos is more a matter of forensic accounting than a search for a smoking gun. It's definitely different...

I just started it and it grabbed me instantly: Mouthy Tara who just finished education but has to learn so much; chain-smoking priest Abelard who witnessed the fading of his god; the setting with a vampire captain and that interesting turn on magic.

The novel is an interesting companion to my current reading of Deathbird Stories which is a 1975 collection of Harlan Ellison's stories about different forms of gods.

I'm thinking especially about that very short story "Bleeding Stones". Gargoyles there are awakened by acid rain and wreak havoc among church folk in NYC cathedral (because humanity pollute the environment and threaten that building which the gargoyles protect). I don't recommend it - it is a splatter story with repulsive, explicit violence. But that scene with the Tara and the gargoyle brought up the memory of that story again.

Andreas wrote: "But that scene with the Tara and the gargoyle brought up the memory of that story again. .."

And then there are those of us who just thought of the Disney TV cartoon, "Gargoyles". :)


Anyway, it's been fun to reread the opening chapters...

I really like the way Gladstone covers his exposition, starting off with significant events, and living things drip in relatively slowly.

Prologue: introduce Abelard, his devout worship of Kos, his constant smoking. Also, there are oblique references to technology cloaked in religious terms: deific couplings, prayer wheel spinning off its prayer axis, to give some sense of how an almost steampunkish technology merges with Kos's holy aspect of fire.

Chapter 1: Tara gets thrown out of the Hidden Schools, the place where Craft is taught. Extra amusing, because it's meant quite literally, as the Hidden School floats unseen like a cloud in the sky, and her expulsion is quite literally a postgraduate test of fly or die. The story of exactly why she's been expelled is saved for later exposition.

The enigmatic Elayne Kevarian, partner in the Craft firm of Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, slipping her business card into Tara's pocket with the promise, "if you survive, I'll offer you a job."

(Kevarian is the only character I noticed that shows up in more than one of Gladstone's Craft books, as she's a very minor character in Full Fathom Five. But having read that, it makes me appreciate that Kevarian's business card isn't a simple piece of cardboard.)

Tara returns to her old life in a farming village, where the locals don't really appreciate the Craft. That appreciation is usually expressed in waving torches and pitchforks. I liked the line about her conversation with her father on her return, "Tara would have thanked him if she knew how."

Do you find it funny how smoking celebrates a grand comeback in this novel? After long years (since the Zelaznys, Ellisons, and dicks) of standing in a dark corner, we witness a glowing ember of cigarette hanging from chain-smoking Abelard every second page.

I've seen that there are several books in the "Craft Sequence" series. How tightly linked are they? Is each novel a standalone?

Last 100 pages to go, where is our discussion lead Karen? :)

Andreas wrote: "I've seen that there are several books in the "Craft Sequence" series. How tightly linked are they? Is each novel a standalone? "

Answering myself :)
Max Gladstone tells us that each of the 3 novels are standalone - the fourth is coming in a month or so:
http://www.tor.com/2014/05/26/this-is...
But there is a chronological ordering:

1. Last First Snow

2. Two Serpents Rise

3. Three Parts Dead (our current BotM)

4. (Not yet published)

5. Full Fathom Five

He just numbers them chronologically in the title :)

Andreas wrote: "Do you find it funny how smoking celebrates a grand comeback in this novel?..."

I'll come back to that in a day or two... but cigaret smoking is a holy sacrament for a priest of a fire god, no?

Andreas wrote: "where is our discussion lead Karen?.."

Karen recently added a baby daughter to her family, her first; so I imagine she's keeping busy. :)

Andreas wrote: "Max Gladstone tells us that each of the 3 novels are standalone - the fourth is coming in a month or so:..."

Of the three that have been published (and I've read), they all stand perfectly well on their own.

By now you've read something of the God Wars and know that on the other side of the ocean, most of the gods word defeated. The other two existing novels take place in other countries where they now use different nexus for Craft: a Witch King and a Corporation, respectively. Each of these novels focuses on a different culture (all of which seem loosely based on Earth cultures of the past.)

Elayne Kevarian is the only character who appears more than once, since she shows up briefly in book 3 (Full Fathom Five) offering the legal craft services of Kelethras, Albrecht, & Ao to one of the protagonists, and there's no particular reason you would need to know much about her then.


Andreas wrote: "He just numbers them chronologically in the title :) ..."

I'm a fan, even when catching up on older series, of publication order rather than a post hoc chronological order.

In the nomination thread I mentioned an article in Tor.com about the Color Design Sequence for the Covers for Gladstone's Craft books. (Be sure to scroll down to the end of the article to see their "prediction" of the cover for the next book :)

I read & really enjoyed this back in January (which promptly led me to read Two Serpents Rise and Full Fathom Five), which is too soon for a re-read for me, but I'll join in the discussion even though some of my recollections may be fuzzy.

I like how Gladstone puts a great deal of intricate world-building into the book but mostly trusts the reader to figure it out in context (dolloping a bit of essential expo out along the way -- having Tara be new to the firm and both lawyers be out-of-towners in New Coulomb gives some excuses for expo). There are a few times where withholding information seemed more authorial trick than expo-reduction or momentum-maintaining strategy (to wit, keeping the reader mostly in the dark about how the courts work), but overall I think Gladstone finds the right balance.

I thought Three Parts Dead had a great first sentence, and while I liked the few glimpses we get of Tara in her hometown, I wasn't sure how I felt about the conflict with the Reavers? Reapers? being tossed into the narrative and then essentially thrown away.

Within a few weeks of reading Gladstone's Craft books, I read Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs, and I thought both shared an interest in complex systems/bureaucracies and how (and whether) individuals affect them.

I do need to point out that Elayne isn't the only character from Three Parts Dead who shows up in Full Fathom Five, though!

Hillary wrote: "Within a few weeks of reading Gladstone's Craft books, I read Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs, and I thought both shared an interest in complex systems/bureaucracies and how (and whether) individuals affect them. ..."

Me too! When I read City of Stairs it did remind me of the Craft novels. Partly it's the alternate world whose magic is based on deities. Partly it's the setting's technology level, which (allowing for the use of magic for some things we would normally do technologically) seem vaguely similar as being maybe a century ago. Also, both have a substantial sense of prior history that led to the present situation. And they are both investigatory storylines, where the investigation is carried out within an official structure (as opposed to the rogue investigator model of urban fantasy.)

And, oh yeah, I thought they were both excellent stories :)

NPR (US National Public Radio) put a review of Gladstone's Craft Sequence a couple of days ago: The Craft Sequence: Please Do Judge These Books By Their Covers.

BTW, Last First Snow goes on sale in 2 weeks.

G33z3r wrote: "Of the three that have been published (and I've read), they all stand perfectly well on their own...."

I think the latest book in the series, Last First Snow, changes that. It takes place in Dresediel Lex, which is the same city as Two Serpents Rise, and it involves a number of characters who appeared there. But since Last First Snow takes place before Two Serpents Rise... well, interesting. The very first page had some surprising Kevarian revelations that sent me back to Three Parts Dead, where some of her remarks to Tara take on a more hidden irony. And of course I had to refer again to Two Serpents as well.

One of the problems reading a prequel is that when there's a significant character who doesn't appear in Two Serpents, one wonders if the character is doomed.

I can see I'll have to reread them all in order after (some title including the number Four) comes out next year.

Interesting article on the Craft series on Tor.com today:

Buddy, Can You Spare a Thaum? The Metaphors of Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence

I read Three Parts Dead recently and really enjoyed it. The main characters were interesting and the setting I thought was quite original. After finishing it I immediately bought the next book in the series, Two Serpents Rise. I was a bit disappointed at first that this was more a shared setting than an actual sequel, and that Tara and Elaine did not appear in the second book. As a stand alone story the second book is still good though, but I admit I'm less eager to continue the series without the hook of recurring characters or an overarching plot line to drive them forward.