#craft sequence

[virginiaoflykos]

What to read after Light Bringer? (Series similar to Red Rising)

August 2023 update!

Red Rising is my favorite series of all time, and since I first read it, I have sought series and books similar in both spirit and execution. Some of these recs are books I haven’t read personally, but have often come up in discussions with other users!

1. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Status: ongoing, expected 10 books in total, 4/10 out at the moment

Book 1: The Way of Kings. The Way of Kings takes place on the world of Roshar, where war is constantly being waged on the Shattered Plains, and the Highprinces of Alethkar fight to avenge a king that died many moons ago.

2. The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

Status: finished, 6/6 books out.

Book 1 (in publication order): Three Parts Dead. Comprised of 6 standalone books set in the same universe, the Craft Sequence tells the tales of the city of Alt Coulumb. The city 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.

3. Hierarchy by James Islington

Status: ongoing, 1/3 planned books out

Book 1: The Will of the many. The Will of the Many tells the story of Vis, a young orphan who is adopted by one of the sociopolitical elites of the Hierarchy. Vis is tasked with entering a prestigious magical academy with one goal – ascend the ranks, figure out what the other major branches of the government are doing, and report back. However, that isn’t quite as easy as Vis or anyone else thought it was going to be…

4. Suneater by Christopher Ruocchio

Status: ongoing, 5/7 books out

Book 1: Empire of Silence. Hadrian is a man doomed to universal infamy after ordering the destruction of a sun to commit an unforgivable act of genocide. Told as a chronicle written by an older Hadrian, Empire of Silence details his earlier adventures and serves as an introduction to the characters and the setting.

5. Dune by Frank Herbert

Status: completed, 6/6 books out

Book 1: Dune. Set in the distant future amidst a feudal interstellar society in which various noble houses control planetary fiefs. It tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose family accepts the stewardship of the planet Arrakis. While the planet is an inhospitable and sparsely populated desert wasteland, it is the only source of melange, or "spice", a drug that extends life and enhances mental abilities.

6. The Expanse by James S A Corey

Status: completed, 9/9 books out

Book 1: Leviathan wakes. Set hundreds of years in the future, after mankind has colonized the solar system. A hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain come together for what starts as a missing young woman and evolves into a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

7. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

Status: completed. 3 books in the original trilogy + 3 standalone books + 3 books in the newest trilogy

Book 1: The Blade Itself. The story follows the fortunes and misfortunes of bad people who do the right thing, good people who do the wrong thing, stupid people who do the stupid thing and, well, pretty much any combination of the above. Survival is no mean feat, and at the end of the day, dumb luck might be more of an asset than any amount of planning, skill, or noble intention.

8. Cradle by Will Wight

Status: completed, 12/12 books out

Book 1: Unsouled. Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path

9. Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (one PB’s favorites)

Status: completed, 4/4 books out

Book 1: Hyperion. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Church of the Final Atonement, alternately known as the Shrike Church, and the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems) to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale.

#red rising #golden son #morning star #pierce brown #dark age #iron gold #light bringer #what to read #book rec #book recommendation #books #stormlight archive #hyperion cantos #craft sequence #the expanse #hierarchy #the will of the many #first law #suneater #sun eater #dune #cradle series

[augustinajosefina]

A request

Please suggest books to me! Preferably in the glove kink/lesbian space atrocities, urban fantasy or dark academia genres but I'll happily try any SF/fantasy at least once.

So far I've read and loved:

Before 2023

The Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) - Ann Leckie

Jean le Flambeur (The Quantum Thief/The Fractal Prince/The Causal Angel) - Hannu Rajaniemi

The Windup Girl/The Water Knife - Paolo Bagicalupi

Memory of Water/The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta

2023

The Locked Tomb (Gideon/Harrow/Nona the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir

The Masquerade (Traitor/Monster/Tyrant Baru Cormorant) - Seth Dickinson

Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace) - Arkady Martine

Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun/Hexarchate Stories) - Yoon Ha Lee

The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red to System Collapse) - Martha Wells

The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season/The Obelisk Gate/The Stone Sky) - N. K. Jemisin

Klara And The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

Xuya universe (The Citadel of Weeping Pearls/The Tea Master and the Detective/Seven of Infinities plus short stories) - Aliette de Bodard

This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Goblin Emperor/The Witness for the Dead/Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison

Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh

2024

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

The Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead/Two Serpents Rise/Full Fathom Five/Last First Snow/Four Roads Cross/Ruin of Angels) - Max Gladstone

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Last Exit - Max Gladstone

Dead Country - Max Gladstone

Read and liked:

The Moonday Letters - Emmi Itäranta

Great Cities (The City We Became/The World We Make) - N. K. Jemisin

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Autonomous - Annalee Newitz

Dead Djinn universe (A Master of Djinn/The Haunting of Tram Car 015/A Dead Djinn in Cairo/The Angel of Khan el-Khalili) - P. Djèlí Clark

Even Though I Knew the End - C. L. Polk

Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty

The Mythic Dream - Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

Shades of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic/A Gathering of Shadows/A Conjuring of Light/Fragile Threads of Power) - V. E. Schwab

The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley

Ninth House/Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo

Machine - Elizabeth Bear

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

She Is A Haunting - Trang Thanh Tran

Was uncertain about:

Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki

The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune

In the Vanishers Palace - Aliette de Bodard

And read and disliked:

To Be Taught, if Fortunate - Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon

The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson

How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

(My pride insists I add that I have, in fact, read other books as well. Just to be clear.)

#books #lesbian space atrocities #imperial radch #ann leckie #locked tomb series #the masquerade #baru cormorant #seth dickinson #teixcalaan series #arkady martine #machineries of empire #yoon ha lee #the murderbot diaries #martha wells #broken earth trilogy #nk jemisin #tamsyn muir #this is how you lose the time war #the goblin emperor #katherine addison #aliette de bodard #annalee newitz #paolo bagicalupi #some desperate glory #emily tesh #hannu rajaniemi #a master of djinn #p djeli clark #max gladstone #craft sequence

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 56 – Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Gladstone’s, but until now I’d only ever touched his standalone works – I was previously a bit put off by the length of the Craft Sequence and so never actually tried it. So, thank you to the people who recommended I give it a try anyway! Despite being the first in a series, Three Parts Dead is a perfectly fine self-contained story and not relying on you reading the sequels to finish anything important. While it’s not the best thing of Gladstone’s I’ve read (Last Exit my beloved), it’s not the worst, either.

The book takes place in an industrial fantasy setting about a generation out from the apocalyptic, centuries-long war between the old gods and the ‘deathless kings’ – human sorcerers who had learned to master magic such that they could face them and tear the world apart in the crossfire. Tara, the hero, graduated from basically-Hogwarts entirely because there’s a binding preventing the school from doing bodily harm to its students – the next second they literally threw her out a window at 10,000 feet. The story follows her as she’s hired as a junior associate helping a world-famous lawyer/archmage as she’s hired by the church of Kas Everburning to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of their god. What follows are several hundred pages of convoluted scheming, legal proceedings, forensic accounting, and bloody magical duels and assassinations.

There are a few twists I genuinely didn’t see coming, the plot overall hangs together very well, and the pacing was just about perfect for the kind-of pulpy mystery/adventure story it was. Overall just a great time reading it.

That said, the setting’s probably the main thing to really sell people on this book. It’s just fun, and actually pretty damn original. The basic conceits are that a) magic is real, and b) so is capitalism. Kas Everburning is the beloved god and protector of the city, and also a highly leveraged legal entity loaning power across the globe whose death would catastrophically destabilize the global financial/metaphysical/political system. Mages can fly and raise zombies and enscroll people, but it’s all done in the idiom and with the vocabulary of contract law.

Beyond the basic conceit, Gladstone just clearly delights in layering weirdness on weirdness. Vitally, he does actually have a bit of restraint with the exposition – the book’s full of off-hand comments about different places and institutions that make you (me, anyway) incredibly curious about what the hell their deal is, but the actual explanations are restricted to what’s actually relevant to the plot and what the characters actually need to know. I still really want to know what’s up with King Clock or the Iskari or a half dozen other things, though. So, top-tier worldbuilding.

The themes are not exactly subtle, but I very appreciate that Gladstone lets them mostly remain as worldbuilding subtext and manages to make them feel like they emerge very naturally. I appreciate the slight restraint it takes to let the reader draw their own conclusions about the fact that the city’s police force is so empowered by strength and lack of need for doubt when on the clock that it’s literally addictive, or that one of the main antagonists is a brilliant older academic whose masterwork is a system where his star pupils (including a disproportionate number of attractive young women) are magically networked together to achieve incredible results he can take credit for while their lives and personalities are drained away to nothing. Being able to literalize the subtext a bit is half the fun of secondary wrld fantasy, after all.

Anyway, yes, very fun read. Four stars.

#book review #sff #three parts dead #craft sequence #max gladstone

[torpublishinggroup]

a tor person adopted a puppy 🐶

and yes, she's a baby, but it's never too early to dive into max gladstone's craft sequence 😊

#two serpents rise #max gladstone #craft sequence #chihuahua #booklr

[transbookoftheday]

Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

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

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

On the island of Kavekana, Priestess Kai builds gods to order—sort of. Kai's creations are perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the Old World. For beyond the ocean, true deities still thrive, untouched by the God Wars that stransformed the city-states of Alt Coulumb and Dresediel Lex.

When Kai tries to save a friend's dying idol, she's graveley injured—then sidelined from the business, 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 digs into the cause of the idol's death, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear that will break her if she can't break it first.

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.

#full fathom five #craft sequence #max gladstone #transfem #trans book of the day #trans books #queer books #bookblr #booklr

[morkaischosen]

Gal shouldn't be here.

The Craft Sequence is a very contemporary fantasy, and one with a realistic- if not cynical- view of power. Again and again our protagonists find themselves up against gods and corporations, establishments with the very most established positions, and have to use every edge at their disposal just to keep some kind of hope for something better alive. There aren't any knights in shining armour coming to save them. Except...

The Ruin of Angels deftly sketches in a picture of Camlaan - an insular island with Imperial dreams, spinning tales of love and heroism as it sends its thugs to project its will outside its island borders. It's a familiar picture to me as an English reader, and its mythology is so clearly a justification, a comforting self-deception for the iron fist of an immortal queen. You can't say "a true knight wouldn't-" because the knights who would are real, and the ones who wouldn't just a story they tell. Except...

The Ruin crew are thieves. They have their motivations and dreams, and they're risking life, limb and legal process to score artefacts, and for all Raymet's preoccupation with scholarship and heritage, that seems to be a side-hustle to the crew's overall goal: profit. And yet, somehow, one of the crew is a storybook knight with an unbending code of honour. It's not that she's a hypocrite, not exactly - the climax of her arc with Raymet wouldn't make any sense, wouldn't have remotely the same emotional impact, if I didn't feel in my heart that what Gal's willing to justify (what she feels is just) is the most important limit on her behaviour - but she's like an invader from another story, too wild and pure to live by the rules of this world.

And all of that is vital to her place in the book.

We see her, largely, through Raymet's eyes, and our sense of genre brings us right along- how are you even real?

But the book carries on, and she keeps being like that, and eventually Raymet curses her out, and the people who made her into someone who just doesn't fit the world that really is, and- "I don't understand this. I don't understand you."

Gal reads like the intrusive work of another, better world, and part of me resents her for that; but once I accept that she really, truly is only and completely what she seems, the only word for such a senseless thing is miracle.

It's a book about love. It's a book about a lot of things, but when I read for Raymet and Gal, it's a book about love. Disbelief, and fear, and the blossoming of joy as you realise this is real, you're here, all the reasons you shouldn't be just don't matter because you are.

That's how it feels, sometimes.

-----

This week's campaign of Galposting is brought to you by @swordswomanshowdown and my discovery that I'm willing to put a whole lot of effort into trying to get people to vote for a character I adore in a Tumblr poll tournament.

#max gladstone #the craft sequence #craft sequence #ruin of angels #the ruin of angels #yeah we're on the full Tag For Visibility plan here I'm not fucking around #galposting

[hiddenschools]

Ms. Kevarian drew close to Tara, and her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Beware of Alexander Denovo. I’ve known the man for half a century. I haven’t trusted him so far, and I don’t know any reason to start now.”

“I will do more than beware him,” she said. “I’m going to beat him.”

“Good.” Ms. Kevarian’s words were sharp and quiet, like footsteps in a distant passage. “But remember, your first duty is to our client, not revenge.”

“If I have to raise a god from the dead to defeat Alexander Denovo,” she replied, “I will raise a hundred. I’ll bring Kos back ten times greater than he was.”

“Well said.”

Three Parts Dead, first book of the Craft Sequence

#craft sequence #three parts dead #max gladstone #tara abernathy #elayne kevarian #book quotes #sff books

[lettiecassie]

The craft sequence is for people who read the locked tomb and thought "I loved that but I wish they talked about the theorems some more"

#locked tomb #the craft sequence #craft sequence #the locked tomb #max gladstone #tamsyn muir

[joncronshawauthor]

The Twenty Best Magic Systems in Fantasy

Magic systems in fantasy literature are like the spices in a curry, the kick in your favourite cocktail, or the jam in your doughnut (note to self: must order some doughnuts…and cocktails). They’re the magical ingredient that makes the world feel truly fantastical. Here, are some of the coolest magic systems that have graced the pages of fantasy literature. Allomancy – Mistborn Series by…

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#Allomancy #Broken Earth Trilogy #Broken Empire Series #Charter Magic #Codex Alera Series #Craft Sequence #Dust #elemental magic #fantasy literature #Farseer Trilogy #Glamour #Glamourist Histories #Grisha Orders #Grishaverse #Hands of Power #Harry Potter series #His Dark Materials #Inheritance Cycle #Inheritance Trilogy #Kingkiller Chronicle #Lightbringer series #Lygari #magic systems #Malazan Book of the Fallen #Mistborn #Naming #Old Kingdom Series #Orogeny #Sword of Truth #Sympathy

[lairn]

Book 17/24: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone Rating: 3.75/5

I was hesitant to start this book because my previous experiences with urban fantasy have been lackluster, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Tara is a Craftswoman, a magician working independently of divine influence, who is hired to assist in resurrecting a dead God. To do so she must go to the God's home, the massive city of Alt Coulumb.

Gladstone's world building of the city, magic systems, and various governments is easily my favorite aspect of the story. The world is rich in detail and the capacity of magic is infinite in its possibilities. The flexibility of magic puts the logic of the world at risk of becoming a game of Calvinball, but Gladstone retains enough order to make the plot rewarding rather than absurd.

The characters are fun and moderately well-rounded, but the plot and the world are the driving elements. Gladstone lays out a mystery narrative that is not overly transparent (always a challenge) and keeps the reader busy assembling clues as the world becomes more complex and more clarified.

#reading challenge 2023 #three parts dead #max gladstone #craft sequence

[dr-dendritic-trees]

I realize I have a one track mind at the moment but I am thinking about Kopil and Achilles and Odysseus and I am RoTaTiNg ThEm.

#craft sequence #the Iliad

[augustinajosefina]

Who's my favourite skeleton-armed vaguely sosiopathic necromancer? You're my favourite skeleton-armed vaguely sosiopathic necromancer!

(Just finished Dead Country last night. To be clear, it's not Ianthe.)

#tara abernathy #craft sequence #max gladstone #the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius

[literary-illuminati]

Finally got around to starting Three Parts Dead. And then did basically nothing today except read the entire thing. So, uh, good book?

'Sufficiently advanced contract law is indistinguishable from necromancy' is a great hook for a setting. Also being introduced to the heroine with 'was expelled from Hogwarts law school. At 10,000 feet."

#three parts dead #craft sequence #max gladstone #tht #sff

[torpublishinggroup]

The perfect read for those among us who love intricate systems of magic and hate capitalism. 

Dead Country. Max Gladstone. 

#dead country #max gladstone #craft sequence #the craft #tara abernathy #book recommendations #fantasy

[janesmitish]

Craft Sequence is fun cause the entire premise boiled down is just "The Gods decided to use capitalism to gain more power. This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a bad move"

#fantasy #craft sequence

[neurowinter]

Still occasionally think about a scene in the fantasy novel Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone where two characters are discussing why anyone would want to live in LA.

#craft sequence #four roads cross #dresediel lex